This is Cora, the service dog. She’s a member of my family, because her human is my stepdaughter Miriam. When I look at Miriam’s photo below, I see the family resemblance to her dad, Kossack Charles Curtis-Stanley, but no matter how much I love my husband, it’s hard to understand how he managed to father a daughter as lovely as Miriam. (Sorry, heart of my heart. I love you.)
This is Miriam. I’ve known her since several months before her dad and I were married. She’s beautiful (obviously), tall, smart as hell, strong as hell (she’s training to be a blacksmith), a professional artist with a BFA from Cornish College, a gamer since childhood, disabled and BROKE.
Cora wasn’t always a greatly-loved service dog who gets to go wherever Miriam goes, including here, where she gets to play with our two cats and two dogs. She started out life as a brood bitch in a puppy mill, forced to whelp litter after litter as soon as she could get pregnant. That was the only life she’d ever known. She never had a human of her own, had never felt a loving touch, had never had a home, or a soft bed to sleep on, or nutritious food to eat, or the health care that every woozle and pootie and every furry, feathered, hooved, scaly, or any other kind of non-human family member depends on their humans to procure for them when it’s needed.
Fortunately, Cora was rescued from the puppy mill when she was five years old or so. and wound up with a rescue organization for her breed, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. (The link will take you to a national breed rescue organization, which I think is different from the one Miriam went through to adopt Cora.) Miriam had done a lot of research as to the breed or breeds that would work out best for her particular needs from a service dog, and at the top of the list, the Cavalier King Charles stood alone. She spent a long time looking for a dog and talking to agencies who place rescue dogs. The two, dog and woman, spent quite a lot of time together visiting over several weeks, IIRC, and at the end of that time, Cora came home for a weekend with Miriam as a trial run. Very, very shortly after that, Cora came home with Miriam for good.
You’ll know I’m asleep when I start snoring. I’ve still got an eye on my mom, and the slightest noise will alert me instantly. I’ve got this.
Now she can lie on the sofa, jump up into laps, stand down our great big puppy Hunter (an Anatolian Shepherd, age two), play gently with or just lie down next to our 14 ½ year old Toller, Bitty Girl, when Miriam comes over for a visit. She’s worked out beautifully as Miriam’s service dog, assisting her in daily life with her various disabilities. She’s very calming and warm-bodied, very comforting to someone who has gotten triggered about something, and superbly cooperative about almost anything.
But Cora has a bump on her skin that’s grown from the size of a pea to that of a lima bean in less than a week. What she needs right now is a lumpectomy, immediately followed by a biopsy of that lump. Because Cora is a service dog, the awesome vet Miriam found will do the biopsy at no cost, but the $350 for the lumpectomy is well beyond Miriam’s wallet right now and will be for some time. For the purpose of getting Cora the medical care she urgently needs, Miriam’s put up a GoFundMe. I don’t have any money myself, and I don’t think Charles does either, or we’d be covering this ourselves; the mortgage payment has already gone out, along with the rest of the autopay bills that get paid at the beginning of the month. That’s why I’m here in Community Fundraisers, asking for help for a couple of members of our family who could not be dearer to us. Miriam needs Cora and we need them both. Won’t you help Cora get the care she needs?
Miriam’s GoFundMe is titled No Lumpy Bump! and she’d also welcome PayPal to wantswings@gmail.com.
If you would rather send some other form of remittance, such as a check, please email ME (rivercs@gmail.com) and I’ll give you her address.
Thank you for anything you can do to help. Funds help, obviously, but there are several other ways to help as well, most of which don’t involve sending money. Shares of her GoFundMe help, as do shares of this diary. Recs and tips help by getting this diary some visibility. Keeping Cora and Miriam in your thoughts, prayers, energy streams, heart, etc. all help. If you like, you can try to post good wishes for Cora to her wall on Facebook (she’s Miriam Keith), but I’m not sure whether it will work or not if you’re not a friend of hers. If it *doesn’t* work, try posting them on my FB wall instead with her name included; I’m River Collins there.
