Dharma aka Justice

YA note from Dharma to Carol & Loren and JaniceY

July 4^th, 2007 Happy Birthday to me!  I’m one year old today and it truly couldn’t have happened without you.  I was just another unwanted puppy, born because nobody had cared enough to spay & neuter my parents.  I was sent off to a shelter and a very uncertain future (or no future at all).  But you rescued me and made me feel wanted and loved.  You shared your homes until you could find a happy forever home for me.  You helped teach my forever family (they’d never had a dog like me before this) what I’d need and how to care for me.  When I was driving everyone crazy with all my “Aussie energy”, you brought over play dates until you found Kelli, the perfect (no interest in chasing or clobbering the cats) best friend for me.

We had a family meeting and it’s been decided that you’ve already given me just about everything I ever wanted.  I have a happy forever home; cats to herd; a best friend to play, patrol, and bark warning notices with; great medical & dental care; yummy good-for-me food; a safe yard where I can run around three out of four sides of the house; air conditioning in the summer; all the ice cubes I want to crunch; and so much more.  But I still got to make a birthday wish.  (I can tell you what it is since it’s already been granted.)  I wished that my forever family would send this note for me and that I could say thank you by giving you an “I Get To Have A Happy Birthday!” gift from me; the kind that would help you keep on helping others just like me.  So, my forever family is going to give you this note for me along with a donation check.  It may not be the biggest donation you’ve ever seen, but it comes with lots of love and gratitude.

There is one more part to my birthday wish.  Would you please add this to my very own page on your website?  I want everyone to know what wonderful things happened for me because of what you do!

P.S.

If you should happen to spot any fireworks displays, pretend every gorgeous burst of color is just for you from your 4^th of July, firecracker kind of guy, happy to be here, friend!

Oct 1 Update from his family: Dharma (formerly known as Justice) is doing wonderfully well.  He and Howard went walking at Cooper Park this morning.  Both did very well.  Dharma is happiest when he’s glued to Howard’s side, so a boy’s morning out and about was just about heaven (even though it meant being on a leash).  

He’s learning so fast that it’s easy to forget how young he still is (around 12 weeks?).  We keep forgetting that he’s learned most everything by just figuring things out; there hasn’t really been any formal, leash based, training.   He sits, stays, comes (for the most part), gets “outta there”, gets down/off, “drops it”, fetches, and does “potty potty” just because it seems to be the right thing to do.  Actually we’ve stopped telling him to fetch because he brings stuff back to us almost all the time ~ although it’s a bit hard to do that when he’s really having fun.  There was a “learning curve” moment today that you’ll just love.  We put up a gate at the hallway entrance so that the cats would feel more secure as they get to know Dharma.  Whenever we’ve forgotten to close it, he’s just raced down the hall on his way to all that good tasting kitty food.  The weather was so nice today that we just left the door open to the outside and Dharma came in when no one was around.  I came through the door and there was Dharma, sitting in perfect good boy posture at the hallway entrance, even though the gate had been left wide open.

We both think that so much of Dharma’s excellent behavior has to have a lot to do with the work that you and Janice did before he arrived at our place.  You ladies do such good work with these rescues that they all seem to “audition” incredibly well.  I really did think we were only going to be doing foster care for Dharma; but once Howard & Dharma connected, it seems they knew better.  From the moment Dharma saw Howard, he’s just wanted to be wherever Howard is at.  I’ve never seen anything like this before.  Even if I throw a toy for Dharma to chase after, he’ll always return to Howard if both of us are there.  However, we’ve all agreed that their relationship is pretty exceptional.