My Girl Mackie

Who could resist that face???

I've had Mackie quite a while - we're reaching that point where it's just going to get harder and harder to say goodbye when she gets a adopted.   She's a doll and feisty and sassy so we need to get her adopted.    She would have been adopted monthes ago but she's got a disc issue.  And when people hear disc issue and dachshund, they get scared and lose their desire to adopt her.   She's extraordinarily mobile so she's not a candidate for any kind of surgery.   I feel confident that she will make it through her life doing fine simply because of her small size.     Because she's so small, she's simply unable to jump onto couches, chairs and beds.   She's so small, her little legs can't even allow her to reach to the next step to either go up or go down.  But I can't guarantee this.

A lot of people have fallen in love with Mackie, but when I tell them why she walks so odd - they generally walk quickly away.    I am confident that there's a dachshund lover out there who will be prepared to take a dachshund in who may or may not have back issues later in her life.   Unfortunately, the breed can easily have back issues even if they appear totally healthy.    That's why dachshund lovers are encouraged to not let them jump onto or off of things or even take stairs.    Its another reason why dachshunds need to keep extra weight off - they need to keep extra pressure off their backs.

Fearless and Resourceful Mackie

If Mackie didn't walk weird - as a vet once said, as a drunken sailor.   Nobody would ever know anything is potentially wrong with her.   She is the feistiest bad ass dog I think I've ever fostered.    I crack up at her antics on a daily basis.     As my Dad would say - she's full of piss and vinegar.    But she's got the sweetest face and expression so you can hardly believe how nutty she can be.     Every other dog in the house is bigger than Mackie and every other dog in the house is terrified of her.    Almost every night when JTK is getting ready for bed and we're reading a book, we can hear a frenzy of running back and forth in the living room.   Generally she's terrorizing Cooper, the biggest dog in the house. 

When Charlie first came in the house, she immediately had to let him know she was way tougher than he was and that he'd better stay on her toes.    A couple of times we caught her actually biting his ankles - JTK likes to say she's "LITERALLY" an ankle biter.  ;)    Suzie is not scared of Mackie, though, because she's a tough old broad and this little whipper snapper is not going to boss her around.    I think Mackie wants to grow up to be like Suzie     Really, it's like she's begging Suzie for tips on how to be even more bad ass but Suzie is really not interested in being Mackie's Sensei.  haha   Tina loves Mackie and so does Jingle - they tolerate a lot out of her that they normally wouldn't.    I think they both understand the life she had as well and give her a break for her little outbursts.  ;)

Is that a wink?? ;)

I had to put a bungee cord on one of my cabinets to thwart Mackie's efforts to steal cat food.   I keep Roscoe's cat food in a flip top container and one day I walked into the kitchen to find Mackie standing on all the other items in the cabinet  with her long nose in the container chomping on Roscoe's cat food.   I'm pretty impressed that she not only got the cabinet open, but she got the container open too.   She is resourceful!

Mackie came from a puppy mill - a puppy mill so bad that the Humane Society of Missouri raided them and seized all the dogs.    Apparently it was a mill filled with dachshunds and doberman pinschers.   Considering her size and the horror of her surrounding conditions, Mackie had to rise to the occasion to keep herself and her babies safe - I'm sure of it.    I don't even want to think about what her life was like for her to have been part of a puppy mill raid.   Luckily the employees at the Humane Society fell in love with her and worked very hard to find a rescue for her.    See, Mackie had this nasty little growth on her head and the Humane Society will not adopt out any dog that has anything wrong with them.   This growth on her head made her unadoptable and if a rescue couldn't be found, she would be put to sleep.

The email about Mackie was one of the many emails our group gets and I took a couple of days to decide if I would foster her.    I called the HSMO and the woman was so excited - she was just about to enter into their system that a rescue couldn't be found so she would be euthanized.   Luckily, I called in just the nick of time.   

When I picked Mackie up that night, she was in rough shape.   She had a surgery to remove the growth on her head, she had a dental removing a number of infected teeth and she had her spay surgery.    Apparently, her had dropped dangerously low during the operation and we had to make sure she stayed warm that night.    In the next couple of days a number of people saw her including my sister in law and nephew and everyone was really worried about her because she had a very difficult recovery.  When I see her behavior today it's really hard for me to remember that tiny little girl I brought home that had to be bundled up and kept warm to keep her temperature stable.

Mackie is a beauty

Mackie is my little buddy - JTK does annoy her quite a bit and she lets us all know that.    Mackie needs to be with me almost all the time.   And when we sleep at night, she has to sleep on top of  me.   It can be kind of hard to sleep, but its much better than how she was at the beginning.    She used to have to nestle her head under my neck all night long.    I'm a side sleeper, so every night Mackie crawls up on me underneath the  covers and that's how we sleep.

Please help me find a home for Mackie - someone who will be willing to face anything that needs to be faced for her, but will also have a positive attitude that she will live out her as healthy and full of life as she is now.