Cuddles Bullough was a rather trashy looking wiener dog who lived on Bon View Drive. Growing up had been tough. Her mother could never hold a job, was always drinking out of the toilet and even though she had no idea who Cuddles's father was, she lied and told her he left them for Hollywood taking a job as Stevie Wonder's seeing-eye dog. Abandoned and valueless with a moral compass pointed straight to hell, Cuddles fell into promiscuity. Known as the "Bitch of Bon View Drive" she gave birth to seven or eight litters that ravaged her low-slung body to the point her teats dragged on the ground when she walked.
She had other addictions beside sex; going through the garbage cans late at night with Bubbles Wallace and Kevin the French Poodle from the bottom of the street, yapping at the mailman, and spelling out profanities on the neighbor's lawn with spots of dead grass created through carefully calculated bladder control. Using a thesaurus she could carry in her mouth she and Bubbles had created a virtual crossword puzzle of profanities on the block.
They'd chased cats, the three of them, Cuddles behind the wheel in her Chrysler Sebring screeching around corners and honking the horn at all hours. While stopped for gas one night she was jumped by Wootsy Woodbury the Abyssinian who lived on Ash Circle. Wootsy scratched her so severely she had to go to the vet for stitches, antibiotics and the worst of all, a bath.
Hard living eventually caught up with Cuddles. She woke up one more morning in the alley behind IHOP, pregnant again, garbage strewn everywhere, half a pancake still in her mouth and decided that was it. She needed help. After getting into a twelve-step program for sexual addiction offered by the Humane Society and finally convincing the people she lived with to get her fixed, she had emerged, tattered and worn looking, but with new insights into the conditions and battles that everyone struggles to win. Like so many who emerge from the "dark walk" as she phrased it, Cuddles went to work helping others. She began as a volunteer at the resident facility that treated her sexual addiction. Her first group, "Lick the Self-Licking" was such a big success they asked her to facilitate other groups including, "Loosing your Fear of the Vet" and "Taking Heartworms to Heart". It wasn't too long before she was in private practice and helping dogs and cats all over the valley.
This was the time I started my own therapy, I had decided my journey of self discovery must begin and the only way to move forward was one paw after the other.
