This is a post that I have been wanting to make for a long time.
Meet Violet. Violet has been posted before in this thread (bless our Lord
@Rabid). I've had Violet for an odd three years now, and these three years have probably been the best years of my life.
This may seem like another tumblr esque post, but hear me out. In truth, Violet is just like any other dog, only she has a slight disability. I found Violet in a secluded trashcan I'm the Greek countryside. The town nearest to that cold bin has a rampant well known problem with hunters abandoning dogs that they consider to be unfit for tracking duties.
Some of them give the dogs (mostly puppies) to shelters anonymously. Others prefer to give them
to a friend. But in the most extreme cases, these animals are left to die out in the wild, directly killed or abandoned in secluded spots, mostly trashcans, until they starve to death or die from the heat.
Violet happened to be unlucky enough to be abandoned in the latter way, being (presumably harshly and with quite some strength) dumped into a trashcan. The impact broke one of her front paws and subsequently forced it to mend wrong into a stump, rendering her disabled. The vet told me that it is likely that she had stayed in the can for three days before I stumbled on to her. Despite fighting against the odds, she made it out alive and managed to recover thanks to volunteers and a lot of personal effort by myself and my family.
At first she was going to be given in for adoption, and the calls and compliments were flowing in so much that I had to spend the better half of a day answering emails and phonecalls. Though with almost every single case, the enthusiasm faded when the callers and senders respectively found out that Violet (according to them) wasn't normal because of her disability. Thus, they pulled out. Violet was living with my family during this time and was slowly building trust and getting used to family life. After what I had seen and witnessed with the reactions of some people, I felt it was my obligation to keep her and help her adapt to her new life.
Disabled animals, disabled dogs in particular, deserve a normal life in which they aren't defined by their malformations or disabilities, but the amount of love they give you. After three tough years and a transformation process in which a frail, scared pup was turned into a happy, social dog, I can proudly display this as my greatest live achievement yet. For everything I do, I get rewarded tenfold.
So, be like Violet. Smile like Violet. You won't regret it.