Name: Willow Breed: Cardigan Welsh Corgi
Birthday: Sept 11 2008
Eye color: Brown

This story was submitted by Willow's mom.

Willow is My Cardigan Welsh Corgi who was born on the anniversary of 9/11 . We bred her ourselves. We also own her mother, Jess, and father, Robbie. Willow was the runt of the litter. (7 in the litter and all the rest were males). She was very small compared with the other pups, and quite lethargic. We didn’t know if she would pull through. For the first 4 weeks of her life I hand fed her extra milk to make sure she was getting enough and made sure she always had a teat on her mother and didn’t get pushed off by the other pups.

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 My health issues all start one day when Willow was about 4 months old. I woke up one morning suffering with a very bad headache which I still have today. I went to see my doctor and was sent to see a specialist at the Hospital. They ran tests, x-rays & scans. Eventually I was sent to see a surgeon who thought it was due to my jaw keeping on locking, so he told us if I had surgery it would fix it. So I underwent my first surgery, than second and third . After the surgeries  my headache was still there, and now I was  deaf on the right side, but also now my jaw was killing I was black and blue and was unable to eat normal food. The hospital informed us the only way I could get completely fixed was to have a complete TMJ replacement and this will solve the problem. I was very unsure if I could trust them but they assured me this would work so I agreed.

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 So now I’m a 31 yrs. old living with a constant headache, a jaw joint replacement which doesn’t work properly and nerve problems on the right hand side of my face. I have changed hospitals & GP. They have told me I have chronic pain syndrome & trigeminal neuralgia and will have to live with the pain & nerve problem because there is no treatment for it, I’m also seeing a hearing specialist who has told me I will need to wear hearing aids in both ears because I’m now losing my hearing in my other ear.


 Through it all, Willow watched over me. She lay at my side day and night. She helped me to feel better by her actions. She would cuddle up with me on the sofa and didn’t want to get up and leave me. Willow alerts me to sounds such as the phone, when someone knocks at the door, the food timer in the kitchen and, when we are out, cars. She has never been trained to do any of that, she just does it Willow is my guardian angel and owe so much to her. Earlier this year Willow was awarded the PDSA Commendation Award .

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