On Wednesday, December 10, the Petco Foundation in partnership with Halo, Purity for Pets, announced the winners of its second annual Holiday Wishes grant campaign. We are pleased to announce that DFW Pug Rescue Club, Inc., was a winner and presented with a $5,000 grant to support our mission to save animal lives! Thank you Petco and Halo for giving us this great gift!

Gumdrop’s story

699bd432-87f4-49bb-b4f5-15fc64fefed4Gumdrop the pug dog waddled into my 9 year old daughter’s heart in July of 2014. My daughter has been diagnosed with type 1 juvenile diabetes. Life has been “ruff” (get it? Ruff?) for her because the 4 shots she gets a day including one at school makes her different. She feels very alone at times since she is an only child and had started asking for a dog. She looked and looked for months and never found a good fit for our family. I started looking up breeds that I thought might work for us, and found the good folks at DFW Pug Rescue based in Dallas, Texas. We went through the application process and they did a wonderful job matching our needs with a prospect. We went on a Saturday to meet the pug we were interested in. As soon as we rang the doorbell, out came a pug that would change my shy daughter forever! Holy smokes, from the moment we meet her, we knew we were leaving with her. It was as if we were picking up a dog we knew our whole lives. We completed the adoption process on the spot, named her Gumdrop, and leashed her up for her first trip to Petco to get her official engraved name tag. While we were at Petco, I saw an immediate change in my daughter. She was more outgoing with strangers when they would approach and ask about her new dog. She was smiling for one of the first time since she was diagnosed with diabetes months ago. Fast forward a year later, Gumdrop and my daughter are best friends for life! They play together, sleep together, eat together, and watch TV together. I truly 100% believe we did not find the right dog until it was time for us. Gumdrop has single handed (or paw…) changed my daughter’s life for the better. She was so ashamed and embarrassed to be different with her illness that she would barely talk to anyone new. Now she flourishes with confidence that this one small pug dog has given her. She starts with telling people about her dog, about how funny she is, and about how she plays with her. Then she gets into how she rescued her from DFW Pug Rescue and tells others how they can adopt a pug too. From there conversation flows to different subjects and before you know it, she has made a new friend. Our family may have rescued a pug from a puppy mill, but I can tell you that pug rescued my daughter from a life of loneliness and anger from her diabetes. Thank you to the wonderful people at DFW Pug Rescue for taking the volunteer time and energy to match us up with the world’s most patient and kind pug who understood when a 9 year old just needed a friend.

Thank you Petco and Halo for giving us this great gift!

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