The story of Tami-Bear

Tami-Bear is the most amazing furry companion I could have ever asked for.  About 11 years ago I rescued a litter of puppies from a women who neither wanted nor cared for these precious angels.  There were actually two litters with 14 puppies when I first saw them at one week old, by the time they were weened from their mothers and able to go new homes there were only 6 puppies left due to neglect and illness.  I was a 20 year old wildland firefighter living in northern California also going to college with limited means but I just couldn’t let any more puppies die so I took the lot of them and figured I would find them all homes.  I had my eye on the runt of the litter and figured I could find the remaining five puppies good families.  Turns out they all had parvo and worms and were very ill.  After having to put down one of the pups cause she was just too sick I committed to saving another of the puppies who was very sick and ended keeping her along with the runt I had my eye on.  Thus began my wonderful friendship with Tami-Bear and Piglet.

Tami and Piglet are a Walker hound/ Rottweiler mix. I believe the hound in them has led them to have very adventurous spirits.  My house is bordered by timber land on two sides and they took it upon themselves to explore at every opportunity, which I can imagine would be wonderful if you were a dog.  However this adventurous spirit has led Tami into some unfortunate situations.  At about a year old they decided to explore the forest and Tami came home with a bite wound on her neck that was determined to have come from a mountain lion, her saving grace was a leather collar with alternating metal spikes and domes on it.  One of the mountain lion’s teeth actually went through one of the metal domes and the leather, I believe this saved her life.

A few years later one of my neighbors was out of town and his two wolf dogs escaped from their yard, and after killing two of another neighbors goats found Tami and attacked her, leaving her with multiple bite wounds along her left side near her shoulder, neck and hip.  Regardless of these two incidents Tami remained to be a very friendly and outgoing dog.

When Tami was five years old we moved to a small island in Southeast Alaska for a permanent fire job, where Tami had an unfortunate encounter with a porcupine twice which eventually resulted in a quill migrating into her right eye.  After a month of trying everything we could, I had to make the tough decision to remove her eye because all it was doing was causing her pain and had very limited vision. But don’t worry this still didn’t slow her down.  She adjusted quickly and easily, I think it was harder on me than on her.  It wasn’t certain there was quill in her eye until it had been removed and therefore was a very tough decision for me to make to remove the eye. This change only made her sweeter.  About a year later she was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and started on a life long long regime of medication.

If all this wasn’t enough a couple years ago after we moved back to northern California my closest friends rescue pit bull got in a disagreement with with Tami and and gave her another bite wound on her neck, which had to have a drain inserted into in order to heal properly.  Again she remained to be the same very friendly, sweet, and zesty companion I have loved for so long.

So at this point I’m thinking she has had her fair share of sickness and injuries, more than any dog should have to go through.  She has endured it all and became a better dog because of it. I haven’t met anyone one yet who isn’t instantly warmed over by her shining personality.  So to find out last Wednesday after about a week of lameness in her front right leg that she has a bone tumor was almost too much to bare. After a clean chest x-ray and blood work that showed only slightly elevated levels of some indicator, I cant remember cause I was in shock, and a normal calcium test, I decided to make the agonizing decision to have her leg amputated.

I’m very hopeful that she will again pull through this.  In two days from now they will do another chest x-ray to make sure no mets have shown up and barring all looks good will go under the knife to have her leg and shoulder removed……