Here's Rebel, his story is told by parents Tom and Vicki. In the world of rescue, sometimes the dog finds you when you least expect it...

We had two Shelties, Max and Otis. Max got sick with liver disease last May. He was a fighter through it all but became anemic in July and we had to put him to sleep July 23rd, at 11 years old.

Otis was Max's half brother for about 2 & 1/2 years, and was diabetic. We got Otis as a puppy so he grew up with Max. Shortly after we had Max put to sleep, Otis decided he didn't want to eat and being diabetic, his glucose levels got all messed up. We took him to the vet and they said he would have to stay overnight on IV's to bring his glucose levels down. We talked to the vet at about 5:00 and he said he was doing really good, levels were coming down and he was real perky. The next morning we got the call that he died overnight. We really believed he wanted to be with Max at the Rainbow Bridge. That was in September.

We don't have kids so they were totally our (spoiled) babies. It was sooooooo hard to lose both of them so close together. We said we would never have another dog. After searching the internet for comfort on dog loss and then starting to look up rescue websites we found WSR. It took a couple of weeks, and I think it was sometime in December we sent in our application looking for a puppy to 2 year old Sheltie. We thought we weren't in a hurry, wanted to wait til spring, but it didn't take long until we were saying the house was too quiet and we needed another dog to love.

After checking the website every day, we saw Rebel and decided to go and meet him. He stole our hearts right away. He was a stray, so we don't know how old he really is, but that doesn't matter. He is such a good boy. He has the roam of the house when we are gone and hasn't touched a thing, although my slippers seem to move by themselves when we're gone, but they haven't been chewed on! He was very skittish when we first got him and still is at times, but when we look back over the last seven weeks we can see a huge improvement.

He has traveled with us to visit family in Sheboygan and loves to go to my brother and sister-in-laws to visit his two golden retriever "cousins". We went to our trailer one Saturday and he went right in and made himself right at home. He likes walking, except when he hears some noises and gets skittish, but we're working on that. He's a prancer when walking and sooo handsome (have to brag). We've been working on come, sit, lay down and stay every night and he's doing very good with these, he likes it when one of us goes and hides and then calls him to come. He's really starting to like his yard too. At first he would just go out to do you know what but now he'll hang out a little bit and check things out, The last couple of days when we were doing some yard work he hung out with us and was a happy guy.

We could go on and on about this great Sheltie we found through WSR. It's such a great thing to have rescues for these dogs and it feels great to have adopted one from a rescue! We're planning on coming to the reunion and look forward to meeting all the other Sheltie lovers!