Princess Penelope Wigglesbum - the most recent addition to our family.

All five of our dogs are shelter dogs, and each came to us in a different way. But Penny, the latest addition, was the dog we never expected - we thought we were helping out a friend.

We adopted two dogs from the Southern Nevada Animal Rescue League (SNARL - my favorite dog acronym) - Morgan, an American bull mastiff Mix, and Albie, a Great Pyrenees. Our link to this great rescue organization is our friend Leann, who fostered Morgan before we adopted her six years ago. Since we adopted Morgan, Leann has come to visit her several times and has become a good friend to us, and to our ever growing brood of rescues.

In October 2024, Leann and her husband were about to leave for a two-month trip to China. Leann got in touch with us to ask an unusual favor. She had been fostering a dog (from a different shelter organization) with a troubled background - a pit bull named Angelina who had been a breeder dog for a pit bull fighting ring. Angelina wasn’t a likely candidate for adoption - she was 11 years old, overweight, was missing an eye, had dermatitis and was a breed that is often difficult to adopt out. She had languished at a shelter for a while before Leann took her in, and Leann didn’t want to put her through the additional trauma of being returned to the chaos of a shelter. Leann reached out to us in the hope that we would take Angelina in for two months.

I was very skeptical. I have become a dog person over the past 16 years, but I also have all of the biases that most people carry about pit bulls. We already had four dogs ranging from 45 to 130 pounds (also a geriatric cat) - introducing this kind of unknown into our pet family seemed risky at best. But when I brought the idea up with Sharon and Hui Ling, they were all over it and believed we could make it work. Leann brought Angelina to us the day before Halloween 2024.

Angelina seemed happy to be with other dogs, but they didn’t interact much at first. We figured this was because our other dogs are pretty active and Angelina was both an older dog and very overweight - she weighed 93 pounds when we got her, roughly 20 pounds more than she should. For the first few days we had her, her naps were only occasionally interrupted by her waddling to different napping spots.

My fears about adopting a pit bull disappeared almost immediately. Angelina was a sweet, friendly jellyroll - happy to have doggy friends and thoroughly joyous whenever there was food around. But she was also a little distant, clearly unsettled by her change in circumstances. It wasn’t until her first vet visit six days later that I understood why.

Angelina had an appointment with the shelter’s vet the week after we got her. I piled her into the back seat with some difficulty and set out on the 30 minute drive. I glanced back at her a few times while I drove and was sad to see that she had her nose pressed against the back door, as far from me as she could get. She stayed in that position the entire drive. 

We visited the vet, where she got a mostly clean bill of health - she needed to lose weight and needed medication for her dermatitis but was otherwise in good shape. I took her back out to the car and noticed a distinct difference - she was excited to get back in the car and wanted to sit next to me in the front seat. She tried to lick me non-stop. I realized after a few minutes that she must have thought I was taking her somewhere to abandon her yet again, and when she learned otherwise, she was joyous. 

On the drive home, I composed a speech to give to Sharon and Hui Ling that started with, “Five dogs really isn’t much more than four.” I brought Angelina into the house, started in on my speech and inexplicably burst into tears before I got the first sentence out. Sharon chuckled a little. “Hui Ling and I already figured this out. We were just waiting for you to come around.”

The only things that remained were renaming her (she really didn’t look like an Angelina) and getting her weight under control. Sharon and Hui Ling somehow settled on the name Princess Penelope Wigglesbum - she did wiggle her butt much more than you might expect from a pit bill. I was OK with it as long as we agreed to call her Penny for short.

The weight issue was surprisingly easy. We have no idea what she ate in her prior life, but during her shelter journey she experienced what all shelter dogs do - shelters feed their dogs whatever they can get their hands on. We were just starting Bubba’s Bowl, and Penny was the perfect test subject. We shifted her from random and inconsistent foods to a balanced diet focused on healthy proteins, fruits and vegetables. The volume of food in her new regimen was pretty close to what she ate before we adopted her, but it was what her body needed. In six months, Penny went from dangerously overweight at 93 pounds to a healthy weight of 70 pounds, which she maintains to this day. The dermatitis issue was a surprise to us - none of our rescues had any issues with allergies, so we were surprised that simply feeding Penny the nutritious food we fed all of our dogs would make a difference. Today, Penny takes no medication for her prior dermatitis. You can see the difference in her coat, in the continued healing of her skin, and her demeanor. Penny no longer requires medication for dermatitis. She gets regular baths (we call them baff's) with normal dog shampoo and conditioner. No more medicated wipes, no more meds, only a happy and healthy senior.

Before Bubba's Bowl - issues with dermatitis including missing fur. Actual photo taken by Leanne before dropping her off for her 2 month stay with us.

After Bubba's Bowl - continuous improvement and no medications for Penny's past dermatitis. Actual photo taken March 9, while finishing this article.

Penny joined our big dog family about 16 months ago, and today we can’t imagine her not being part of our pack. Now that she’s at a good weight, she gets around more easily, plays with the other dogs and loves walks, something she could barely do when we got her. The chances are good that we’ll have her around for a lot longer now that she is trim and healthy.