Mattie

Mattie is an 8 year old female Chocolate Lab who joined us officially February 15th, 2009. Her story is unique compared to the rest of the pack in that Mattie wasn’t actually rescued. She decided on her own that she wanted to live here with us and we just had to oblige.

Mattie used to live across the road and we would occasionally see her wandering the neighborhood. In December, she showed up on our property and Matt walked her back to her house. A little while later, she was back again and he brought her once again back to her home. Well, the third time she showed up it was late in the day and she spent the night. She also showed up and stayed at our house from Christmas until New Year’s before her owner, who had been travelling, came to pick her up.

One night, Mattie showed up at about 11:30 pm. Everyone was asleep….everyone that it except Bare. Before Bare started having seizures and we had to take away his crate, he would jump up on top of his crate and watch out the window and let us know if ANYTHING moved out there. I tried to explain to him that the deer were allowed to wander around. He didn’t agree and would bark his head off. LOL! So Bare started barking and I ignored it for a minute or two thinking that he might stop and that whatever was out there would wander away. Then I listened a little closer and I heard a familiar bark. It was Mattie and she was barking at the back door to be let in. It was snowing pretty hard and she was covered in snow. I opened the door and said “Come on in Mattie. It’s freezing out there.” She let me wipe off the snow with a towel and proceeded righ to the bedroom to lay on her dog bed. We had given her a dog bed when she had stayed with us during the holidays and I never put it away. I guess part of me knew that she would be back some day. She stayed for a day or so and went home once again.

January came and went and from time to time I could hear Mattie barking across the creek. I worried about her. She had a very large tumor on her belly and from December to January it had grown. February came and Mattie showed up once again. We called the owners and let them know Mattie had come for a visit. We asked if she could stay and they said yes.

Mattie’s tumor had grown much larger since we had seen her last and now that she was our responsibility we could take her to the vet. The tumor was so big that you could hold it with two hands. Besides the tumor, she was in heat, had mastitis, was in a false pregnancy and had milk coming from a few of her nipples and pus coming from some of the others. She was a mess. She underwent a very invasive surgery and the tumor was removed and she was spayed as well. It took quite a while for her to recover and at one point we were worried that she might not make it but she did and is doing well.