Almost 15 years ago, while searching local animal shelters online for a pal for our boy Leroy Brown, I fell in love with the photo of an 8-week-old Pit Bull mix puppy available at the Downey Animal Care Center. I took the afternoon off work and we drove the 20 miles to the shelter.
The puppy was even more adorable in person than in the photo. That’s her on the right—was she a little cutie or what?
We decided to adopt her even though the shelter didn’t allow a “meet and greet” where we could first observe if she would get along with Leroy and vice versa. Well, we introduced the two dogs on neutral ground, and Leroy didn’t like the puppy, who we named Ella, at all. For her protection, we kept Ella in a crate and separated from Leroy.
I was heartbroken but had no intention of returning Ella to the shelter. I was working at i Love Dogs at the time, so I called Eugenia, the office manager, who also happened to be a professional dog trainer. She advised us to spend more time paying attention to Leroy than to Ella—and that worked! They actually became besties, as you can see in this video I made:
They didn’t always get along this well, unfortunately. They were the only dogs I’ve ever had who would get into vicious fights with each other. We learned to detect the pre-fight warning signs—one dog would usually start slowly stalking the other—and we’d immediately separate them. (Here are some helpful tips for safely breaking up a dog fight if you should ever need them.)
After Leroy died in September 2018, Ella became our only dog. I work at home, and Ella became my shadow. She had a bad habit of barking at me while I was trying to do phone interviews, but the interviewees were pretty understanding. Otherwise Ella was practically perfect, if I do say so myself.
Ella’s health started failing about a year ago. She was 13 at the time, which is pretty old for a Pit Bull. She was truly a trooper, and we really thought she would make it to her 15th birthday at the end of December. She had good days and bad days. But when the bad days outnumbered the good ones, we made the difficult decision to free her from her pain.
Ella and Leroy are now reunited. I hope they’re getting along at the Rainbow Bridge or wherever they happen to be. This is the first time since 1995 that our home has been dogless, and it’s not something I want to get used to. When we’re ready, we’ll rescue another homeless dog or two, and our lives will be full again.