1. It all began...

My story began a day in June 2011 when I went to feed my animals one morning and noticed that my dog, a male Miniature Pincher named "Sarge", had 2 small circular patches of missing hair on his back. I didn't think much of it at the time as I also have a female cat in the household that sometimes slaps the s#!t out of my dog for eating out of her bowl. My dog and cat have a love/hate relationship that my dog dominates, but there has been very rare occasions where my cat has been pushed to the limit and had decided to strike back. I thought this was an incident where my cat had lashed my dog and caused some minor bruising and thought little of it.

Days later, while getting my dog ready for a walk in the park I had noticed that one of the bald spots had grown almost double in size, while the other had stayed the same. I could now clearly see Sarge's white flesh from a spot on his back about an inch south of his shoulder blades. At this point I knew something was up. And being perfectly honest, this was exactly the point where I knew that I was not going to take my dog to the vet.

The reason I made the decision to rule out a vet visit was the fact that earlier in the year, my sister's tiny teacup yorkie named "Mocha" had gotten sick, and we rushed her to the vet. The first thing they asked for was money - even before they asked what was wrong with the dog. About 15 minutes later they came with the bill to show us the cost we'd have to pay to help them fight the dog's infection. Which amounted to $800 to keep the dog overnight, and $1200.00 to be billed later. We paid the $800 and the next morning we got a call saying that Mocha died in the animal hospital. In that same phone call, they asked for money, and the next day we get a bill for $1200.00 in the mail.

So my mind was made up on NO vet, and that I was going to ID the problem and cure it myself.