My Stray Dog's Story | Snoopy

Personal

Feb 20

I love getting to tell this story, sharing how the most important lady in my life found herself a home.

Before I get into where Snoopy comes in I have to share about my life the week before we found her. I was getting ready for my first college spring break, though I didn’t have any exciting plans, I was just excited to have some time away from school.

My grandparents and my uncle were returning from a trip to Florida as they did most years. Except on this trip, only twenty minutes from their house, they got into a bad car accident that took the life of my uncle and seriously injured my grandparents.

That whole following week my mom and I went from Manitowoc to Neenah, every day to visit my grandparents who were in separate hospitals. The Thursday following the accident, while sitting in the lobby of my grandma’s hospital, I got a call from my Dad and he told me he had found a puppy. I had never expected anything like that, we live out in the country surrounded mostly by fields and farms. You don’t just find stray puppies. Somehow a little eight week old puppy wandered onto our back deck. Our dog Bear had been the first one to alert my Dad she was even out there, in the cold of March. Bear led him straight to her, where he had to throw his jacket over her to let him pick her up.

We asked neighbors and put posts out on Facebook to see if anyone was missing her, but heard nothing. After a week she became part of our family.

From her first night she proved how smart and mischievous she was, crawling over the pen we had built for her from boxes and odd items. Bear took to her pretty quickly, letting her constantly run underneath him and grab his fur with little fuss.

We took the first of many trips to the pet store to get her a collar and toys, as our older dog Bear was not a toy dog and we had nothing. She loved to chew too.

Snoopy brought a lot of comfort to us and our family. She cuddled with my Mom after long days, got to take trips to visit my grandparents once they were in a place to work on physical therapy. It was hard to be sad around this little bundle of joy.

She was named by my Grandma, due to her similarity to the Peanuts character Snoopy, which also had special meaning to our family. I’ve loved the character Snoopy since I was little, especially since my Grandpa had a Snoopy stuffed animal in his airplane. I would always get to sit with the Snoopy in the back of the plane.

I’ve gotten to experience so many new things and in a new light thanks to Snoop. She forces me to get outside more, laugh at her little quirks, and live a life a bit fuller.

Snoopy and I at Devil’s Lake, taken by Sarah Tetlow

For a little mystery of a dog, she’s pretty perfect. I’m always astounded by how smart, friendly, and full of personality she is. Snoop turned five this year and I can’t wait for all the adventures to come on our next years together.