Faith's Story

Faith’s story is still very much unfolding, but I will try to give a bit of her background and then provide weekly updates from this point on.

Faith was born into freedom…what a lucky girl!! Had she not, she more than likely would not be with us today. Faith was in her mom, Demi, at the time of rescue. Demi was rescued with around 1000 other dogs from a puppy mill in West Virginia. Demi was one of 29 Cavaliers that came through Lucky Star Cavalier Rescue. A handful of them ended up in West MI with Alice Dunn of Hamilton. Knowing Demi was pregnant, Alice kept her planning to whelp the litter. Faith entered this world on October 14, 2008 with two other litter mates. Faith was born with her eyes wide open! Something you don’t want to happen. The eyes generally do not open until 10-15 days after birth as they are continuing to develop. For reasons we’ll never know Faith’s eyes were open at the time of birth. Which meant her eyes were not protected, and could not finish developing. Something, somehow happened and stopped that process. Alice described it as “her eyes didn’t blink, they just stared into nothingness”. She immediately put salve on her eyes to attempt to protect them to allow the development to continue, but it was too late. My dear Faith was born blind and will never see the light of day, she will forever live in a world of darkness.

One of Faith’s litter mates was born dead and not able to be revived. The other remaining litter mate only survived about a week. Demi, as sweet as pie, was a horrible mom. She had no interest in letting her puppies nurse. This provided to be a huge problem for Faith. Not only did sucking/nursing not come natural for this preemie pup, her mom wasn’t helping matters either. My dear Phalin, who I co-own with Alice was with Alice preparing to whelp her own first litter. Faith was actually born 3 days after Phalin’s puppies were born.

Alice decided that she needed to try putting Faith with Phalin to nurse. Phalin had plenty of milk and her nipples were smaller which would be easier for Faith, plus Phalin would lay down and let the puppies nurse easily. Phalin immediately took Faith in as one of her own. Eventually, the decision was made to keep Faith with Phalin indefinitely. Faith started gaining little by little, but she was still a small peanut with very odd looking eyes wide open! Faith truly started to thrive with Phalin and her pups, she needed their warmth and stimulation.

Faith was actually named by my mom. We had gone a night to visit Phalin and her pups and Alice & I were naming Phalin’s pups. Alice had already named her something different, and my mom happened to mention she thought Faith would be a perfect name for her, we agreed and so it was changed. This little one had fight in her and she wanted to be in this world! I’m not sure exactly at what point we started discussing Faith being mine! I had been sharing her story with my dog friends and Cathy said to me, I think you should adopt Faith. Honestly, the thought had never crossed my mind. I vowed I was never going to do this puppy phase again, I truly had enjoyed my last two additions coming in as adult dogs and over that puppy phase. But I have always said I wanted a Ruby girl (Ruby is the color of Faith – Cavaliers come in 4 different colors: Blenheim, which is what Hope & Phalin are, Ruby, Black & Tan, and Tri). Faith had also very much bonded with Phalin and Phalin with her. There was already a bond there that would never be broken. Well, if you can imagine, it didn’t take me long to fall in love with Faith, when you look at her, how can you not fall in love! So of course, having the privilege to adopt her and be her mom was the way to go and I have yet to look back!