When we made aliyah, we made the heartbreaking and very emotional decision, not to bring our dashies with us.
You can read about it here. Suffice to say it was the best thing for them. And they landed up going to an amazing family, they are spoiled rotten, go for car rides and vacations to the beach and sleep on the bed. We get regular updates on how they are doing and pics of them all the time.
When Paul started his new job, which is a work from home/remote office job, we decided that we would look into getting a dog.
One of my stipulations was that we would take in a rescue dog, a doggo that needed a new home. Whether because they had been abandoned, or were too old to be adopted or had health issues. After having to give up our babies and seeing the love and care they were given in their new home, we wanted to pay it forward.
So one day a few months ago, I got a call from Vanessa, her pupper’s sister needed a new home, would we be interested?
Well, maybe.
I called the vet who was in charge of looking for a new home for Nessi and got the details of her current human. Within a week we made a plan to go see her and within a week from then we brought her home.
Here is her story.
When Nessi* (and her sister Sox and the rest of their litter) were about 2 weeks old, they were found on the side of a main road, their mum had been hit by a car . The pups were split up and went to a variety of people to hand rear them.
When they were about 5 weeks old, one of the foster moms older dogs attacked Nessi and cracked her skull/jaw. She was not allowed to be adopted out until she was fully healed.
She was then adopted out to a wonderful guy in Tel Aviv. Because of the pups losing their mum so early, they all have varying degrees of anxiety and other issues from not having that maternal protection. Nessi also has a few extra issues from her attack at 5 weeks. Her human spent hours and hours with her and a trainer working through her anxiety and issues and helping her overcome them.
And then her human got sick. Unfortunately his illness meant he was unable to look after a rambunctious, energy full, crazy puppy and he had to make the very hard and heart breaking decision to re home her.
Which is where we came in.
On 4th April, Nessi came to live us.
For the first day, she lay in one spot, refusing to move or interact with us at all. We left her alone, put out food and water for her and basically ignored her even though we just wanted to shower her with love.
When it came time to take her outside before going to bed she wouldn’t let us come near her to put her leash on and Paul spent ages sitting on the floor with treats, tempting her to come close enough to him to get it on.
That night she slept on the couch in the lounge and would not come sleep in her basket in our room.
To cut a long story short, she warmed up to us within a day or two. She has now taken over the entire house. She sleeps on the couch with us when we watch TV. She sheds everywhere. She sleeps in her basket in our room at night or on the mat next to Paul’s side of the bed.
She loves playing tug with her rope or her rubber bone and get super excited when the kids come home from school.
She loves the children and lets them lie all over her and kiss and hugs her. She is very much a puppy and loves to bite and chew everything, especially people!
She still has very bad anxiety and we give her homeopathic doggy anti-anxiety pills twice a day which definitely helps but we need to take her to training. She really doesn’t like strangers, especially when they come to our house, so we need to help her deal with that or we will never be able to have visitors again.
All in all, adding Nessi to our home has been the best decision. We love her and she brings joy into our home.
*Nessi in Hebrew means miraculous.
