Happy at Last

Here is little Dora a few weeks after we got her. That sad look has left her eyes. She knows she is home now, part of our family, part of our pack. She is home, safe and happy at last. 

Mini Me

Dora and Dominic are like Me and Mini-Me. Her body really doesn’t look like a Pointer’s, but her markings and the shape of her face is so much like his, she could be a mini version of him.

Over the last few days, all the dogs have become friends. Ruby was suspicious of Dora at first, and looked at me reproachfully whenever Dora got in my lap. But now she and Dora are great friends and they play together enthusiastically. Dominic joins in, and he is especially exuberant. Actually, he is a bit too rough with her, chasing her and tackling her to the ground. But she is tough. She rolls over and then jumps right up and chases him.

Dora loves us very much and has turned into a bit of a Velcro dog. When I am working in the office, she has been jumping up and sitting behind me in my chair. When we are sitting on the couch watching television, she comes and sits with me or Gary, or climbs on top of us. She has slept in the bed every night. Like Dominic, she tries to get under the covers.

She is starting to smell a lot better, although we still haven’t given her a bath. She runs around in the grass, and rolls, and she is beginning to lose the odor of the shelter. Little by little, her behavior is giving us clues to where she came from and what her life was before the fire. 

First, she definitely was not a farm dog. She clearly had never seen horses before, and she started out fascinated with them. She does not understand that they could hurt her, and we have to make sure she does not get under their feet. The first day we had her, she followed us when we rode our sets of horses around the farm. She kept looking up and me and wandering in front of one of the horses I was leading. Finally, I had to put her in a crate. I was afraid she might get stepped on, and afraid she might wear herself out running.

Second, she did not know about cats when she got here. Three of our four cats have had to bat her in the head to discourage her from being overly curious about them. The fourth cat, Tiger (aka Sheldon) is way too nice to the dogs, and has allowed her to nibble his ears and chase him.  The other cats and I are trying to teach her not to chase them. She is getting better, but I am still watching her closely. 

We think she was probably in a family with a child, and she was the child’s dog. We’re pretty sure she slept on the bed. Someone may have taught her to sit once, but she is not used to that. Her trick is to stand up on her hind legs and beg. It took me a few days to turn that back to sitting, which she does pretty reliably now.

She loves the other dogs and she loves us, but I can’t say I think she is totally happy. She has expressions sometimes that make me feel like she has memories. Are they bad memories of the shelter? Is she remembering a family that she loved and misses? Am I, perhaps, projecting too much? 

I wonder what happened to her family, and I wonder if there is a child out there, wondering what happened to his or her little dog. I wonder how much the family knew about her chances at the shelter, or if they had any option besides giving her up.

On Facebook, the people involved in rescue berate the “owner surrender” people, as if those people really knew that giving a pet to an “animal shelter” was like sending it to a concentration camp and that it probably would be killed. But I really don’t think people do know that. When we were at the shelter in Greenville, we saw the man bring in the two nice cats, and the punk kind bring in his “homey’s” dog. Maybe the paperwork they signed said on it somewhere that the animals would be killed if no one wanted them in a few days. But the lady at the desk certainly didn’t say anything about it. On the shelter website, it cautions people who want to give up animals that they are “unable to house surrendered pets for more than a few days.” But it doesn’t say that it’s going to kill them.

I really don’t think people know. They think it is a shelter. 

Naming the Dog

Dora with her new name and a stick

These days, people tend to give their dogs human names, which supposedly reflects the fact that pets are really considered parts of the family, fur children, if you will. Pet names are also affected by popular culture - that’s why Bella (from Twilight) was the most popular name for female puppies in 2011. 

Finding the right name for an animal is an almost mystical process. A likely name comes to you. You try it out, discover how it sounds when you call it out loud. You see if it matches the animal, if it fits. Some names sound right; some don't. You try a few and eventually something sticks.

When there are two of you naming the animals, it can feel like a bit of a competition.  Gary was calling cat number four Whimsy for about a week after I had settled on calling her Wanda. (That's her name now.) When we got Wally, his name was Cletus. I thought that was a funny name for him and I was all for keeping it. After a few weeks, Gary changed it to Wally, but it was about a month before I capitulated and switched to the new name. 

Other animals have been easier. Chase got her name from two things. One, when we got her, she liked to chase the cat - and so she earned her “Indian name,” Chasedacat. Two, she is a black and white and brindle dog, and, on one side, she has what looks like the image of a dog's head. When she runs, it looks like the other dog is chasing her. We didn't argue about that name at all.

Little Joanne is a bit of a mystery. She doesn't respond to that name, so it seems likely it was given to her at the shelter.  What is her real name? When she was brought to the shelter, why wouldn't her name have come with her? Last night, we called her Skeeter. But that doesn't seem quite right. Maybe we can say names to her until we find one she recognizes. Maybe she can tell us her real name. I feel a little bit lost with her. What will we call her?

But then, this morning, Gary is out walking with her in the field. He comes back and says “What about Dora?” 

She looks up at him, as if to say yes. “Hey Dora!” I say, and she looks at me. It would be an overstatement to say that she knows this name already, but it does seem familiar to her. And it works.

So now she is Dora. Dora the Explorer. Adorable Dora. Dori. She smiles at us and bounces in the air. Dora will work.

Dora on a walk around the farm

RESCUE

Home at last. First night out of the shelter and on the couch.

March 7, 2012

The shelter in Greenville opens at noon and it will take us two and a half hours to get there. We decide we want to arrive as close as possible to opening. But we have a lot of work to do on the farm, and we want to take the other dogs for a good walk. And we woke up late. We don't leave the farm until close to noon, and we have a quick errand to do on the way. We get to Greenville at about 3:00.

The shelter in Greenville is huge and has several different departments, including an education center, an adoption center, a veterinary clinic and a lost and found. We are not certain where to go. So we park near the door that says Adoptions and walk in.

The adoption center is clean and modern and looks like a pet store, with all kinds of dog toys and dog beds and collars and leashes for sale. The lighting is rather dim, and the carpet is a deep grey. There is a lady behind a desk who is talking quietly to a couple with a young child. They appear to be contemplating adopting a dog. There is a crate in the middle of the room with a beautiful and friendly young Catahoula in it. It's a lovely dog and a great advertisement. Gary immediately kneels down and starts talking to him.

"I love this dog," he says. "I want him."

The lady behind the desk is still talking to the young couple, and there doesn't seem to be anyone very interested in paying attention to me. So we wander into a room lined with kennels of adoptable dogs. Each kennel has a little dish on the outside filled with kibble so that visitors can give the dogs treats. Gary gets into this room before me and has already given just about every dog a treat by the time I get there. The dogs are generally young and good-looking. I don't see little Joanne anywhere.

We return to the main room, where Gary goes back to talking to the Catahoula, and I go back to waiting for the lady behind the desk to finish with the young couple.

"He'll be on the adoption floor until he's adopted," the lady is telling the couple. "But if you don't come back right away, he could be adopted by someone else."

Presently, the couple leaves, and the lady behind the desk looks at me.

"I'm here to pick up the little Pointer, Joanne," I say.

"Oh, is that a rescue?" she asks. I tell her yes, and she says, "You'll have to go to Lost and Found. That's where we have the rescues."

So we say goodbye to the Catahoula and walk back outside, down a hill and up another one and go into the Lost and Found department.

Lost and Found has a very different feeling from Adoptions. It smells bad - a faint mix of urine, feces and disinfectant. There is a desk in the center of the room, and a few offices off the main room. There is a window into one of them, where we can see a box filled with sleeping tiny puppies. There is a large black lady behind the desk in the middle of the room. She has a deep sweet Southern voice.

We aren't the first people in line here either. There is a middle aged black man with a large wire carrier that has two very handsome, well-fed and large cats in it. One of them, a tiger cat, is meowing uncertainly. There is also a scrawny white kid of about 20 with a baggy shirt and jeans ten sizes too big. He has a tan mixed-breed puppy that looks like it might be about 6 months old.

The man with the cats says he picked them up near his house and he wants to turn them in because he is afraid they will get hit by a car, or that his dogs will hurt them. "I just want to do the right thing," he says. "I don't want them to get hurt."

I look at the cats and try not to think about the fact that they will probably never leave the Lost and Found. Animal shelters are even worse places for cats than for dogs. I have an impulse to tell the man we will take the cats. But I squash it. We already have four cats, and one of them (number two) has still not gotten over the acquisition of number four over a year ago. Besides, we are here for Joanne.

The lady calls someone to come take the cats, and a man in scrubs, who looks like he might be on work release, arrives from behind a set of doors behind the desk and takes the carrier. Goodbye cats, I think as the doors close behind him. They don't look like feral cats. They look like they belong on the windowsill.

"So what's with this dog," the lady now says to the kid. "What's the story here?"

"I gotta give him up," the kid replies.

"What kind of dog is it?"

"It's just a mongoloid dog," the kid says. Gary looks at me knowingly, as if expecting me to correct him. I don't.

"Why you giving him up?"

"It's my homeboy's dog and I can't take care of him no more."

"Your homeboy? Where's he at?"

"He's incarcerated."

"Okay, well you gotta fill out this form. You got your driver's license?"

The kid steps forward. He doesn't have a driver's license, but shows a state ID and signs something. Then he leads the puppy through the doors. Goodbye puppy, I think. I wonder if I will see him on the Urgent Dogs list on Facebook later in the week.

Now it's my turn.

"I'm here for the Pointer, Joanne," I say.

"The rescue?"

 I nod.

"You with Pointer Rescue?"

"Well, I'm pulling as an individual," I say. I don't bother explaining that I am not actually affiliated with Pointer Rescue. The lady calls someone and tells them to go get Joanne, while I give her my driver's license and sign some documents.

While I am paying my money, a worker in blue scrubs comes back through the door with a small dog on a leash. The dog is wagging its tail like crazy and crouching down in a submissive posture. It takes me a minute to realize that this is Joanne, because I was expecting a purebred Pointer, and this is definitely not one. This dog is considerably smaller than our Pointers, although her coloring and markings are very similar. Her face looks like a Pointer's, but her head is much smaller. Her wagging tail has a fishhook curve at its end.

I bend down and say hello and she wags and wags, wiggling her whole body. She is wearing a plastic strip around her neck as a collar. It has a label on it that says "Pointer Rescue."

I have brought a collar and a leash with me, but the collar is a full-sized one for a Pointer, not a medium sized one for a little dog like this. Joanne pulls back when I go to buckle the collar, but I soothe her. It is way too big, so I loop the leash around her neck. Then I give her to Gary, who puts her on his lap while I finish the paperwork.

Joanne has been spayed, and she has a microchip. She also had some other vaccinations, and she comes with a free 30-days worth of health insurance from ShelterCare. The lady explains to me that I have to activate the ShelterCare coverage by email within two days of taking my new dog home. It all seems like a pretty good deal. We say thank you, and we leave.

Joanne is not great on the leash, but she does come with us. We try to encourage her to relieve herself before we get into the car, but she isn't interested. She seems a little shell-shocked.

"And she stinks," says Gary.

We get her into the car and we head back out to the highway. She is restless in the back seat, so I allow her to come up front and sit in my lap. She really does stink. Her paws are stained with yellow blotches and there are a few on her back. She smells like she has been dipped in pee and poop. Her abdomen has been shaved for her surgery, and she has a small scar. I wonder out loud why they didn't give her a bath before they spayed her, since our paperwork says we are not supposed to let her get wet for two weeks.

"They barely wanted not to kill her," says Gary. "That's why."

Stinky or not, she is very sweet. She looks at me, she looks at Gary and she looks out the window. Sometimes she curls up and seems like she is going to go to sleep. She puts her chin on my shoulder. She tries to get into Gary's lap as he is driving. She is restless and anxious. She doesn't know what's going to happen next. We decide that she is not a Pointer at all.

"She's a grandma dog, the kind of dog your grandmother would have, getting into all kinds of trouble," says Gary.

We finally get home. We decide that I will take her for a walk in front of the house, while Gary lets the other dogs out the back door so that they won't come flying out at her and scare her. When we get out of the car, she walks around with me on the leash, sniffing. The other dogs come around the corner and sniff her. There is a little posturing, but everyone seems to accept her reasonably well. Ruby, our 8-month old retriever mix, is a little stand-offish. But there are no fights and little growling.

So now, we take the leash off and go for a walk around the farm with all six dogs. All of a sudden Joanne gets excited. She can't believe where she is. She starts bouncing, all four feet off the ground. All we can do is laugh. If we hold our arms out, she jumps into them. We don't want her to do too much jumping because she was just spayed, but it's hard not to be thrilled by her exuberance. She looks so happy.

"She's not a Pointer," I say. "She's a Jack Russell Terrier. Or maybe a mix, a Jack Russell Pointer."

We can't give her a bath, but Gary does get a few damp towels moistened with dog shampoo to rub her down. This improves her color, but she still smells awful. When her fur is a little bit wet, it smells like poop. When she dries, she smells a little better, but not much.

When it is time for dinner, we feed her separately, and she is ravenous, eating like she expects us to take the food away. That night, she sits with us on the couch. The name Joanne doesn't suit her, and it isn't her real name - she doesn't know it. We don't know what to call her yet. Maybe Skeeter, since she scoots around so much, like a skeeter bug.

While she's lying on the couch, I take her picture with my cell phone and post it on Facebook. I am wondering if the people who were cursing me when they thought I had abandoned her will see it.

I had told Gary before we got her that I expected her to sleep in the crate we have in the bedroom, at least for the first night. That was when I thought she was a full-sized, timid lady Pointer. Well, no way. She comes up and sleeps on the bed between us, with her head on the pillow. Nic, Wally and Trouble are there too, making four dogs on the bed. I have to be sure to point my nose away from her so that I can't smell her. But this definitely isn't the first time she has slept on the bed. This was once someone's beloved little dog.

I go to sleep, disturbed by the thought that a sweet little dog like this, with nothing wrong with her, was almost killed, just because her family's house burned down. She survived the fire, but was almost killed by the government. Something is very wrong with this picture.

GETTING READY

Nic and Ruby, our two younger dogs.

March 6


Our five dogs don't know yet that we are planning to expand the pack. I wonder what they would think if they did know. Little Joanne is supposed to be eight months old, just a few weeks older than our youngest, the retriever mix Ruby. Nic, the purebred Pointer, is a year older than that. Then Wally is about 4, Trouble about 5, and Chase about 6. 


Nic and Ruby are a bonded pair - they play all day and lounge around together. Trouble, the blue heeler, is close to Chase the hound mix, though she is most interested in squirrels, and he is most interested in what anyone might throw and he might catch. Wally, our other Pointer, is interested in birds, lizards, and sleeping on the couch with Gary. He has the best relationship with Trouble, though he also plays and hunts with Nic and Ruby. We figure that Ruby will not be friendly at first, but that the new dog will probably end up being a threesome with her and Nic.


That is, if we keep her. When I filed the adoption application, I just wanted the little dog not to die in the shelter after surviving a house fire and losing her family. I wasn't thinking too clearly about whether we really needed to add another dog to the family. After I sent in the application, rescuers who know me on Facebook reached out, offering help in adopting her out, or getting her accepted into Pointer Rescue Organization, assuming that my plan is to foster her. I am somewhat relieved. Although I am certain it was right to save her life, I am not at all sure that it is fair to my other dogs to take on another one. After all, I only have one lap.


Being a foster rather than an adopter also makes sense if we really want to make a difference for homeless dogs. After all, if we foster Joanne and then find her a home, we will be able to save other dogs from death row and make a more significant difference.


Now I tell Gary that if she doesn't work out for us, we do have options. He doesn't seem convinced. 


"Of course we're going to keep her," he says.


So today, while we are out on a project, I get a call from Greenville. It's Lauren, the person who originally answered my emails at the shelter. She wants to know if I am still planning to pick up Joanne tomorrow.


"Yes, of course," I reply.


"Because there is someone from a rescue group who says she's taking her."


"What? No. We're coming tomorrow," I say. 


"Well, I guess there was something on Facebook. There was a lot of talk . . . people on Facebook are crazy."


"We're coming tomorrow," I say. "You open at noon, right?"


"That's right."


"We'll get there as close to noon as we can," I say, and we hang up.


Afterwards, I wonder if I should have just let the rescue group take the dog, since I am not positive that bringing her home is really going to be the right thing for everyone, when there is an option. But another part of me really, really wants her.

DEATH ROW

Death Row Dog on Facebook

February 29, 2012

NAME: Joanne ANIMAL ID: 15428041

BREED: Pointer

SEX: Female

EST. AGE: 8 months

EST. WEIGHT: 25-30 lbs

HEALTH: Appears Healthy

TEMPERAMENT: Friendly

ADDITIONAL INFO: Came in after being in a house fire 

RESCUE PULL FEE: $65

AVAILABLE DATE: Now

UPDATE: space is limited!!!

The dog in the picture has a sweet face with soulful eyes. Her name is Joanne and she is a liver and white female, with almost symmetrical markings. I saw her picture on Facebook about a week ago, shared by people who became my Facebook friends after we adopted a couple of dogs from Pointer Rescue Organization. She was originally listed as a Pointer mix, but the Pointer lovers on the web have now declared her to be a purebred. "Not a mix," one says. "Looks PB to me," says another.

I had looked at her picture before and read her story and thought she would be picked up pretty quickly. She has such a gentle face, and the poor thing is only in the shelter because her house burned down. When I first saw her, I had actually posted something on her picture because a lady in town had called me looking for a Pointer, especially a German Shorthaired Pointer. I was trying to direct her to dogs that needed homes. Since this one was just a couple of hours away in Greenville and looked so pretty, I had suggested her as a possibility. But I had also connected that lady to a young GSP male I knew of in Florida. She had decided to adopt that dog and so had never called about little Joanne. 

Now, leap day, we are working on a home improvement project and Joanne's face comes up again on my Facebook news feed. She has been listed in the Urgent Dogs folder at the shelter for about a week. The message today from a rescue group page is "needs commitment by 5pm today." This means that she will be killed tomorrow morning if no one steps up for her this afternoon. 

People on the rescue group page are commenting left and right about how they would save her if they were close by. A man in New Jersey says he'll take her, how can he do it? Someone says he has to contact the shelter and gives him an email address. He says he'll email them, and then we don't hear from him again. I go back to my construction project thinking about Joanne and her sad eyes. We already have five dogs, and the house is pretty full.

When we break for lunch, I go back to my computer to check the rescue page. Joanne is still there, and people are still lamenting that she seems destined to die tomorrow. It's about 1:30.  Greenville is two and a half hours away by car. If we leave now, we can get her out of the building this afternoon and save her life, I think. I show Gary her picture and ask him what he thinks.

"She's adorable," he says. 

So I post on the rescue page that I will go and get her now if she's available. Contact the rescue coordinator at the shelter, I am told. So I send an email, asking if she is adoptable, if she is spayed and can I come get her now. 

"Yes, She is able to be adopted," comes the reply. "She is not spayed yet so she couldn't leave yet but you can come meet her. The adoption fee is $65."

So I send another email asking some other questions about her. I don't want to make that drive to Greenville twice, and I know if I meet her, I'm going to be too worried to leave her behind at the shelter. I ask if I can adopt her over the phone, and I am told I can send in an adoption application, which I can download from the website. I ask Gary again if we should get her, and he says, of course. So I download the application, fill it out and send it in. It is 2:32, two and a half hours before her last call.

After I email the application, all I hear back is "so you are wanting to adopt her for sure?"

Yes, I reply. Then I ask when we can come get her and if I can pay for her by credit card now. 

"She wouldn't be ready until Tuesday," replies the rescue coordinator. This email is sent at 4:23.

Okay, I say, can I get her Wednesday? And can I pay for her by credit card? And do you need any more documentation from me? I am worried because it sounds like they are not taking my application totally seriously. Why did she say "she wouldn't be ready," instead of "she won't be ready." And why won't they take my credit card?

I write back again, asking about paying for her, and trying to confirm that I will pick her up Wednesday. I send them the name of my vet. I send them my picture. But I get no reply.

Meanwhile, I haven't posted anything on the rescue Facebook page, because I am unsure of the status. A little later in the evening someone who visits the shelter writes "Not rescued!:( ," on her picture. Then other people chime in, about how their hearts are breaking and how can people write that they are going to get a dog and then don't, and the dog just gets killed because no one at the shelter knows people are interested in her. 

This is clearly directed at me, so I write back that I sent in the adoption application, and that I have no reason to believe that I am not adopting the dog. I am a little worried, to tell the truth. But in my heart, I think everything will be all right. I am sure they will not kill her in the morning when they have my eight emails and my adoption application in hand. 

"She was still alive this evening," someone posts. "So if you are interested in her, be sure to email the shelter so they will know someone will take her."

But the next morning, I still have no reply from Greenville. So I write them again. Twice. Finally, at 12:32 pm, someone responds. The lady I was writing to yesterday is out sick. Someone else, who now thinks I am a volunteer for Pointer Rescue Organization, asks me if I am pulling as an individual this time. I say yes. She says she will schedule the dog for surgery on Monday and I can pick her up on Wednesday. 


"Thank you so much for saving Joanne," she writes.


 I say, "Great! We can't wait to meet her."

The next time I check, little Joanne has been moved into the "Dogs rescued/adopted" folder at the shelter's Facebook page. She is safe. She is ours.