My name is Jessica Mount. Last year, my family and I decided that we would like to add a dog to our family, so we began researching different breeds. After a lot of reading, we decided that the Great Pyrenees was high on our list as far as general breed qualities, so we went to Petfinder.org to get started looking. It was there that we discovered Lonestar Pyrs and Paws, run by Leslie Sampson and a dog named Snowflake that would later become a wonderful addition to our family. Leslie asked us to share Snowy's Cinderella story here.

Snowflake was a 2 year old Great Pyrenees who was surrendered to a high kill shelter in Tennessee in August of 2009. She was covered in fleas to the point that she had lost large patches of hair, she was urine stained, had a broken tooth and a wound on her front right leg that would not heal. She was given 24 hours before she was tobe put to sleep. This is what she looked like when she arrived at the vet in Tennessee:

Snowflake went to her foster home in Tennessee where she got many flea dips and treatments, shots, medical attentionand began to recover. Her foster mom discovered that she loved kids and felt she should go to a home where she could be with them.

After she was on her way to recovery, Snowflake made her way to Leslie Sampson here in NH. Her leg was still not healing, so she again had to go to the vet who recommended exploratory surgery to determine the cause. They discovered that a piece of dead bone in the leg was preventing it from healing. After removing the bone, she was really on her way to recovery.

Snowflake was very timid and seemed to have been mistreated during her life. When she got to Leslie, she didn't play or even bark!

We met Snowy for the first time on October 4th, 2009, nearly 2 months after she was saved. Her coat was still recovering, and she was starting to learn to trust again. We liked her immediately! She was so quiet and sweet and went right up to our 1 year old daughter to nuzzle her. Here she is with our daughter the first day we met her:

So, we began the adoption process. After Leslie had done our home visit, we couldn't wait to bring Snowy home! Shortly after we decided to adopt her but before she came home, she started to open up a bit more and Leslie even caught her playing the night before she came home!

Snowflake settled right in to our home. After the first day, she was playing with us too!. We were so excited that she seemed to feel so comfortable here.

It has been a few months since Snowflake has come home. We decided to change her name to "Yuki", which is Japanese for snow, so that she could start her new life with a new identity. She has become a wonderful member of our family and while she likes my husband and I, she adores our daughter and likes to follow her all over the house (no doubt hoping some treats will fall out!). She is unbelievably gentle with our daughter, which was one of the things that drew us to the breed to begin with. Our daughter loves to feed her treats and I have never seen a dog take a treat so gently before.

We have also discovered that, fittingly, Yuki loves the snow! She loves to hop around in it, and dig her nose under it so that she can fling it up into the air.

I have to say that everytime I see her romping around that it warms my heart to know she is so happy now, when just a few months ago her life was so horrible, and almost ended.

At this point, Yuki has gained 15 pounds, her coat is soft and full and while she is still nervous of certain things, she is well on her way to becoming a new dog. Sometimes, she even barks!