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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Second Muffin Is Just As Sweet

Muffin is just a dog.

At least that was the way someone looked at the pup one dark winter’s night as a car crept across a bridge above the Spokane River.

A door opened, maybe a yelp escaped Muffin’s gums as she was flung out, hit the black water and was gone.

Only she wasn’t.

Her dog’s life, which by all rights should have ended in the forgotten splash of a cruel form of animal control, went on.

Bruised and battered, Muffin was swept downstream only to be washed to shore near a mobile home park at Barker Road.

Mary Mitchell remembers the call she received from her neighbor years ago. A pathetic little dog had staggered out of the river and was hiding behind a heat pump. Could Mary come down and try to lure it out? She went only because she had a dog once.

Mary and her husband, Pat, got a dog when they married in 1944.

For 21 years Mary and Pat Mitchell and the dog named Muffin lived together in what Mary called the best marriage anyone could have.

In January 1965, Mary put her first dog to sleep.

She cried about the dog.

Two days later, her husband was killed in a railroad accident.

She cried again and could not believe the hand of fate.

“From that moment on I said to myself that I didn’t want to get attached to another thing in my life,” she said.

She moved from her home. She did not remarry.

She lived alone in a mobile home on the Spokane River near Barker Road.

Then the friend called one night about the little dog that had washed up from the river.

Mary agreed to try to help coax the shivering dog from her hiding place. “She was all bruised and broken. But when I looked down at her face, I saw my dog. It was the same face,” Mary said.

She reminded herself again that fate had been hard-hearted and she never wanted to be all tangled up in feelings for another person - or dog.

“What we and Pat had was very, very good,” she said. “And our dog meant a lot to us.”

But there was the soggy cur with nowhere to go.

So, Mary said yes, she would take the near-dead puppy in.

She named her Muffin.

And in these last eight years, Muffin the dog has given new meaning and purpose to Mary Mitchell.

“Muffin is my best friend,” she said with a laugh a few days ago in her mobile home with a river view. she was wearing a t-shirt that read, “I belong to Muffin.”

Over the last few years Mary and Muffin have gone everywhere together. To the auto repair shop, the hospital, even motels.

“When pets aren’t allowed she was my seeing eye dog,” Mary laughed.

In the early 1990s, Mary and Muffin began visiting nursing homes around the region.

Old people fondly anticipated their visits. They loved to see the dog, and talk about their pets, their families and their memories.

“We made life better for people in these places. The folks in the nursing homes would tell Muffin their problems. Then I would go out and see if perhaps we could get things straightened out with the head nurse,” she said.

A few months ago someone sent Mary’s name to the publishers of the Who’s Who of Animals.

The publisher sent Mary a letter and asked if she would like to have Muffin the dog included in the 1994 edition of the animal’s Who’s Who.

Yes, it’s a kind of vanity press.

The listing of the dog is free but an owner is expected to pay $79 for the leather-bound book.

“But I would have paid $1,000,” said Mary. “The dog means that much to me.”

There on page 103 of the 1994 Who’s Who of Animals in America is a picture of Muffin.

She is on the same page as Kissy Guilmart, a cat from Durham, N.C. , and Ms. Mouse, a pet moose from Big Piney, Wyo.

In the last few weeks, Mary and Muffin have taken photocopies of the entry in the Who’s Who of Animals around to all their friends.

So far, 155 people have signed their names and written congratulations to Muffin.

Mary’s banker has signed. So has mechanic, her accountant, and her doctor.

Muffin and Mary have a life. “It’s not like the life we had back then,” Mary said, “But it works.”

This month make 30 years since Mary’s husband, Pat, and her first dog Muffin died in the same week.

Mary wasn’t sure her life would go on.

But it did.

And it does, if only we will give life a chance.