In February, 2015, I took custody of a dog with the understanding that his owner would be moving here within a few months. This did not happen, and unfortunately, at the end of January, 2016, the dog, who was older, passed away. The grief was intense, even after only a year, and I did anything and everything I could to cope. My mom, seeing how much pain I was in, started searching online for a new dog. She had a lot of ideas about the kind of dog I should get, preferring smaller dogs since the dog I had before wasn’t allowed at her house. Her favorite breed was dachshund, but she would accept anything smaller than about 20 pounds. She would find possible options and send them to me, only for us to call and find out someone had already picked up the puppy. Then, one day, she sent me an ad for a chihuahua who was being sold for $110. There was no picture, but we called anyway. The lady said there wasn’t a picture because he’s black and wouldn’t show up on their carpet. That made us a little uncomfortable, not knowing what we were going to find, but his personality sounded perfect. When we got there to see him, he was full of energy, but he was so sweet. You could tel he just wanted to be loved. They claimed they would make me a deal and sold him to me for $100. I think this is because they expected whoever responded to the ad to try to get him for a lower price. I didn’t care about the price. I just wanted him and to get him away from there. He was underweight, because their dogs would take his food from him. This caused him to have some food aggression, poor baby. He was also on his 3rd home in under a year, and he didn’t have any vet records. I don’t think he’d received any medical care and he had worms when we got him. They gave him to us with food we couldn’t give him (pretty sure it was cat food?) and he was wearing a cat collar. This of course could not handle the pressure from him pulling on the leash, so he took off running down the street (meaning my poor cousin had to chase after him). He was so small that it was difficult to find a collar that would fit him correctly, but as soon as I could, I bought him a harness anyway to protect his neck.
The first night, I tried to feed him and he would not eat. This would be an ongoing issue for many years to come (more on that in a bit). He also had a lot of tummy troubles, so when he would eat, he would sometimes throw up without warning. He was also an escape artist. Because of my grief, I would try to put him in the fenced-in backyard for awhile, and he would find a way out to go running down the street to the first person he could find. Of course, I had the address on his tag, so they would bring him right back to me. I am so lucky nothing ever happened to him. My dad kept patching up little gaps around the fence until he stopped escaping. Because of this history, my dad still calls him Houdini. I struggled a great deal with feelings of overwhelm in the first few months after getting him. I still bonded with him, though, and he bonded with me. My favorite thing to do was lay in bed and he would lay right next to me. He still does that, he’s a velcro dog, for sure.
I know I saved him and gave him a good life, and honestly, he saved me too. In addition to co-regulating with me whenever possible, he also taught himself how to be a service animal. If I get extremely anxious or upset, he will jump up into my lap, put his front paws on my chest, and put his face right in my face. This forces me to focus on him and calms me down. If he cannot get to me when I am upset, he will start whining until someone picks him up and brings him to me. This happened recently when a lightning strike hit right next to the house. I was standing, trying to get things together in case we needed to leave quickly, and he started whining until my partner picked him up. In 2018, we had a fire in the middle of the night. It could have been so much worse, but it was traumatizing as this has always been one of my biggest fears. I held him throughout the entire ordeal (which took hours), from the point of smelling something strange, to the smoke detector going off, to running through the house screaming, to using the Emergency SOS feature, to waiting for the fire department and my brother to show up, to riding in the car to stay with my mom for what turned out to be something like a couple of weeks. He was so good, basically just sleeping in my arms through all of that. It’s so funny, because my brother, when leading us across the street to where he was parked, asked me if Dash would bite him. Um, no, definitely not. He was as docile as can be.
He did have food aggression, which unfortunately, we had to use against him to get him to eat. If I touched his food, he didn’t care. If someone else touched his food, he would growl at them, and eventually he would start to eat it. This went on from 2016 when I got him until April of 2024 when it miraculously changed. In the early years, he wouldn’t eat for about 36 hours until he made himself sick. I had to hear his little tummy making all kinds of noises and he still wouldn’t eat. It was horrible. Then I changed his food, and he did better, as in we were able to get him to eat at least a little something most nights. When I would take him to my mom’s, he simply wouldn’t eat. It was so stressful.
He would also get protective of me and my friend Ashley, who helped take care of him for a couple of years. If anyone hovered over us or started tapping on us, he would growl and lunge at them. Once or twice, he did bite certain individuals on their faces. They deserved it.
He also knows exactly how to get his feelings across. One time, I left for a couple of hours, to go with my sister to pick up my friend who was coming to celebrate my birthday with me. As soon as he could, he went outside and rolled around in the dirt, then came back inside and jumped up on the couch with my friend. I was horrified and had to give his dirty butt a bath. Speaking of dirty butt, one time I decided to leave him at home with a friend while I went to my mom’s for a few hours. It wasn’t over night or anything, but he wasn’t happy, because I always took him with me. A little while later, we got a FaceTime call talking about, “I smell poop, but I can’t find it.” Dash took a shit in the middle of the hallway and then rolled around in it, smearing it everywhere. It wasn’t because he wasn’t let out, oh no, it was because he was pissed at me for leaving him. So, my sister had to rush me home, and she helped me clean it all up and bathe his disgusting, poop-covered self.
Overall, he has always been very well-behaved, but when he was little, he loved paper. If he found any paper on the floor, he would shred it into tiny little pieces. Who needs a paper shredder when you have Dash? He grew out of that one, thankfully. He also loves fries. He won’t go after most food, but if you have fries, especially McDonald’s fries, all bets are off. One time, my partner and I had some Bojangle’s fries, which we don’t usually give him, on a plate. He managed to knock the plate off the table onto the bed and started gobbling up the fries as fast as he could. Another time when he was much younger, a friend who loves to cook was staying with me. A bunch of other people were here too. She made pasta, and I got up to go to the bathroom. At the time, there were other people around the table. When I came back from the bathroom, everyone else had gotten up from the table, and my pasta was gone. Dash climbed up onto my chair without anyone noticing and finished off my food for me. That was hilarious.
I didn’t name him Dash, but I’ve always said that name is very fitting for him. Even at 11-years-old, he still gets the zoomies and will tear through the house, sliding on any floor that isn’t carpeted. If you have something he wants, like a treat, a puppuccino, or fries, he will stand on his back legs, walk, hop, spin in circles, and jump to get it. It’s the cutest thing ever, along with his adorable, expressive, velvety, huge ears. I love them so much, along with his white arrow that he has on his chest. He’s mostly black otherwise, with a greying face and some grey here and there as well. He was a cute puppy, but he’s still cute now, and everyone loves him. Recently I was going through old pictures and videos of him (more on that soon) and I found so many pictures of other people holding him and loving him. That means everything to me.
Now, let’s get to the inspiration for this post, starting with what changed in 2024. Earlier I said, he miraculously stopped having issues with eating in 2024. Not only would he refuse to eat food, but it was impossible to give him medicine. Not anymore. He gobbles it all up. What changed? My partner met him. I have pictures from 2024 of my partner laying on the bed with Dash’s food bowl on his chest and Dash eating out of it. After that, feeding him hasn’t been a problem. He gets excited for his food every day, and basically inhales it as soon as it’s in the bowl. It’s awesome to see the way they’ve bonded. I also have a video of my partner telling Dash a story while petting him, and a picture of him holding Dash on his shoulder. Dash is constantly licking my partner, and he follows him around just as much as he follows me. Today I had to take Dash to the vet, and when we came home, he wanted nothing to do with he for awhile, choosing instead to follow my partner around. The funny thing is my partner doesn’t call Dash by his name. Because Dash is a chihuahua mix, he calls him Wiener dog, or Gweeny most of the time now. However, he also calls him Velcro and Magnet. LOL
If you’re interested, my partner used AI to create a fun song about Dash, and I sent him pictures and videos to make a slideshow synchronized to the music. There are two versions of Velcro to Our Knees: A Song for Gweeny, one is The Musical and the other is the Hyperpop. I personally recommend checking out both. Even though he used AI to make this, I absolutely love it, especially with the pictures. I also lov how AI helped my partner accomplish tasks that would have otherwise been more challenging and/or inaccessible. If you’re going to get me on board with AI, it will always be for what it can do in terms of accessibility.
I love Dash so much. I am so grateful for him every single day, and I love the bond he has with others as well. He’s just the best dog with the best personality ever; he definitely deserves to have his own song! I hope whoever reads this enjoys learning all about sweet Dash! As always, thanks for reading!