Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul (31 page)

Ella wanted to return to school. As she entered her classroom, several friends rushed to her with comforting words and hugs. Her teacher later told us that she had then read to the class
The Tenth Good Thing about Barney.
Then they had all talked about love and loss and the many different things we learn from our pets. The teacher said it was a remarkable day.

Although I knew then how important and loving that

8
RESCUE ME!

S
aving just one dog won’t change the world
but surely the world will change for that
one dog.

Unknown

Just an Old Golden Retriever

She was just an old golden retriever. Her name was Brandy, and for eleven years she was the sole companion of an elderly woman who lived in a bungalow colony in the country. Neighbors often saw the two of them together in the garden. The woman would be hunched over picking flowers and there was that old dog, close at her heels or lying in the middle of the grass watching her pull weeds. When the woman died, some relatives came and collected anything they thought was valuable and put a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn. Then they locked the dog out and drove away.

Some of the neighbors left food out for Brandy, but mostly the dog stayed near the house that she knew and waited for her owner to come back. A young mother who lived next door noticed the old retriever, but she had never been around animals before and while she thought the dog was friendly enough, she didn’t feel it was any of her concern.

However, when the dog wandered into her yard and began playing with eighteen-month-old Adam, she wanted to shoo the dirty thing away. Adam was her only child and the light of her life. But he was having so much fun feeding Brandy cookies she decided to let her stay. After that, whenever Adam had cookies Brandy came by to visit.

One afternoon, the boy’s mother left Adam in the soft grassy yard to play while she answered the phone. When she returned he was gone. Just gone. The mother was frantic. Neighbors came over to help in the search. Police arrived and looked for three hours before calling in the state police and helicopters to do an extensive aerial search. But no one could find the child, and as the sun set over the horizon, whispers of abduction, injury or even death crept into conversations.

The search had been going on for six hours when a neighbor, who’d just returned home, wondered where Brandy was. Adam’s mother, hysterical with worry, didn’t understand why anyone was asking about the old dog at a time like this.

When someone suggested she might be with Adam, a trooper recalled hearing a dog barking deep in the woods when they were doing a foot search. Suddenly, everybody started calling for Brandy.

They heard faint barking and followed the sound until they found the toddler, standing up fast asleep, pressed against the trunk of a tree. That old dog was holding him there with one shoulder as one of her own legs dangled over a thirty-five-foot drop to a stream below.

Brandy had followed Adam when he wandered off. When she saw danger, she’d pushed him out of harm’s way and held him safe for all those hours, even as the child struggled to get free.

As soon as the rescue team picked up Adam, the old dog collapsed. A trooper carried Adam back home, while his mother, sobbing with relief, carried Brandy. She was so grateful to the old golden retriever that Brandy spent the rest of her days with them. Brandy lived to the ripe old age of seventeen.

But this story doesn’t end with just one life saved. In Brandy’s honor, Adam’s mother, Sara Whalen, founded Pets Alive, a rescue sanctuary in New York that takes in unwanted animals, including those designated to be euthanized because they are old, blind, incontinent or perhaps not cute enough to be adopted. While she can’t save them all, Sara feels comforted that she can help at least some of them. She knows that if someone had put that old retriever to sleep, she could have easily lost the light of her life: her son.

Today, thirty years later, there are more than three hundred animals in her care, including birds, potbellied pigs, old horses retired from the carriage business and unadoptable pets from rescue groups across the country. The woman who used to think an old, abandoned dog wasn’t any of her concern found that every life has value and has become a beacon for thousands of animals in need.

Audrey Thomasson

Nothing That Can’t Be Fixed

“Oh, no! Look out!” I shouted as I watched the truck in front of me narrowly miss the little black dog on the highway. Startled, my children, ages one and two, looked at me from their car seats.

Cringing, the dog ran away, limping on one leg. It made it to the shoulder of the road and then turned to stare hopefully at my car as I drove past. I didn’t feel that I could stop with the children in the car, but something in that earnest stance stayed with me well after the stray was out of sight.

Stray dogs were a problem in the rural community where I lived. My husband, a veterinarian, often spoke about the plight of these forgotten animals. Most did not survive long. If they were not killed on the roadways, they died of starvation or disease.

I kept thinking about the black dog as I drove home. Then I made a decision to do something I’d never tried before. I dropped the children off at home, asking a neighbor to watch them, then drove to my husband’s veterinary clinic. I found him inside and began to tell him about the injured dog.

“If I can catch it, would you put it to sleep?” He didn’t seemvery pleased withmy plan, but he knew the dog was probably suffering. There were no animal shelters in our area, and we both knew there was no way for us to keep the dog—besides having two small children, we had no yard or place for a pet. My husband thought for amoment, then answered quietly that he would do what I asked.

Armed with a blanket and some dog biscuits, I drove back along the highway. I found the dog once again on the shoulder of the road. I pulled over and parked, grabbed some biscuits and stepped out of the car. When I walked to where the dog lay, I got my first good look at just how miserable such an existence can be.

The little black dog was painfully thin. Its hair was missing in patches and roughened, raw skin showed through the bare places. A tooth caught on an upper lip gave the dog’s face the appearance of a snarl. One eye seemed to be gone, and the dog’s leg had been injured. It was so hungry that it was gnawing on the bottom half of an old turtle shell it held between its paws.

Kneeling down in front of it, I fed it the treats until they were gone. Then I carefully picked up the dog and set it on the blanket in my car.

During the drive back to the veterinary clinic, I kept telling myself that what I was doing was the right thing. This animal was badly injured and starving. A quick, painless euthanasia was better than the fate that awaited it otherwise.

I glanced down at the dog and saw it studying me. The look in that one brown eye was unnerving.

Just don’t think about what’s ahead,
I told myself.

My husband was waiting for me when I pulled back into the parking lot. He opened the car door, picked up the dog and carried it into the clinic. Reluctantly, I followed him inside.

Instead of taking the dog to the kennel area, he carried it into the exam room. There, he started looking over his newest patient.

“It’s a young female, about a year and a half old. She has mange, that’s why her skin looks so bad. Probably hit by a car, but this leg’s not broken. Her jaw is fractured, though, and starting to heal itself. This eye needs some corrective surgery and the other eyelid needs to be closed . . .”

While my husband continued to examine the black dog, she sat quietly on the table. Her gaze never left my face. Why was she staring at me? Did she understand why I had brought her to this place?

His examination completed, my husband turned to me. He looked at me meaningfully and said, “There’s nothing here that can’t be fixed.”

I looked once more at the dog. She was still watching me with her single brown eye. I felt heartsick about this dog’s sad life, but the decision had to be made, and I was the one who had to make it.

It’s been twelve years since that day. I think about it often, especially on days like today when I’m sitting in the yard watching my hens peck around in the grass. My orange cat stretches lazily in a sunny spot on the patio. The summer’s last hummingbirds are fussing about the feeders.

An old dog leans against my leg. She lays her gray muzzle, once so black and shiny, on my knee and looks up at me. I give her silky head a pat. Now I understand the expression in that solitary brown eye. And I answer her, “I love you, too, Daisy.”

Pamela Jenkins

Ana: From Rescued to Rescuer

Ana’s early life was a long series of painful—and unfortunately, all-too-common—experiences. Like many golden retrievers, Ana started out as an adorable high-energy puppy, but when her energy and high prey drive began to take a destructive turn, it soon drove her human family crazy. Instead of training her, they eventually booted her out of the house to a doghouse in the backyard. This, of course, made things worse. She was the type of dog who desperately needed a job to do. Now, with even less attention and direction, Ana began to dig and bark. When she destroyed the irrigation system for the plantings in the family’s backyard, that was it! Ana was given away and soon was passed from one home to another. Fortunately, she was rescued by a responsible woman who recognized Ana’s need for a job. This special dog eventually found her way into my life, starting the train of events that would lead to the creation of one of the most successful disaster search-and-rescue training programs in the country.

When I retired after a long career as a physical-education teacher, my husband and I moved from the suburbs of Los Angeles to a small town in the mountains of Southern California. There I decided to pursue all the interests and dreams I had put on hold during my working life. One of these was to have a highly trained dog for rescue work. I started in wilderness search and rescue, but soon decided that, given my age and personality, disaster search-and-rescue work suited me better: The search area in a disaster situation is clearly defined, the need is certain and heavy packs are not necessary.

Immediately after the bombing in Oklahoma City, my canine partner, a black Lab named Murphy, and I were deployed there. Working at theMurrah building, I sawfirst-hand how vital search-and-rescue teams were. Unfortunately, there simply weren’t enough trained teams available. When I returned home, I decided to do something about the shortage.

At that time search-and-rescue dogs took between three and five years to train, and the expensewas prohibitive. An idea began to percolate inmy head: if assistance dogs could be trained in nine months to a year, why couldn’t a search-and-rescue dog be trained in the same amount of time?

I began making inquiries and eventually found a trainer who I believed could take a year-old dog and within a year turn the pup into a search-and-rescue dog. The next hurdle would be to find appropriate dogs to train. After a phone call to my friend and mentor, Bonnie, who was deeply involved in assistance dog training, the whole thing really started rolling. When I told Bonnie that I needed dogs for this new program, she said, “Oh! I think I have the perfect dog for you.”

Ana had been given to Bonnie in the hope that the highly intelligent dog could be trained as an assistance dog. Bonnie knew quickly that Ana wouldn’t make a good assistance dog—she was a fast learner and had the right attitude, but wasn’t mellow enough. When I asked Bonnie where I could find dogs to train as search-and-rescue dogs, it clicked in her mind: Ana would be perfect!

And she was.

When I drove to Bonnie’s to pick up Ana, Bonnie led me out to a large fenced paddock where at least twenty-five golden retrievers were all playing happily together. She opened the gate and let the dogs into a big barn area where they began to run together in an enormous golden circle around the barn. I noticed that one, and only one, of the dogs had stopped to pick up a stick and now galloped merrily around us holding the stick firmly in its mouth. Bonnie smiled at me and said, “Wilma, can you pick out the dog I have in mind for you?”

I hazarded a guess. “The one with the stick?”

Bonnie’s jaw dropped. “That’s her!” she said. It was a lucky guess, but my stock sure went up with Bonnie that day.