Hello! My name is Marni! I am the creator of this site. Here's a picture of me! The picture next to mine is my owner, Amy.

One night, a lady was driving to work on a country road. All of the sudden, I ran in front of her car and she hit my ankle! It hurt, but if she hadn't hit me, I would never be where I am today! She put me in her car and rushed me to the vet. They gave me stitches and cleaned me up. They gave me medicine and tried to look for my owner, but they couldn't find one. The nice lady loved animals, but she already had 3 dogs. She knew a family that had been searching for a fun and loving pet and she called them. On Father's Day, the family came to see me and decided to take me home.

Two days after I went to my new home, we got the heartworm test results back from the lab-- they were positive. I was infected with heartworm! Heartworm is a fatal disease where a worm like structure takes over your heart. The treatment was over $1,000, but because my family rescued me as a stray, the vet said they would only charge my family $500. At one point, they decided not to put me through treatment because the treatment was more deadly than the disease itself. My mommy knew somebody who had a lab who lived 8 years and had 3 litters of puppies after she was diagnosed with heartworm, but she decided to go through with the treatment because they loved me.

Another surprise!! I was going to have puppies! I was 1 week pregnant before I came home with my new family. 65 days later, I had 9 puppies. Unfortunately, the first puppy was too big and it died. After 6 more puppies, the vet took an X-ray and found out I had 2 puppies left. They died too. I was very sad, but I still had 6 cuddly puppies to take care of. They left me at about 15 weeks. My family kept one in case I didn't survive the heartworm treatment, but I made it and I am as healthy as ever, so they sold her at 23 weeks old to another family. Here are my puppies! In this picture, they got out of the whelping box for the first time and are trying to escape from the basement.

Left to Right: Patch, Jack, Mocha (Mo), Renae, Gus, and Oscar.

Anyway, now that you know how I got to be with my wonderful family, I'll tell you a little bit about myself! My name is Marni Miles. I got my name because the lady that hit me knew somebody in high school who got in an accident. I reminded her of how lucky her friend was, so she named me after her friend, Marni. I am 8 years old and I have brown spots. Most dalmatians have black spots. I am very small also, I am about 5 inches smaller than a standard dalmatian. I will eat anything except lettuce, broccoli and celery. But I love cheese, carrots, and tomatoes. My very favorite food is tuna. Hey! Is that the can opener I hear?!?! The tricks I can do are: sit, stay, down, wave, shake, "gimme five", dead dog, outside, downstairs, upstairs, inside, out, and I am working on rolling over. I was in 4-H but I didn't like all of the other dogs, so Amy made me quit. I love to go on looooong walks, go to the dog run and to the park, and sleep on Amy's bed. It's lots of fun to sing along when Amy plays high notes on her flute and piccolo. If you want to learn more about Amy, visit Amy's Webpage!

Amyland