One of our favorite dogs we'd fostered over the years was a tiny beagle named Freckles. She was cute as a button and had an adorable personality. When Freckles got excited she would dance on our tile floor, nails clicking like tiny castanets. Freckles radiated heat better than an electric blanket when she slept on our bed every night. The two biggest challenges of acting as her foster parents were keeping Freckles calm while she recovered from treatment for heart worms, and letting her go when the time came for Freckles to be adopted into her perfect forever home. Years passed in a blur. Our own little island of misfits eventually grew into a permanent six-pack of large dogs that all lived inside our relatively small house, and we were forced to take an extended hiatus from fostering. Eventually a couple of our oldest pack members crossed the rainbow bridge. Without warning, our sweet Husky Sasha suffered a fatal heart attack, and beloved Wyatt the Wonderdog succumbed to lymphoma, and eventually, sadly, we found ourselves with only two remaining pack members. We didn't immediately return to fostering because we'd moved since our days volunteering with the Humane Society of Forsyth County, and we were no longer actively associated with any rescue organizations, Then one day I noticed an email in my inbox with a desperate message in the subject line: "Urgent! Beagle stuck..." That was all I could read without clicking on the link. Stuck where? Beagles are scent hounds, which means they will often detect and track a specific smell for miles. For this reason, … [Read more...]
A Real Trooper
Trooper [This was the first story I wrote for Always a Next One. It remains my personal favorite, the only real "tear-jerker" in the collection. Please don't ask me to read this story aloud, because I can't. I get emotional when I recall the rollercoaster nature of the experience in my mind. The "voice" of the narrator had to be my wife Lisa, because the story only works if told from her perspective and seen through her eyes.] If cats have nine lives, how many does a dog have? Decisions of life and death take their toll on me. It’s not easy to be president of the Humane Society of Forsyth County. I recognized her phone number on the call display. “Lisa, thank God you answered your phone.” “Hi, Leslie. What’s the matter?” “I just found a dog that was hit by a car lying on the side of the road. I thought he might already be dead. I only stopped and got out to make sure there was nothing I could do. I really can’t believe he’s still alive. The poor thing … his legs were all twisted and his body is scraped and bloody. Even the skin on his nose is rubbed off. The worst is his head injury. It breaks my heart to see how badly he’s hurt – at first I was sure he was dead. But as I turned back toward my car, I saw his chest move.” Leslie finally paused to take a breath before plowing forward. “Lisa, he evacuated his bowels. I had some rags in my trunk and cleaned him up as best I could … but he’s dying. Please, can the Humane Society help him? I don’t know where else to take him or what to do.” Her torrent of words hit me like a hammer. Another good-hearted volunteer with yet … [Read more...]
