Pet of the Week: Fannie — The Dog Who Fought Twice for Her Life

Cameron, TX - Some dogs are just waiting for a home. Fannie is waiting for the person she fought to live for.

Fannie, a gray-and-white pit bull-type dog with a white blaze down her face and a heart-shaped white patch on her back, is recovering at the Cameron Animal Shelter — and her road there has been anything but easy.

Earlier this month, Animal Control Officer Sandra Ritch got a call about a dog that looked like she had been hit by a car. What she found was worse. Fannie was emaciated and dehydrated, her body covered in older scars and raw, infected wounds — the marks, Ritch says, of a dog who had been bred over and over and used up. As Ritch tells it in the Milam Touch of Love group, Fannie's past was "not a bait dog or a fighting dog, just plain right out overbred and abused."

The first night was the hardest call of all. "When I first saw her and the pain Fannie was in, my first thought was hurry up and humanely euthanize her to get her out of the pain," Ritch wrote. "As we were getting ready, I saw in our officers' eyes we needed to try and save her. So we did."

And she started to heal. A local family — Tannessa Willard Strelsky and her family — took Fannie in as a foster, where she was reunited with one of her puppies, a little male named Bo. For a dog who had known nothing but being used, it was her first taste of being loved.

Then, last Friday, October 16, Fannie crashed again. A serious infection had taken hold inside her, and she was rushed to Dr. Marissa Little at Little Veterinary Services, who treated her with medication and IV fluids. Ritch asked the community to pray: "She once again is fighting for her life." By Sunday, the prayers — and the medicine, and the dog's own stubborn will — had answered. Fannie was up, walking around the shelter yard, and looking for her people. "We should have called her Kat," Ritch joked, for all the lives this girl seems to have.

Here is the part that will surprise you: after everything, Fannie is gentle. She doesn't mind cats at all, does fine with small dogs, and — in Ritch's words — "Loves kids."

Fannie is being offered as a foster-to-adopt, so her new family can help her finish healing while she settles into the home she has earned. Twice now, this dog has fought her way back from the edge. Everyone at the shelter believes she did it for a reason: there is someone special out there she is meant to find.

Could it be you?

Meet Fannie: Cameron Animal Shelter, 1200 E. Gillis St., Cameron — call (254) 697-6574, or message the Milam Touch of Love group on Facebook.

Milam Touch of Love, the all-volunteer nonprofit that supports the Cameron shelter, makes sure city dogs are spayed or neutered, vaccinated, and on heartworm prevention before adoption, with donor support covering the vetting. To help dogs like Fannie, donations can be sent to Milam Touch of Love, PO Box 543, Cameron, TX 76520 (memo: "Cameron Shelter"), or given through the group's page.