Mirabella

 Our joyful, adventurous, prancy, will-you-be-my-friend Mirabella has died.  She was diagnosed with an oral melanoma or sarcoma on October 2nd, and there was nothing to be done.  Nothing slowed down the growth.  She was just shy of 12 years old.

For those of you who don't know Mirabella's background, she had a difficult first few months of her life.  Mirabella was the only one of her litter to survive parvo.  She also had raging giardia.  At three months, her breeder gave Mirabella to National Mill Dog Rescue - an amazing, truly amazing rescue organization based in Calhan, CO -  because the breeder thought Mirabella was going blind.   A trip to a Colorado Springs doggie ophthamologist confirmed this, that Mirabella would be blind by the time she was a year old.  We adopted her from NMDR when she was six months old, thinking we could figure out how to have a blind dog.

Fast forward five months, we took her back to the doggie ophthmalogist and discovered she had dodged that bullet.  She had full vision.  The doctor couldn't explain it, but we didn't care!  

Mirabella was a rare standard poodle.  Most phantom poodles have two tones of brown, along with the black.  Mirabella had three, a red tone on her nose.  I can't begin to imagine what that breeder could have sold Mirabella for, but we're talking thousands.   Instead, she got to live a full life of adventures in the mountains and making friends everywhere she went.