Our Auntie, Ruthie

Hello Everyone,

We have only briefly mentioned Ruthie in the past. She is our grandfather's dog and she doesn't care for sports, blogging, loudness, playing too much, or chaos. We all live in the same house, so she is subjected to our "beingness" on a daily basis. She prefers to be a lady of leisure, to just eat, sleep, arise briefly for pats, and return to sleeping.

She often does "come to work" as Mother says and hangs out with us all during the day while our Mother works on the computer for hours on end. She dutifully falls asleep and this horrid snoring starts about five minutes later! Katherine, Zorra, and I all have to go check her out, even though it happens several times during the day. I often wonder if she will bring the house down from the vibrations of her snores!!

A few years ago, my mother and auntie decided to look for a dog for Grandmother. A nice, small dog who would sit on her lap. Mother scoured Petfinder and somehow ran across Ruthie's photo. That was all mother needed to see. She had found the perfect dog, even before reading the description. Ruthie is a Beagle/Pekingese mix and had a distinctive underbite! That underbite is what drew her to mother and she knew that Ruthie had to come and live here.

Ruthie was down in Jeffersonville, IN, so they all took a roadtrip to meet her at the foster family. It was love at first sight and Ruthie came to live here.

Ruthie is quite the celebrity, in her own right. She is mentioned in a book put out by Petfinder called "Second Chances: Inspiring Stories of Dog Adoption." Mother wanted to win Bissell Spot Machine and entered Ruthie's story in a contest. We didn't win the machine, but Ruthie became a celebrity.

Ruthie was found by an animal control officer while nursing a litter of puppies in an alley. All of Ruthie's pups got adopted, but no one selected her. Luckily, she was spared from death row because she had a special way about her and ended up in foster care.

One night, Ruthie came in and woke up Mother in the middle of the night and was insistent in getting mother's attention. Mother finally got up to see what was wrong. It so happened that Grandfather, who is diabetic, was having an episode and his blood sugar had dropped dangerously low. He had become incoherent and needed medical attention. Grandmother was trying to administer assistance with Grandfather, but he just was not responding. Ruthie had become a rescue dog.

The book authoer, Joan Banks, had read Mother's entry and contacted her indicating that Ruthie's story should be in the upcoming book.

The author hopes that the "amazing" adoption stories will remind people how wonderful displaced dogs can be. The book is dedicated to "the selfless people who work in animal welfare and to the hundreds of thousands of wonderful dogs annually who didn't find "forever" homes." The proceeds from each book will buy 14 bowls of dog food for animal rescues and shelters nationwide.

Also, Petfinder now has a series starting on Animal Planet, here in the US. The description is here.

We don't often get on a soapbox, but we are advocates of rescued dogs and cats. Katherine, Zorra, Ruthie, Harley the Cat, Sabrina the Cat, Dakota the cat, and I are all rescued animals. Even though Ruthie is the only Petfinder Alumni, we are going to try to catch an episode or 2 of the show.