These pictures where taken the day I found Mick, or more truthfully the day he found me. It was September 11th, 2007 when I wandered into my mom's house unaware I was about to meet my new best friend in the back yard. I was a college freshman, totally self absorbed and total over the dog thing ever since my winnie dog, Ginger, of 14 years died. I was in the kitchen looking for food, as college freshman do, when I saw my mom in the back yard waving a hot dog around. Every college freshman thinks their mom's is a little crazy, but this was little much for even a mom. "What are you do" I asked with a slight attitude as I passed threw the back door to investigate. "This poor dog followed Mr Dan (their neighbor) home from a walk but won't let anyone touch him. He's been in the bush for half an hour and won't come out." I was still unconvinced that my mom wasn't crazy because I didn't see any dogs in the bush. I sat down on the back patio steps with an "uuuuh huh." She instructed me to watch the invisible bush dog while she went inside to try to find something else to entice him out.As soon as she closed the back door the bush started to move, out crawled Mick. He was over a year old but only weighted 35 pounds. Every bone in his body was clearly visible. The crawled turned in to a dead sprint as he ran up and sat down right in front of me. My heart melted. I reached out and he licked my hand. Mom came back and almost screamed but stopped her self. "How did you do that?" She asked in an astonished whisper. I didn't do it, he did it. She sat down a bowl of dog food and he ate it so fast that he made him self sick.
I couldn't stand it, I walked him threw the house for fear if I gave him the chance he would retreat back to the bush. Then placed him in the passenger seat of my car, and we went to the vet. I hadn't called for an appointment, I was afraid they would say they couldn't see him today. But I knew if I got him in the lobby and they could see the state of him they would help. He had a hunter's orange collar on that was already on the tightest hole and still hung off him 4 inches. He could have easily pulled his head free of it but instead he laid at my feet while we waited on the veterinarian. However, every time someone new came in he would jump up and try to hide under the chairs. The vet was wonderful. He ran every test at his disposal, gave me two bags full of medicine, his private cell phone number if I had any problem and only charged me $30. But he warned me not to get too attached to Mick. Because Mick had the worst case of worms he'd ever seen, he was 30 pounds under weight, anemic and had obvious psycological damage from being abused. The vet was partly worried even if he was nursed back to health he may not have a good temperament.
When I got him back to my house and I got the back yard all set up for him, but whenever I went in the house he howled. Not a bark but a guttural howl. So Mick was only an outside dog for about an hour. Mick walked in the house and crawled his brittle bones up onto the couch in the living room. He laid their while me and my roommate tried names on him. He was skinny, handsome, had beautiful hair, liked the sing the blues and was a ladies man. Mick Jagger was the only name that would do.
He spent the next 3 weeks, almost 20 hours a day on the living room couch asleep. Because of the worms it was 4 weeks before I could get any weight on him at all. It took 3 months to get him to 55 pounds and another 2 years to get him the rest of the way to 65 pounds. It took a years of socializing to get him not to overturn the living room couch, trying to hid under it, every time a man came in the room. Now Mick Jagger is the happiest, spoiled, most loving and most loyal dog in the world. He is truly an irreplaceable member of our family. I can't imagine life without him. This blog will have more than it's fair share of his marvelous adventures.
