wilbur is one of my most favoritest dogs of all times. he is little, cute, funny looking and he snorts. he has two switches, on and off and both of them at times can be extreme. when he sleeps he is dead to the world but when he plays...omg he is sooooo funny. he is brave as a lion and if any beast even dares to be in the vicinity of his food, he will in an instant be hanging from their necks (including jazz!) but his bite is as dangerous as an old clothespin, it is really just meant for hanging on. and he can be so sweet and gentle with the others, even lola this week has been sharing his bed.
if he was even close to perfect, i could have sold him a hundred times over for hundreds of dollars each time. but he is not. he is a puppy mill/petshop dog and at not even 8 yrs old he is totally wrecked. he is a brittle diabetic, he produces about 3 full gallons of urine a day, and he always produces it on the floor in very large lakes. this one dog alone floods us out every night because his kidneys are shot from his diabetes. his bowels are just rancid from his diabetes too, and the smell that accompanies feces or gas would lay an army of sewer rats low. he is blind now so he doesn't zip like he used to and is cautious as he makes his way around, but he is getting better at moving and he is way faster than honey but not near as quick as jazz.
he gets crystals in his urine and goop in his eyes and he has had pneumonia twice from just drinking water and swallowing the wrong way cuz the pipes in his neck are too short and close together and don't function they way they really should. wilbur is pretty much a disaster. and he has been a long term disaster, each new health issue cropping up after another. i know that if wilbur had never made it to saints his life would have continued to be pretty horrid until someone finally just did him in.
wilbur came here barely 6 yrs ago after getting the boot from several homes. and that boot would have continued to kick him around because people who wanted him initially and then decided they didn't, could always find another idiot who wanted him too and his devastating cycle would have continued. heck, there are still people who innocently call me and think that they want him today. they want him because he is a pug and they want a pug and they have no conception that this pug is alot more than most humans could handle. they think his blindness and diabetes is cute! wilbur is not just a pug, he is a very ill, sightless, walking overflowing septic system who i happen to love deeply.
and he was intentionally bred this way for greed.
someone recently sent me the link for some large scale but now downsizing US breeders who were selling their stock at auction. i carefully read each breeders list...hundreds of this and that and more. i felt like vomitting. thousands of animals up for sale to anyone who wanted to breed. a thousand lifetimes of producing millions of profitable puppies like wilbur to satisfy our human needs.
it boggles me the horrors that man creates for money and to get what we want when we want it. we are truly a sick, selfish species....like wilbur, wilbur himself is not a horror, but his rejected wrecked life from birth to death had the potential to be one huge nightmare. and while he escaped the very worst, the very best is still not all that easy for him either.
puppy millers/puppy breeders/ puppy producers for profit/puppy "want to have one now...ooops now we don't"....,we are a shameful species.
As unpopular as this sentiment is with many animal people, I even believe that "responsible" breeders who care deeply for their animals and find the best homes are contributing to the problem. One more home for a breeder's pups or kittens means one LESS home for a shelter animal. One more forgotten animal forfeited to the sting of the sodium pentobarbital needle.