One Time

"One time" is a phrase often used by poker players looking to luck out after a series of bad beats.

Meet Buddy and while his aliases read like a veritable list of Vegas wise guys - The Bud Man; Biscuit Head; Frankenbuddy; Buddy Fifteen Toes (Nah, I just made that one up), he's no poker player at all. He's a dog and perhaps the unluckiest dog of all.

There's not a lot known about Buddy before he arrived at the Humane Society of Memphis and Shelby County other than he was a Katrina rescue from New Orleans with buckshot in his butt and a gnarled and withered hind leg. Speculation was it must've gotten caught in barbed wire and he chewed his paw off.

And even though he endeared himself to the staff at the shelter with his big, big heart and the Bud Man dance he does when he gets excited, they couldn't find an adoptive family for him. Nope, life wasn't much kinder in his new town. Time and time again he was adopted out only to be inexplicably and incredulously returned.

Ultimately Ginger, then the head of the Humane Society, took him home. But poor ole Buddy has never caught a break. In December 2008 he was diagnosed with multilobular osteochondrosarcoma when they discovered a tumor in his head. Vets at the University of Missouri excised the mass with clean margins but in the process removed his right eye and a portion of his jaw.

Buddy recovered fine but this Monday 6:30am Seattle time I got a call from Ginger. His lungs are riddled with tumors. After contacting several oncologists there's a ghost of a chance he's a candidate for an experimental drug but we won't know until next week.

And while we hold out hope, Buddy hasn't always been unlucky. He met Mommy G.

So here's for one more time... God, one more time