Our sweet Pearl. Such a gentle, loving soul. I belong to a group on facebook that is often posts dogs in need and typically what I do is crosspost them so others might see them and give them a chance. However, in the middle of an unremarkable day, I saw a plea come across for this dog "living" in a parking lot. The store owners had been seeing her for weeks, and initially has assumed she was dumped and would move on. But she did not move on. She begged every passer-by for food, she took shelter from the Texas summer sun by laying under cars, and slept between them when too tired to move. A store owner had taken a couple pictures of her, and this poor, sad, weathered face spoke to me. I immediately shared the information with my husband, told him I didn't know what to do, but I just couldn't ignore her like so many others had been. He promptly left work to go with me to find her. When we got to her, she was so calm, so tired. You could tell she had given up. We asked her if she wanted to come with us and she did. We figured we could at least take care of her until a rescue had room.
At the vet, we found Pearl was around 10. Her front teeth were ground down to nubs from eating off the ground. Her right ear was nothing but scar tissue from too many infections. She had been shot with BBs and pellets. She was missing so much of her hair and her skin was quite infected. She was so itchy. Lots of medicines, lots of love. Days later a woman called and asked if we could keep her longer as finding as rescue that wanted her was proving tough. That's ok, we told her. We wanted her. After 10 long years of wandering and being ignored. Being invisible. Pearl was home. 4 months later, she is part of our hearts and souls and will be forever. And she is ALWAYS smiling.
Houston, TX
