How I got here...

It's hard to say exactly what my life was like before I made my way into rescue, but let's just say I'm pretty lucky to be alive. I'm from a cruelty case in rural Louisiana and, even though the local parish didn't even have a shelter, some die-hard volunteers fought to keep us alive despite a policy that suggested that victims of dog fighting cases (like me) should be put down. They managed to have the courts agree and my life was saved! The only problem was that there was nowhere to go...

That's when I got even luckier, and some really cool people drove me all the way across country in one 36 hour stretch. Look at how little I was!

(that other dog there is my sister, Gris-Gris)

That whole journey was pretty tough for me. I'm not used to new things and everything was so new and... scary! I refused to get out of the crate the whole car ride, not even for a potty break, and the first thing I did when I got to the BAD RAP barn was pee for several minutes. That felt sooooooo good (and almost earned me the name "Austin Powers").

We got to explore the yard and then settle into our kennels. That's when I met Ana. She thought I was a little stinky (okay, I was *a lot* stinky) so she gave me a sponge bath and fed me treats. This is when I first showed off how well I can do the head tilt... check me out!



Everyone kept saying we were 3 months old because we were so small, but once they checked our teeth they got a surprise... we were more like 5 months old when we arrived, just really nutritionally and emotionally underdeveloped.

Fortunately, there are a whole slew of awesome barn volunteers who helped me learn that this new place was full of food, love, warmth, and learning. Pretty soon, I was learning to be a real dog and it felt great!