It’s All About Cali

by Emily Mail Hall (Feb 25 2015)

I have always been an animal lover. I have owned animals my whole life. Bully breeds are nothing new to me as my parents have had 4 pitties at one time. We now have 2 left since the parents died and they are still a huge part of our family.

When I moved to southern California, I was a little sad to not have an animal, but living with my boyfriend and his folks, I knew it was not going to happen while I was here. But, I did get my fix every time we went to hang out with our good friend and his pittie, Chico. He was such a love bug and I always was happy to get to see him. Well, one day someone dropped another bully off at our friends house; a skiddish little thing that was skin and bones and scared of everyone. Her name was Cali.

We don’t know exactly what happened to her, but we are certain that she was abused in some way. She would hide underneath our friends garage and could only be coaxed out with Doritos. I finally was able to earn her trust and noticed that she had a HUGE patch of hair missing on the side of her face. It looked like some kind of chemical burn, but thankfully it had already healed and just the hair was missing at that point. She was such a scared thing, but we all loved on her.
My boyfriend, Danny, and I decided that we would help out friend out with her because he had the space, but not the money to take care of two dogs. We went out and got her a collar, a leash, and got her fixed right away because he had not gotten Chico fixed yet. This all came out of our pockets and we went over to our friends house every night to walk the furrkids together.
One day, our friends dad got super mad at Cali because he thought she had torn down the vines on his wall (We later found out it was her AND Chico) and so he told his son she had to go. By this point, our friend, his sisters and his mom absolutely adored Cali and everyone was in tears. I made phone calls all over the area to find a no kill shelter that would take in Cali. Danny and I then went over to our friend’s house and decided we’d take Cali for one last, awesome walk over at the Rose Bowl. The whole time Danny and I were in tears; we were insanely attached to her. We kept talking and I finally convinced him to talk with his Mom so we could keep her for a while till we could find her a new forever home. So, we went to our house and talked with his Mom.
After almost an hour or so, we finally convinced her into letting us keep her around while I talked with my folks up north and people I knew to try and find her a home. Months went by and we became more and more attached to this little girl. We finally just stopped looking for some place else because we figured out she already had her forever home.

We have had Cali for almost 5 yrs now, and every day she is improving with being around people. We have had a lot of ups and some downs though. The 2nd year in, we discovered that Cali was prone to cancer and had Mast Cell Tumors. We had her first one removed and things went well for a while… then she had another outbreak. We then had those removed. Again, we thought we had beaten it, but since then 5 more have popped up. We decided that we needed to find another approach to this disease because taking her to the vet all the time was killing her; she has high anxiety and even our vet was scared to put her under again so soon. We finally found an amazing group that provided a diet for dogs with MCTs. She has been on it for almost 6 months now and she hasn’t had any flare ups. The MCTs are still there, but no more have popped up and the ones she has are small. Because of all of this, I had to start thinking of new ways to help get us money to pay for her vet bills as well as her new diet. I started selling my art work as a way to supplement our income. It has been hard, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Danny and I would do anything for Cali. She is our kid and we love her more than anything. Within the next year we hope to get her remaining MCTs removed and continue her new diet. We also hope to one day get her a little brother. But before we can do that, we need to take care of her. Every morning we wake up and smile because she is usually laying in the bed with us, her little nose poking out from the blankets; a constant reminder that we found our kid and that she gives us joy every day, no matter what problems she has had, or what problems she may have in the future.

Click here to follow Cali and her meowing siblings.