My Adventure Book...: "Mica," the Little One

I first saw her as I was leaving Church one Sunday; she was waiting outside the chapel, hopeful that someone inside would give her something to eat {I suspect the children had already given her some cookie crumbs so her chances were pretty good}. For some reason, she decided she liked me a lot and started following me around as we waited for some friends to come out. She had these horrible crumpled legs, and the worst doggie-dandruff I had ever seen, but she was so, so sweet. It was difficult to part with her, but we left her there because we assumed that her owner lived in the house nearby. But I couldn’t get her gentle little face off my mind the whole week so the next Sunday, I was determined to find out if she, in fact, had an owner and if said owner was properly taking care of her.

After Church, she was there again, and we were able to con our Pastor into talking to a woman who appeared to be the owner in Russian {that’s all she spoke} who turned out was not, but informed us that her name was Jasmin, and that she did have an owner whom we’d likely be able to convince to part with her. Ownership here, it seems, is a bit of a loose concept that sadly applies to more than just dogs. That being said, that guy wasn’t around and I was told to try coming back a different day.

Our snowy street...

As with Ronald, I can’t say reason had anything to do with my decision to pick up a little puppy from the cold, wintry streets of Chisinau. We did have a friend who mentioned she was sort of hoping to get a dog at some point, although she wasn’t sure she was ready for one. After happening to notice that the forecast for the week would be down in the single digits and banking on the fact that our friend would take her in, I got in my car the next day and drove straight to where we’d last seen her. I found a guard whom I tried to speak to {in a funny mess of words I like to pretend were intelligible Romanian}, asking if I could take the puppy home. After disappearing into another room and having a conversation I could overhear but not understand, he said she was mine for the taking. I went out there and found her shivering, wet & cold. To say she was relieved is a bit of an understatement: she greatly welcomed snuggling in my lap, in a warm, dry car as we drove home.

In my lap on our way home...

I arrived home with her, much to Ronald’s chagrin, who was indignant {of course} at my betrayal which I had just brought in our home in my arms. She immediately got a warm bath and got wrapped up in one of Ronald’s towels {shhhh, don’t tell him!}, then ate some of his food, drank out of his water bowl, and even got to sit in our recliner {which he secretly sits in when we’re not looking because he knows he’s not supposed to}.

In the tub...

All clean!

Sitting pretty in Ronald's Recliner...

We re-named her Mica, Romanian for “little one,” that night, with our friends who came over to see her. It seemed fitting for such a sweet little girl.

While in much better shape than when I originally found her, she still had some issues; a bloated belly, crazy dandruff, and what we discovered is a condition known as “knuckling over”, so I took her to the vet the next day. Aside from the aforementioned issues, he was under the impression she was in pretty good health. The knuckling over often happens in large breeds of dogs or in dogs that are undernourished, but this vet was under the impression that in addition to lacking some key nutrients, since Mica was of mixed parents, she ended up having the front legs of one breed and the back legs of another which could be an added cause for the knuckling over. I hadn’t thought of that {or even knew it to be possible} but when I took a closer look, her front legs were quite different than the back ones and they were probably growing all disproportionately.

He gave me some vitamins to strengthen her little muscles and bones, a de-worming pill and told me the dandruff issue should go away with the improved nutrition but that I could continue to give her baths with doggie shampoo to help. Over the next few days she improved tremendously, was very playful and spent the majority of her time trying to get Ronald to play with her. He's never seemed like more of a grumpy old man than when around her, but I think he forgets that he used to be that way too. When I first got him our family dog White Sox was still around, although pretty old by dog standards (17 years!) and she needed all the help she could get to stand up and walk around. Ronald rudely ignored this by eating all of her beds and knocking her over with his "cone of shame".

He may be justified in not being pumped about Mica since she decided that the best place to go to the bathroom was Ronald’s favorite bed…so we’re working on that.

Not amused.

Little presents for Ronald, love, Mica.

He has comes to terms with her though...

She follows him around and mimics him sometimes...

After staying with us for a few days, our friend decided to take her home for a test run at doggie-parenting to see if she could handle taking care of her and work full-time. Mica had a good time over there...