SOUTHAVEN, Miss. — After spending more than 10 years at Sunny Meadows Animal Rescue — 3,880 days to be exact — Happy the Husky finally has a home.
Angela Boisseau and her family took him home earlier this year. For this dog, something as simple as walking around a park in Southaven with his mom is new.
“His three-foot by six-foot kennel was his house, and now he’s got a 2,000-square-foot house,” said Boisseau.
Happy is 14, and many older dogs die in shelters because people don’t wan’t a senior dog, Boisseau said. But a senior was exactly what the Boisseau family needed, after the loss of their 11-year-old dog Blitzen to cancer last year.
When Boisseau saw how long Happy had been at the rescue, she thought it must be a mistake.
“I even messaged them and I said, ‘Seriously, you guys have on here that’s he’s been there since 2011 and he’s 14. Are you telling me he’s been there for 12 of his 14 years?’ Surely that’s a typo,” said Boisseau.
It was not a typo.
“He looks a lot like Blitzen and I think in some ways it gives me comfort, like it’s him saying, ‘It’s ok mom, that you let me go home. I was suffering and I was in pain and I sent you Happy!'”
Happy and Blitzen are nearly identical. Both Happy and the Boisseau family are filling empty places in each other’s hearts.
“I was never able to have children, so my fluffys are are my kids,” Boisseau said. “(Happy is) bright and shiny and beautiful and he’s just a happy boy. Happy is happy!”
And Happy’s new family is now happy again.
“We have a senior now and the last days of his life, he will absolutely know he’s loved,” Boisseau said.