The Dart: Local ‘lucky’ to find companion in rescued shelter dog
Published 12:01 am Monday, April 7, 2014
![Brittney Lohmiller / The Natchez Democrat — Camille Harris’ home is filled with photographs of her seven children, 16 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Harris moved from an apartment to a house next door to her daughter three years ago.](https:https://www.natchezdemocrat.com//wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2014/04/040714_DartBLMain.jpg)
Brittney Lohmiller / The Natchez Democrat — Camille Harris’ home is filled with photographs of her seven children, 16 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Harris moved from an apartment to a house next door to her daughter three years ago.
NATCHEZ — Camille Harris has lived in her house on Ashburn Street for approximately three years.
During that time, she’s had a lot of good times with friends and family, but she’s also had a special companion who has helped her make the house a home — Lucky, the mixed-breed shelter dog she adopted about the same time as she moved.
![Brittney Lohmiller / The Natchez Democrat — Camille Harris always grew up with dogs. When she moved from an apartment to a house, she adopted Lucky, above. Lucky was born without a knee in his back left leg, and Harris adopted him because she also had knee problems and surgery.](https:https://www.natchezdemocrat.com//wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2014/04/040714_DartBL2-300x199.jpg)
Brittney Lohmiller / The Natchez Democrat — Camille Harris always grew up with dogs. When she moved from an apartment to a house, she adopted Lucky, above. Lucky was born without a knee in his back left leg, and Harris adopted him because she also had knee problems and surgery.
When The Dart found Harris Saturday, she and Lucky were hosting another canine guest, her “granddog,” Brees.
Brees wasn’t feeling very active — he seemed to spend most of his time on the couch — but Lucky was happy to have company and scuttled around the house on his three good legs, his fourth leg — the hind left — steering the rest of him despite being born without a knee.
“If you look at him, he uses that back leg like a ski pole,” Harris said. “Even though he’s got that bad leg, he can run like the wind.”
Harris, who is 80, said she’s had knee problems herself in recent years, and the connection between the two of them goes back to the first time they met, when she went to the shelter in hope of adopting a new dog.
“I walked in there and as soon as he saw me, he went nuts,” she said with a laugh. “It was him who picked me, and when I told the lady, ‘I want that one,’ she said, ‘He’s got something wrong with his leg,’ and I said, ‘So do I.’”
Since that moment, whether bonding over leg troubles or just cuddling on the bed, the two have formed a human-animal bond to rival the best of them.
“If I have to leave to go to the store or something like that, he waits for me at the door and goes crazy the second he sees me,” Harris said. “When I go out of town and have to leave him with my daughter, I call every day to find out how he’s doing.”
But if they can, they spend their time together.
“Lord, but I love that little thing,” Harris said. “I called him Lucky because I felt like he was lucky to find me, and I was lucky to find him.”