Meet Russell

Yes I made an American Apparel poster for my dog featuring an image of a chihuahua standing on cheeseburgers and the infamous dog getting hit by a frisbee.

Name: Russell (previously names Kahlua the alcohol brand by its first owners)

Breed: Fox Terrier (smooth) / Pomeranian cross

D.O.B: 10 July 2005

Gender: Boy

Now for a little story as to why this little guy is so special to me. Before we got him, we actually had 4 other dogs at home.

  Months ago, my mum told me her friend's family were moving overseas to New Zealand and leaving their dog behind so we would be taking care of it and finding it a new owner. When I went to their house with my mum and sister, they were in the middle of packing. It was my first meeting with Russell and he really favoured my older sister. We also noticed something addictively cute about him - his tongue tended to stick out his mouth and we couldn't stop staring. However when I went to pat him, his breath was REALLY SMELLY (sorry Russell hehe) and we could notice the fleas on his back. His owners were definitely neglecting him but only because my mum promised ahead; we took him home that day.

As soon as we took him home, I put flea treatment on him and took off flea eggs and he was excited to meet a chihuahua of his size at home. So excited that he scared the chihuahua away with his friendliness. We kept him indoors and everytime we woke up in the morning, there would be about 5 to 7 puddles of pee scattered around the house and 3 piles of poo droplets from the little guy. Even though we tried to train it, it didn't stop. 

In the next 2 weeks, we found a potential owner who returned the dog to us after it peed on their carpet. Another family returned it because their dog tried to bite Russell. We were under pressure to give the dog away (as we already had 4 dogs at home) but my mum went overseas and something strange happened while everyone else was at home - underneath his eye was bleeding and it didn't stop. Eventually we could see a hole underneath it's eye. What we thought was an old scar from a car accident it had previously been in had opened up. We took him to the vet and what Russell had was a tooth root abscess.

The bleeding under his eye had been a common occurrence in the past and definitely neglected by its old owners. To avoid sh*ttalking it's old owners I'll just thank my sister who paid for his gum surgery. It meant he had to have about 6 teeth pulled out and his tongue stuck out even more.

RUSSELL LOVES HIS SNAP COLLAR

Eventually Russell has become so attached to our household that we decided to just keep him. If I'm studying, he will ask to go on my lap. If my alarm goes off and I don't wake up, he calls me to get up by licking my face. He now even asks to be let out of the house to take a piss. 

Tina