Amami Superman Photography

Where to start? Last week our daughter, Jade, was selected to do a type of home-stay program with another school on the island. For one week she got to stay at a student's house and attender their school and classes. It just so happen that one of my wife's schoolmates lived right next to the school our daughter attended. My wife's friend also lived right next door to her uncle.

When my wife went to drop off our daughter at the school, she decided to go visit her friend. As she was walking to her house and passed in front of her friend's uncle's house she noticed a rope hanging down in front of the car port. It made her think, "Why would they have a rope hanging there?" Then she looked down at the end of the rope and saw it resting in muddy area on the ground. My wife gasped as she realized that the rope was tied to an animal laying in the mud. She walked closer and she found that the animal was a small dog. It's hair was matted with mud and who-knows-what so that it looked exactly like the mud it was laying in. It was one pitiful looking animal and her heart went out to it. How could anyone let this little dog reach such a sorry state.

My wife came home and told me the whole story about this little dog and she said she wanted to "save" it. I told her that we already had a dog, but it turned out that she already talked to her friend who in turn was talking to her uncle about the matter. It turned out that they actually kept the dog in the house for the first year or so, but then became tired of the dog and just tied it up outside.

We didn't know what kind of dog it was at first and found out that it was a Shih Tzu. I don't know much about dogs so I didn't know what a Shih Tzu looked like, but I've heard of the name before. We went to pick up our daughter on Friday and I decided to have a look at this dog. It turned out to be just as my wife had told me and how I explained it before. I couldn't believe my eyes.

We went home and the next day I talked it over with my wife and decided to go pick up the dog on Sunday after our daughter's basketball game. I brought a cage with me as I knew how dirty it was and didn't want it sitting on our car seats.



When I got to their house, I found that they tried to give the dog a bath and clean it up a bit. They also tried to give it a haircut and cut away the matted clumps of hair, but couldn't get the scissors to cut them out because the clumps were so thick.

As I walked up close to the dog, I was about 5 or 6 feet away, this dog's smell filled my nostrils and I instantly wanted to vomit. I have a pretty sensitive nose and strong odors don't sit well with me, but I'll tell you this and I'm not exaggerating, it smelled like crap! Even after they gave it a bath. If it's one thing that I just can't stand, it's the smell of crap. I couldn't even change my daughter's diapers when she was a baby.

At first I thought it was just me and my sensitive nose, but my wife's friend came over with some rubber gloves for me to borrow and told me how she thought the dog smelled like crap too despite having a bath. She also told me that they never walked the dog and it basically crapped right were it slept. The matted clumps of hair weren't only caked with mud, but crap as well. This is what made the clumps so hard to cut out because they were so hard. I used the rubber gloves and got the dog into the basket, gagging the whole time. As I moved away from the cage to get some fresh air, I thought to myself, "How am I going to drive home with this in my car?" Have you ever seen the movie Ace Ventura? There's that part in the movie when he's driving his car with a busted windshield and he's got his head stuck out the door window to see, that was me as I drove home.

I got the dog home and now came the nasty of all nasty. I had to clean the dog. There was no way to clean the dog's hair and I decided it best to just shave off all the dog's hair to the skin. It's been a while since I've had to do something so gross. I got out the clippers with an extension cord and a folding table and chair and commenced to try and shave the dog. It was so nauseating and I gagged with each breath. I started at the tail and soon realized that I had to cut most of the matted hair out in order to shave it. The tail and legs were completely encased in mud and crap clumps of matted hair. Jeeze, I'm gagging just trying to write this! Scissors were useless and I got an idea. I went to my toolbox and got out my wire cutters, or nippers if you will, and started nipping away the clumps. It worked like a charm.

It took me 3 hours of gagging but I finally got the job done and it was time to give the dog a bath. This is what came out of that.



I was glad to finally be finished cleaning this dog up. That night, although the dog didn't stink anymore, I still could smell that stench in my nose like my nostrils were saturated with it.

We spent the next couple of days trying to think up a name for the dog. We decided we didn't want to know what the dog's name actually was because to us, we were giving the dog a new life so it deserved a new name. This dog is always happy to see me and one morning when I woke up and was rolling out of bed, it was sitting there waiting for me to get up. As I sat on the side of the bed it started to lick my leg. It was then I decided on a name. "We will call you, Smoochie."

So Smoochie is the newest member in our family. She seems like a good dog. She's very friendly and seems to get along well with our other dog Missy. Obviously Shih Tzu are supposed to have longer hair, but I thought she is still pretty cute none-the-less. I was expecting something much uglier. lol