Lily's Story

We had our first bully from the bull terrier rescue nearly 11 years ago. He was a lovely brindle and about 15 months old when we had him. We called him Biffa (after the dustbins) He was fabulous and great fun. He was a bit of a hooligan but we took him to training classes and he taught us what he wanted to know. He even let me look quite good some days by doing positions on the move, a sit stay, down stay, send away and recall (this skill was strangely lost however when we were on dog walks and he had found something interesting to eat, wee on or roll in! He was even an extra on 101 Dalmations and there is a picture of him in the Daily Mail doing a lovely sit stay with about 50 other dogs, he was the only bully there and we were so proud, - until that is he thought it would be more fun to say hello to all the other dogs and he started to bounce around. (Exit stage right!) Biffa was a huge part of our lives until we had him put to sleep nearly a year ago. He was suffering from canine dementia (how we ever noticed I will never know!) and it was one of the saddest days of my life when he went.

We knew that we wanted another bully and we debated about another rescue (we had two children by now) we heard about a rescue called Hugo who was another brindle dog. He was in Linconshire and we went up to see him with kids and collie in tow and a couple of hours later Hugo came home. He was a very big dog and an entire male. Well to cut a long and painful story short Hugo started to turn on us adults in the family. We tried all sorts of techniques with him, consulted behaviourists but in the end we made the decision that he was a tragedy waiting to happen. Poor Hugo was put to sleep as well. We both felt as if we had failed him and thoughts of another dog were far from our minds until we heard about a little white bitch called 'Lily' who was in kennels in Wales. I had always worried about having two bitches in the house in case they really didn't get on but she sounded so lovely that we had to take the family again to go and see her. She was gorgeous! She had just had a bath so her skin was a bit pink, she had one ear down and one up, bandy legs (like a queen anne chair!) and lumps and scars all over but she was so happy to see us and have some fuss that we all fell in love with her. She came home with us that day and we have never looked back. We decided to change her name and Lily became Beattie. We got her home and gave her a good looking over. I opened her mouth and saw that she had green manky teeth on the top. Her breath smelt awful and I was worried that she had an infection and that it might have gone into her jaw. Her feet were really flat and her nails were horribly long. I booked her into the vets that afternoon .The vet took one look, a sharp intake of breat (which usually means get the cheque book out it's going to cost you a fortune) and asked if we were insured he thought she had terrible skin, her teeth needed to come out, she had an ear infection and her joints were loose so her knees could pop out at any moment! Well she was duly booked in for her teeth which she had to have removed, her ear was cleaned out and we had stuff to put in it. We changed her diet onto a wheat free one and her skin started to look a lot better. She was very quiet to start with but as she has spent more time with us all she has come out of her shell. She is a fair weather bully, she isn't keen on the cold weather and when it's rainy she would rather not go out for a wee and wants to stay curled up into her bed. She wears a coat for the really bad weather, I get the feeling that she would like the boots to match and a hat! She loves to have her bed in the lounge right near the fire. She sits really close to it, so close that you think that she will singe her fur. She does have a funny five minutes (just like our Biffa) but not quite as energetic. Biffa used to run around the lounge like it was the wall of death. She seems quite an old dog in a young body. She hated the hoover and the broom when she first saw it and used to attack it. My poor dyson had bits falling off it by the time she had finished. She is over that now and just gives it a dirty look when ever it comes out of the cupboard. We have to keep an eye on her bad ear, it will always be wonky but I think that it adds to her charm, I have to regularly manicure her nails (which she puts up with) and her feet are now looking like bully feet and are more catlike. She gets on brilliantly with our collie bitch and when Beattie gets going they have a really good chase about. There is a picture of Beattie on the home page of BTCWT. It is a side profile (showing the good ear!) of her standing in our (or rather her) kitchen.

She is a delightful dog and we are so relieved to have another lovely bully (especially after the bad experience of Hugo).

 

OTHER SUCCESS STORIES