A Special Home
Melissa Towey of Florham Park, N.J., has been through a lot with her Shetland Sheepdog, Jovi. He has epilepsy. His first seizure occurred on his first birthday, and Melissa spent the next two years learning how to deal with the disease and how to control the seizures and comfort Jovi when he needed it.
Now she was contemplating getting a companion for Jovi and began looking at the Shetland Sheepdog Placement Service of New Jersey's listings on Petfinder.com at http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/NJ114.html to see who was available.
The one dog who caught her eye was Casey. She was a beautiful Sheltie, about eight years old-which would be good because Jovi was aggressive toward puppies in the Towey's neighborhood, but not toward older dogs. But what really caught Melissa's attention in Casey's description was that the dog had epilepsy.
Melissa wasn't quite ready to make a decision about bringing a second pet into their home, but she couldn't get Casey off of her mind. Then "one day I woke up and just knew that I had to adopt her," she says.
"If I could handle epilepsy with one dog, I could easily handle it with two. It wasn't fair that so many people might not adopt her because of her epilepsy, yet I was out there waiting to be her angel, her forever home. I made the phone call that day."
Casey fit right into the Towey family. "All she ever wanted was to be loved and pampered," Melissa says. "Jovi is clearly the prince, but Casey is most definitely the princess in our household. She is our first rescue, and she will certainly not be my last."
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