We want to hear your Unconditional stories! To share your senior dog story, please send photos and up to 3 paragraphs to:
yourstories.unconditional@gmail.com.
In 2011, I was sent a picture of a terribly sad, defeated looking older blind Beagle. I offered to foster her through Blind Dog Rescue Alliance. She came to me, "very old", according to her vets, with a heart murmur, blind from glaucoma, with 2 cancerous masses on her abdomen, and unable to walk around the block.
My dog, Pete, was found along the side of a highway in South Carolina. He was bleeding and the people who found him thought he was hit by a car. They took him to a vet and found out he was buckshot in the face. His eyes were damaged.
Kai came into my life almost 14 years ago. I like to tell her that we were destined to be together. She has saved me from dark days countless times, and loved me unconditionally even when I know I didn’t deserve it. She has taught me to open my heart and how to love more deeply than I ever could have imagined.
Lady is a 17-year-old dog that my husband and I adopted 6 years ago from a local animal shelter.
Please meet my 10-year-old basset hound, Elmo, who was recently photographed by my neighbor and friend, Aiden Hoyal. She made this collage and I wanted to share his story.
13 years ago Darby came into my life as a possible service dog. He lived with me for 13 months while he trained. After advanced training with the professional trainers for our organization, he worked for 6 years as a service dog with a teenage boy.
Hello Jane,
What a pleasure it was to meet you at the Kempton Hotel in Vero Beach at your book signing.
I wanted to share the story of my aging pit bull mix Tembo, since he's the love of my life! I adopted Tembo in 2007. He had been at the small upstate NY animal control facility for 7 months, being passed over due to his "breed." He was infrequently walked and sleeping on concrete. When I met him, I knew that with exercise and routine, he would be lovely. Well he is more than lovely, he's perfect. He is kind, sensitive and sweet. Tembo is good with dogs, cats, and everything in between.
Lily came to me from Arkansas as a young rescue. Her sweetness, bright spirit, and intelligence earned her an easy place among the Best Dogs in the World.
Molly, a Border Collie X Labrador, was given up by her previous owner in a pretty bad way on 28th October 2016. She was 13, deaf, suffering from arthritis, spondylosis (a spine condition), a double ear infection, and was so weak that she could barely walk. Because of the state she was in, and her age, she was placed into foster care with myself and my girlfriend, Adele, on the 10th November.
Our love story started 2 years ago when I met Dusti Rose (then known as Kyla) at Muttville.
I took her out for a walk…this old vision impaired dog with a funny walk. I fell in love during our walk and adopted her that day.
Our story is a little bit different. I have known Elroy for almost his whole life. My best friend and her husband got him as a puppy. They did an excellent job training him and he had a great life. Then, the tiny humans came along, and Elroy became an outdoor dog. His family could no longer provide him with the attention he was used to.
There's a saying that once in a while a dog comes into your life and changes everything, and that is Hooligan for me. I always loved animals, but never had any real desire to have a dog. Then one day I saw his little face, and it was all over for me.
Miss Ida has been with me for 2 years. Her exact origins are unknown, we are her fourth home. She was dumped on a farm in Virginia and she lived there until the owner survived a workplace shooting.
Anniversaries feel so important to me as my dogs are getting older. 5 years ago, I attended a volunteer orientation at a local non-profit rescue and met 8 year old Athena ~ she had been neglected in her prior home. She was an 'outdoor only dog' who had fleas and Lyme disease, a cracked & broken tooth, nails so over grown she could barely walk and she was truly skin and bones.
It’s been a week since Doris left us at age 15. Unexpectedly. Too soon. She joined our household when she was 8 weeks old – her birth name was Dora but she was renamed in honor of a long-time Guiding Eyes for the Blind volunteer and Doris was as spunky and happy as her namesake.
I adopted Petri in March of 2015 at the Southern Oregon Humane Society. When I went to the shelter I was not planning on adopting a dog, but we instantly fell in love with each other.
Petri is a 10-year-old terrier mix who had never had a home until I adopted him. He entered a California shelter when he was less than 6 months old and bounced from shelter-to-shelter until I found him at the age of 8.
My name is Steve and I am the “friend beast” of a 10-year-old mutt named Pete. Pete is gray in the face and several steps slower than he used to be, but still wrestles me for the ball when I return after week-long business trips and begs to go for rides. This is our story…
18 years ago, we first fell in love with Skip, a little low-riding dog, when we saw him with his Maltese brother, Blizzard, at a shelter in Saratoga Springs, NY. His docile demeanor and wide-eyed glance gave us the warmest feeling in our hearts. That warm feeling has continued through the pleasure of having him close to everyone in this family of four. Skip has seen good times and bad times, and has continued to give us all continuous love, comfort, and fun that a family can ask for.
I got Tuti when I turned 12. Her mother belonged to some friends of ours, so I actually met her from the day she was born. I was born and raised in Colombia and 2 years ago decided to make a life changing career move and came to the US. I decided I wanted to ride horses professionally so I went to South Carolina for 6 months and left Tuti in Colombia. After that, I got a new job in New York and went back to get her.
