Name/Age: Shelter named her Melonie, we call her Melly ~ 3 y/o
Family Members: Kenny, Liz, & Stinky (Melly’s floof-mix brother, approx. 8 years old)
How long has Melly been in the family? 1 year (1/31/20 gotcha day!)
Professions: Kenny is an account manager and Liz is a SPED Preschool teacher
Location: Winder, GA
Nicknames: Melly Belly, Smelly Melly, Melonie Belonie, Goobenheimer, Baby, Muscles, Sweet Girl
5 words/phrases that best describe Melly?
Goober
Affectionate/Loving
Excited
Friendly
Fast
What makes Melly unique? Melly has beautiful markings. She is muscular and fit, and an all-around gorgeous animal. Melly is intensely passionate about showing love to the people who love her.
Ball all day long!
Rescue Story: Kenny and I had been talking for a while about expanding our family. I came into our relationship with a rescue floof named Stinky, and Kenny had to put his beloved lab Bo down the year before we met. We started looking at shelters around the metro Atlanta area and sending each other pupper pics and bios. I’ve always had smaller dogs (15-20lbs) and Kenny was used to big dogs. I told him I wanted to keep our search criteria at around 35 pounds. I saw Melonie’s picture on the Lifeline website and sent it to Kenny. She was 62 pounds of pure muscle! We drove down Friday after work with Stinky for a meet and greet. When we got to Lifeline, we found out that Melonie had been at the DeKalb Shelter for over a year, and at Lifeline for a few months. They had no history of her before being at the Dekalb shelter. We spent some time in the yard with her, then slowly introduced her to Stinky. Lifeline has a 2 week foster to adopt program, so we took her home to see how she fit in with our family.
I rode home in the backseat with her, and she immediately snuggled into my lap. We got her home and took her out to the back yard where she ran and ran and ran. No accidents, well behaved, good listener. All around a good, sweet dog. For the life of us, we can’t figure how she was left in the shelter as long as she was, except that she was waiting for us. We decided the next morning that at the end of the 2 weeks, we would adopt her. Her listed birthday was her intake day, so we changed her birthday to her gotcha day. She is the perfect addition to our family. It took Stinky a while to warm up to her, but now they are thick as thieves….bacon thieves.
12 hours in her forever home and fitting right in!
What is your favorite pastime as a family? Walks in the neighborhood, and hikes at state parks, but Melly’s FAVORITE pastime is running. During the early days of the pandemic, we would take both dogs to the ballfields and let them run and chase balls. Melly will run until she runs out of gas.
What is life like since you rescued Melly? She loves to tear up her stuffies and destroy “indestructible” ropes. She loves to chew on bones and nylon toys. She’ll chase a ball until she can’t run anymore. Ever watch a 60 pound dog run zoomies through the house? She has taken over our guest room. It’s now known as “Melly’s Room” and she spends a lot of time laying on the bed with her toys and Stinky, and looking out the front window to perform her neighborhood watch duties. She has wormed her way into the heart of everyone who has met her. She can be a little much sometimes when new people and dogs come around, but we’ve learned that it is because she is just so excited to meet a new friend. Melly is a damn good dawg and we couldn’t imagine life without her in it. She keeps us laughing, she keeps us warm, she has brought so much love into a family that had a lot of love to begin with!
Photographers Note: Melly was a lot of fun to photograph. She is truly ball obsessed and just wanted to go and go and go. Trying to get her to sit still for their family photo was a challenge but I give Liz & Kenny a ton of credit. They turned on those bright smiles for the camera when they would see her look to me, perfectly timed! The one thing I want to comment on related to this wonderful family, is the relationship between Melly and Stinky. So many people think these strong big dogs are too rough or will hurt a small dog. These two are the most adorable pair & get a long great. Liz shared with me a story when Melly locked them out of the house during breakfast and the two of them ate their breakfast bacon. The mental image of how that transpired makes me laugh. Stinky is a little guy, so you know Melly had to knock some of that bacon to the floor for him. Such a good sister sharing with her older but tiny brother! Also Stinky made a wonderful photography assistant. I was sitting on the ground and he would come up next to me, put his two front legs on my leg, as if he was trying to look at the photos I had taken on the screen of my camera. He is definitely an honorary pit bull.
Siblings!