First, You Should Know: I'm One of You

I'm a Gen X neurodivergent (ADHD and autistic), and I've spent over 50 years being told I'm too much. Too intense. Too sensitive. Too obsessed with things "normal" people don't care about.

I grew up before anyone had language for why my brain worked differently, so I just thought I was broken.

And then I got dogs.

Dogs never thought I was too much. Dogs didn't care that I felt everything times a thousand or that my brain spiraled into research rabbit holes at 2 am. Dogs looked at me like I was exactly enough, exactly as I was.

If you're here, you probably know what I'm talking about.

You probably love your dog with the kind of feral, unhinged devotion that makes other dog people physically uncomfortable. You probably feel everything so deeply you're exhausted just existing. Your dog isn't a pet. They're the only reason your nervous system doesn't spontaneously combust. They're why you can breathe. Why you can function. Why you haven't completely unraveled.

This brand exists because of that love.

And because six days after I found a golf ball-sized lump on my dog Gideon, he was gone.

Sixty-seven days later, I adopted Zeke, a deaf rescue boxer who became my reason to keep breathing. A year after that, I found a tiny lump on him. Pea-sized. Nothing like Gideon's. But I didn't wait to see if it got bigger.

I've been checking Zeke obsessively for lumps and bumps ever since. And over the past six years, that hypervigilance has saved his life. Multiple times. Every suspicious growth I've found has been removed immediately. Surgery alone has been curative because I caught them early, when they were still small and manageable.

Most of us wait. We tell ourselves it's probably nothing. We don't want to overreact or waste money on a vet visit. I get it. I used to think that way too. Zeke was about three years old when I found his first of multiple mast cell tumors. Yet another reason we tend to wait is that we think a young dog couldn't possibly get cancer.

But not knowing cost me Gideon. And, now knowing and refusing to wait has kept Zeke alive.

So, if you're here because your dog is your person. If you're here because you've been told you love too hard. If you're here because you finally found a place that gets it:

Welcome home.
💗Patty, Zeke & Zella