Dotty’s Story
Sometimes, life brings things that stay with you forever. Sometimes, it’s good, sometimes it’s not so much. This is the story of one of the best times of our lives: the story of Dotty.
This story is written by Dotty’s parents and is a true testimate to the humane-animal bond. We are so grateful to them, and all our adopters, that give HSTV’s animals such wonderful long lives, full of love and compassion. Written by: Steve Martin.
My wife and I have been married for 47 years. During our lives together, we have had various dogs and cats, at one time as many as five cats and three dogs
.
In 2011, we had two dogs, named Brownie (a small Golden Retriever mix) and Grizzie Bear (a terrier / Basset hound mix), both of whom were adopted from local animal shelters. One day, we noticed that Brownie had stopped eating, so we took her in to the vet, who discovered cancerous lesions on her stomach. Grizzie Bear lost his playmate that day.
Some time after, we decided that we were ready to try to find Grizzie Bear another companion. In spring of 2012, I was walking through the Knox County Humane Society’s animal shelter, not really feeling a reaction to the dogs on display there. I have always been a believer in letting significant decisions be guided by “waiting for the Spirit to move”. That day, the Spirit moved. Sitting in a cage were three small Beagle mix puppies that had been surrendered. One in particular (the lone female) caught my eye. We went to one of the “get acquainted” rooms, where I put her on the floor. She was ecstatic! She ran all around the room, but always came back to me. That day, I decided that I wanted to take her home. After consulting with my wife, we set the wheels in motion, and Dotty came home with me in June.
I brought Dotty home and opened up her carrier in our fenced-in back yard where Grizzie Bear lived. She was in heaven! The yard was big enough to give her an enormous amount of room to run around and play, and she and Grizzie Bear immediately bonded and became best friends; they were playing together in the back yard five minutes after Dotty arrived.
Over our married life, all the dogs we have had have been mainly outdoor dogs, with one or two being allowed inside on occasion. HSTV made it a condition of adoption that we would keep Dotty mostly inside for her first six months, so we initially set her up to be confined in our master bathroom with quick potty breaks outside through the day. She was smart enough to pick up on the idea of housebreaking quickly, and she soon reached the point of not making any messes in the house. When we finally released her from the bathroom into the rest of the house, she became a full family member.
While she was confined to the bathroom, we were treated to more indications of her loving nature; each time I sat on the floor next to her, she immediately would crawl into my lap. She seemed very happy to be there. After she was released to the rest of the house, she would nightly choose one of us while we were watching TV and climb up in that person’s lap.
Over the years, we were amazed at how intelligent Dotty was. She quickly learned that the alarm that went off at 5:00 pm meant “time to eat”, and that when we turned off the TV after dark it meant time to head to the bedroom for sleep. She learned to let us know when she needed to go outside, and that when we said “Dotty, inside”, it was time to go back in.
In February of 2019, we lost our adult cat Little Bit to stomach cancer, and for several months were without a cat. In the summer of 2020, we decided that we wanted to adopt another cat (actually two). We contacted a local rescue operation that had a litter of four, and we chose two kittens (Felix and Yennifer) from that litter.
When the rescue folks brought the new kittens into the house, Dotty and Grizzie Bear were fascinated. They would stare through the confining fence into the room where the kittens were acclimating, watching them play and scamper. Dotty immediately accepted the two new additions, and they likewise fell in love with Dotty. (We sadly lost Grizzie Bear a couple of months later at age 16 due to typical old-age infirmities.) It’s almost as if the cats thought Dotty was their mother; they would both cuddle up to Dotty and settle in, happy to be with her.
All was great with our little menagerie. Until it wasn’t.
In September of 2023, we noticed a lump on Dotty’s side that concerned us. She had had fatty tumors for years, and we were told that such were common in dogs and were not life-threatening. This one, however, seemed to have a hard core. We had the lump removed, and a biopsy showed that it was cancerous. It seemed, however, that the vet had gotten it all, as it never returned (at least not in that same location). She healed up from the surgery and life was back to normal.
The following year, Dotty exhibited signs of a urinary tract infection, which prompted us to take her to the vet. A routine ultrasound looking for stones showed an unusual mass in her spleen. We took her for a more thorough exam at UT Veterinary Hospital, and they recommended removing her spleen, to which we agreed. She had her spleen removed in early October. A couple of weeks later, UT Vet Hospital called us with devastating news; they had biopsied the mass in her spleen, and discovered that it was a particularly aggressive form of cancer. They presented two options: let her live her life out with no treatment, in which case the average survival time was three to six months, or start her on chemotherapy, which might add one more month to her life.
We talked, and decided that we wanted Dotty to enjoy the time she had left, so we would not put her through the misery of chemo just for another month.
She recovered from her surgery and her behavior was back to normal, eating normally and playing with her toys, but we knew that the odds were against her. We began at that point to look on every day she was still with us as a blessing. However, Dotty seemed to be hanging in there over the next weeks and months, so we began to entertain some hope that perhaps removing her spleen had caught the cancer before it had spread. So in July of 2025 (nine months after her diagnosis), we left for a long-planned trip to Alaska and left Dotty in the care of our pet sitter, thinking that she was okay. But we were wrong. The pet sitter called us on July 20 and said that, although she had been normal the day before, Dotty was suddenly unresponsive. We had the sitter bundle her up and take her to the emergency vet clinic, but it was too late. She was gone.
Dotty has been gone now for six months. While the initial pain has lessened, we still miss her each and every day. Whenever we leave the house and return, we look for her in the yard; whenever we come inside from the back yard, the cats look out the window looking for her; but she’s not there.
Dotty, however, will always be with us. We will never forget her.
