Hawkeye Goes Home

Hawkeye was born at my house. In fact, I literally pulled him from his mother, Beverly, tore open the sac and cut the umbilical cord. I’m not much for puppies as a rule, but he was the exception. 

Born March 25^th to a mother who had lost all three of her other pups, it was touch and go with this one for the first few days. I said an earnest prayer (“Please, can’t I just have this ONE?”). God was good. Hawkeye lived.

Initially, he was referred to only as “the puppy”. I refused him any other moniker thinking he might fade and die at any moment just like his siblings had. When I felt sure I could trust him to stick around, I chose a favorite character from “The Last of the Mohicans” for his namesake. Every step of his development was scrutinized. His eyes opened at 10 days. A week or so later, we realized he was actually starting to see us. Before we knew it he was walking – stumbling, really. The one day, he began to run, a feat he accomplished with great enthusiasm and zero grace. It was a sight that made us roar with laughter! Our houseful of old puppymill girls doted on the sole youngster in their midst. Hawkeye was constantly being washed or diapered, or dozing dreamily between the paws of any of a dozen adult pugs in the rescue house. Our old man, Angus, quickly became a favorite playmate and role model. Having a puppy around seemed to put some extra bounce in Angus’ steps; he was endlessly patient, like a doting grandfather.

I can’t imagine any puppy ever having a happier life. Little Hawkeye was swimming in love and acceptance everywhere he turned.

I began to think about keeping him forever.

I have always had a rule about puppies: No keeping them. Everybody wants puppies, there’s no reason to keep them. The fees they generate help provide medical care for the sad old mill survivors with their bad skin, tumors and rotten teeth. Puppies deserve to be the center of attention and part of a real family, rather than tossed into the continual flux of a rescue house. Yet, the bond I felt with little Hawkeye was so strong…

We rarely see puppies in rescue, and I knew that was part of the problem. Getting a puppy in rescue is like finding a gold coin in the dirt – it just never happens and, when it does, it generates a lot of excitement. We cannot keep every dog or puppy who comes into rescue, of course. Most of us who operate rescues end up keeping the unadoptables…the unhousetrainables, the blind, the elderly…pugs more like Vincent.

Vincent – aka Vinnie Bamboose – still howls at night on occasion. Vinnie has one ear – the other has a tiny opening that must be cleaned regularly. His paws are stubby little clumps, deformed by years on wire cage floors and recurring infections. Vinnie is pigeon-toed – he has a comical walk that I find endearing. He has three teeth. He looks at me with big, liquid eyes and I see trust there. That trust was not the casual trust of a puppy who has never known cruelty. Vinnie’s trust was hard-won, the bond between us all the more precious because of it…my regard for him higher because I’ll never understand where he found the courage to give it.

The day soon came when I had to make a decision. With a mixture of hope and loss, and the certainty that I was doing a proper job of rescue even if it hurt, I sent Hawkeye home with the most wonderful young family he ever could've hoped to have. I have to admit, I miss him a lot. But his new mom is my Facebook friend, so I get to see pictures of him as he grows. He has a pug brother, and is obviously very loved and very happy.

Every night when I go to bed, Vinnie Bamboose comes into my room to be lifted and sat beside me. If I'm lucky, I get one small kiss, am allowed to scratch his bony head and clean the deformed whisper of an ear. He never stays. Vincent has a post on the raised dog bed next to the TV in the living room, where he guards us against intruders. Vinnie takes this job very seriously. But we still share our special time together each evening and I know that when I wake in the morning and look over the side of my bed, Vinnie will be standing there. His tail will wag a bit. Sometimes he even plays. And if I’m not up by 6:15am, I’ll soon hear him howling. Vincent has achieved a level of safety and comfort here that he might never recover were he to start from scratch somewhere else. “Who needs a puppy?” I ask. I wrap my arms around him, give him a gentle hug and kiss his nose, which makes him squirm. He knows the answer to the question hovering between us, and now so do I.

Vinnie stays.

V I N N I E

I know, I've been unusually quiet lately. I often tell people that I know I was a bear in a former life because I do my best to hibernate every Winter. I don't do cold well. Heat is even worse. I am an Autumn person - October is my favorite month.

My fellow midwestern rescuers will know exactly what I mean when I say we're all keeping very busy just stepping up to the plate after the passing of Prop B in Missouri. We wanted it, we got it. Now it's time to pony up. So when the call came from a Missouri Ozark rescue asking me to take three pugs, I didn't bother to ask any questions. I simply said "yes". A few nights later I picked up three eight and nine-year-old male pugs fresh from the puppymill at a gas station in O'Fallon, Illinois. I noticed one of them was missing an ear, and we named him after that famous Dutch painter with a similar affect. Vinnie, for short.

Vinnie had clearly not had a wonderful life. Aside from the missing ear flap, I counted four suspect growths on him: one on his side, one on his haunch, and two large, saucer-shaped crusty spots on his abdomen that I was sure were MAST tumors. One foreleg looked a bit crooked and larger than the other, possibly an indication of an earlier break and resultant osteoarthritis. I could not tell whether the missing ear was congenital or the result of cage aggression. When I fed him, I noticed he tossed his head to throw the kibble to one side of his mouth, perhaps avoiding a painful area. I immediately switched him to a soft diet, which he relished! On the bright side, Vinnie had two perfect eyes, rare in pugs, and a sweet disposition toward humans, something that will never cease to amaze me in puppymill survivors.

New rescued dogs always suffer through an adjustment period. With surrendered pets, it can be very tough coming into a houseful of strange dogs and strange people. On the other hand, puppymill survivors are about as happy as a dog can be...joyous is a good word for them. My meager home is a BIG step up from the environment they came from. Even the ones who are afraid of humans generally make the adjustment  to near-perfect contentment in just a week or two. 


I could see that Vinnie was different. He liked us well enough. He seemed to know right away our intentions were good - his tail wagged, he even gave us kisses - but he was tense beyond belief! I could sit Vinnie on my lap and his legs would never bend. He couldn't lie down. He'd look at me and those big, liquid eyes would dart everywhere as if he expected the dreaded puggie-eater to pounce on him at any moment.


I quickly discovered that Vinnie's stress worsened at night. Vinnie could not be still for long. Rather than sleep with me, he chose a large raised dog bed in the living room next to the television. There he would hunker down among the pillows and observe the daily goings-on. Next to him I placed a stuffed lamb bigger than Vinnie himself  whom he quickly befriended. This was Vinnie's outpost. He guarded his corner and that stuffed lamb against all comers. If we walked by after dark, Vinnie barked. If he heard something moving down the hallway, he barked. He barked if the furnace kicked on.


When Vinnie finally did surrender to sleep, he would startle awake suddenly emitting the most awful sound I have ever heard from a pug. It was a cross between a howl and a scream, as if he woke in absolute terror. Words cannot describe this sound. If you heard it, you'd think an animal was being skinned alive in the room next to you. The first few nights it happened, I'd get up and move Vinnie from his post in the living room, laying him next to me where I would speak to him in soothing tones, stroke his face, massage his neck - anything I could think of to get him to calm down. I could not imagine what was causing this behavior. Then something made me think of old Pete.


When I was a kid, my grandparents lived on a farm in Bonne Terre, Missouri. They always had lots of animals around. One I remember well was a big old collie named Pete. Every night, Pete would lay on his side on the covered front porch, barking softly, all four legs whisking against the wooden boards beneath him. Grandma always said he was chasing rabbits in his dreams.


Dreams...dogs dream...


Pete chased bunnies in his dreams. What kind of dreams, I wondered, would cause a sweet little pug to wake up screaming?

Vinnie's trip to the vet turned out to be a revelation. The two "MAST tumors" on his underside were actually pools of filth that had dried there. Even after a bath, the vet tech was able to drain a nasty fluid out of them. None of us knew quite what they were but, once emptied, they went away. Beneath Vinnie's absent ear flap was one tiny opening that yielded mountains of crud that persisted for weeks. No wonder, I thought, he did not want me to touch it. After a dental, he was left with four teeth. A soft food lifer, but free of dental pain.


Night after night, Vinnie woke with night terrors. I occasionally gave him benadryl just so we both could get some quality rest. My vet did not quite get it when I inquired about doggie Prozac. Then again, I wasn't sure that was the right thing for Vinnie. His major issue seemed to be anxiety, but doesn't that go hand-in-hand with depression, I wondered? When he stared up at me with those liquid eyes, he may as well have been saying, "Help me". I wanted to, but I wasn't sure how. I decided to do some research into holistic remedies. After days of searching, I suspected I may have something when I came across an all-natural pet product company that sold a palatable powder containing St John's Wort and several other herbs known to have anti-anxiety properties. I had actually heard from a few human friends that St. John's Wort had worked well for them, or for an acquaintance. The product description said not to expect immediate results - very like human anti-depressants, I thought. I ordered two jars, enough for a good month.


For the first five days, there was no change. Then I began to notice subtle differences in Vinnie. In the morning, he appeared in the yard as we all went out for the first potty break of the day. Later, he came into the kitchen with all the other pugs and waited for breakfast. Before, we'd always had to go get him, but here he was, the recipient of lavish praise just for being there! At night, he sometimes failed to bark as we went by. After two weeks, he rarely howled at the furnace anymore.


Then, one evening as I was reading in bed, I felt two paws on the edge beside me. It was Vinnie! He had come down the hallway all on his own and asked to come up onto the bed. I lifted him up and rewarded this courageous act with loads of love and praise! He endured the hugs and kisses for a short time, then wanted back down, whereupon he headed down the hallway with a purpose and right back to the stuffed sheep on his chosen bed in the living room. nevertheless, it was a HUGE step, one that would be repeated nearly every night thereafter.


At this writing, Vinnie rarely wakes up screaming anymore. But he still does it sometimes. Every morning he gets a tablespoon of his holistic medicine mixed into his soft food, along with a chewable glucosamine tablet for the arthritis in his foreleg.


Last night, as I pulled my blanket around me, Vinnie grabbed it and pulled. I pulled back. We had a little game of tug-o-war, the best I've ever played, because it was Vinnie's first. I knew the nightmares haunting our little Dutchman were beginning to recede. The pain and terror that accompanied his arrival are slowly giving way to joy and long overdue mischief!


Vinnie has a very long road ahead of him. We've only passed the first bend. But we seem to be on our way. That's what counts.

May They All Go Home

I love it when a dog goes home.

I love it when the bouncy, happy puppy goes home, and when the healthy two-year old with no issues goes home. But it's the "special needs" dogs going home that reminds me why I rescue.

Yesterday, a very special pug went home. This blog is about how God, or Fate, led this dog from a terrible, painful and hopeless existence through a series of remarkable people to a one-in-a-million ending that could have been so much different.

The story begins when a woman entered Noah's Ark Veterinary Office carrying a bloody mess of a pug.

"Can you take this dog?" she asked. "I came home from work for lunch and found him in my backyard. I don't know how he got there. I think my dogs may have attacked him."

Dr. Karen Stufflebean was just leaving for lunch. WShen she saw the emergency come through the door, she stayed and instead took the dog - a young male pug - into an exam room. He was underweight and crawling with fleas. He had also been badly mauled by two large, intact male dogs. One eye had been surgically removed at some earlier point in his life. The remaining eye was ruptured and hanging out of the socket. Despite his pain and blindness, he kissed the doctor and tentatively wagged his tail. While most vets may have put him down, Dr. Karen decided he was "too sweet to euthanize". She sacrificed her lunch hour to perform the necessary surgery to remove the damaged eye, provide much needed pain relief and treat his bite wounds. While Dr. Stufflebean and her staff hovered over him, the woman who had brought him quietly left and was not heard from again.

The pug stayed there at Noah's Ark Veterinary Office in St. Louis and began recuperation from his surgery. The staff there began looking for a rescue or shelter to take a pug with no eyes. The pug rescue in their city said they "couldn't place blind dogs". Likewise, all the nearby shelters were full and said the dog had zero chance of adoption - why give up much-needed space to him? The vet and her staff began to feel like had saved him only to find they now had no place to go with him.

They could easily have given up. Instead they tried harder, expanding their search to the next state over.
I already had two blind pugs in the rescue when they called me about this one. Though I've placed many blind dogs over the years, it's not an easy thing to do. I was not overly thrilled about taking a third, but I've never yet turned my back on a pug in need. "If no one else will take him, call me back," I said. Of course, they did.

I picked him and named him Sugar Ray, because he truly was a sweetheart,and the name "Ray" seemed to fit his laid-back demeanor. Dr. Stufflebean donated all Ray's vet work, and I brought him back a week later to be neutered. Ray was a real gem who loved other pugs and had the best sonic navigation system I had ever seen. I knew he must have been blind even before the attack. He learned his name and the surrounding geography very quickly. If I called "Ray! C'mere, Ray!", he would make a beeline from the back of the yard straight to me. When he found me, the tail went wild and the kisses flew!

I posted Ray for adoption and expected to wait a year, or longer.

To my amazement, just two weeks later I opened an application from a woman who lived about an hour away. Reading it, I could feel the adrenaline start to flow - it's that feeling you get when you just know something is right. I quickly realized she was a true animal lover. She had rescued before. She was also a natural-born caregiver - a nurse who worked with cancer patients, a vocation requiring extraordinary compassion. And she wanted to adopt Ray! I tried not to get my hopes up - lots of people fail to follow through on apps - but I was so excited! This was better than I could ever have hoped for Ray. I quietly said a little prayer and had Ray cross his paws. I emailed asking her to call me. The call I received a few days later confirmed everything my intuition had already told me.

When Mary Sue walked into my home she was, naturally, covered with happy pugs wanting her attention. "This is my idea of Heaven," she smiled. She petted everyone, then asked "Where's Ray?"

"He's asleep on my bed, " I answered. "I'll go get him."

Ray was standing alert on the edge of the bed. As soon as his paws hit the floor, he headed for the living room and straight for Mary Sue. It was love at first sniff. As Mary held him and Ray leaned into her, I knew Ray had found his forever home.

The next morning, I missed Sugar Ray at breakfast. I could not stop thinking about the way so many people and events had aligned in his favor. What should have been a terrible tragedy had done a full 180 through an improbable series of encounters, each of which (by all rights) could so easily have gone badly for him. Could that possibly be coincidence, I wondered? No, I concluded, it had to be something more. It appeared to me that Ray had - not one guardian angel - but a whole bunch of them!

We see so many bad things happen in rescue, and lots of bad people. There are times when I seriously dislike human beings. 

Sometimes I forget about the caring, compassionate people out there.

You see them working in hospitals and nursing homes, in social services or coaching kids' sports. They foster dogs for rescue, or screen applications, share what little they may have with those less fortunate. People like Mary Sue make this a world where even a dog with no eyes can find happiness, can be loved and treasured. People like you, too. Because if you are reading this, chances are pretty good that you're one of those special people.

So, with the holidays upon us, and in the wake of Ray's astounding odyssey (it still blows me away to think about it), I want to take this time to acknowledge all the people of the world who do the right thing, even when it is not the easy thing. This is for the good people out there. You know who you are. You inspire me. I am overwhelmed by your boundless compassion. From the deepest breath of my being, at my darkest point and most euphoric, in the face of hopelessness and on the brink of endless possibilites, I will live in awe of you every day as long as my heart keeps beating.

Thank you. From me, and from Ray.

PROPOSITION B: HOPE FOR THE LOST

Just like all of you, I'm up to here with political ads and can hardly wait for the election to be over. There's only one issue on the ballot that I really care about. If you live in Missouri, you hold the only tiny thread of hope available to tens of thousands of innocents suffering beyond comprehension at this very moment. I'm talking about the parents of those darling little pet store puppies - the ugly adults being bred to death while they live in filth, pain and loneliness to provide financial support for humans who couldn't care less.


It's wrong. And Missourians have a chance to do something about it.


Missouri  has more puppymills than any other state in the union. If Proposition B passes there, then there is hope anywhere in the United States, from the Amish puppymills of Pennsylvania to the rural pits of southwest Texas.


Puppymillers have a powerful lobby. There is lots and lots of money in breeding dogs to death. They have successfully squashed every previous attempt to pass legislation that would require them to provide humane care for animals in commercial breeding facilities. Providing humane care would cut into their profits. It would mean that every single breeding dog they own would be required by law to see a vet at least once a year, have access to exercise, and live in an environment free of unbearable heat and wire floors that injure sensitive paws. Why, those puppymillers might have to spend the price they get for a single one of their own pitiful dog's progeny to actually provide a bit of medical care for the parent. Perish the thought! Yes, every previous attempt at passing a puppymill protection bill has failed.

But this time is different.

Someone in the opposing camp is throwing serious money into the effort this time, inundating the airwaves with a terrific commercial featuring reputable breeders illuminating the differences between themselves and the large, commercial operations. The puppymillers are feeling the heat this time. For those of us in the rescue trenches, it's exemplified by their dumping animals left and right, frantically reducing their stock to a managable size. One breeder told me she was selling her dogs through classified ads becuase, she said, "they are going so cheap at auctions, you have to sell them in groups of three or four or five to sell them at all, and you can't make any money". Many are liquidating everything, getting out of the business altogether.


So be it. It's a shameful business, no better than children working 12 hours a day in sweatshops. If you cannot do something honorable to make a living, you don't belong in a civilized society. Kids, animals and the elderly - the Triad of Helpless Beings - are protected by a civilized people, aren't they?
 Recently, I was told that Proposition B was just another law, and we don't need to be making any more laws we can't enforce. What's the point of passing Prop B if we don't have the ability to enforce it? It's very true, enforcement will be a tall order. But it's like this, folks - you have to start somewhere. 


Filthy matted mill dogs in wire cages aren't even the tip of the iceberg of cruelty taking place in puppymills. I have been to puppymill auctions, have seen and heard much worse. Rural puppymillers will not spend a penny on their breeding stock, even to euthanize them. Why buy a bullet when swinging them by their legs and smacking their heads on a truck bumper is free? Think I'm kidding? A friend of mine who attended auctions posing as a puppymiller once told me how a well-known puppymill veterinarian in southern Missouri described to him in great detail how he debarked his dogs using a metal rod, which could be brutally shoved down their tracheas to rip their vocal cords to pieces. My friend, who was a Vietnam vet, told me it took every ounce of strength in his body to keep from strangling this man. The same vet is famous for telling his puppymiller clientele how they can dose their dogs with tetracycline to get a false negative on their brucellosis tests so they can be sold to other unsuspecting puppymillers.

Puppymillers are not an ethical lot, even to each other.


Several years ago, when I was fairly new to rescue, I took in a sweet little puppymill poodle from a monster (I cannot call her a woman) in southern Illinois. This monster turned the dog over to rescue because the dog had killed and partially eaten her last litter of pups. The dog was in horrid shape when I got her. She had two ruptured eyeballs from untreated infections, and was missing a paw on her back leg. The transporter, who acted as a go-between for rescues, said the monster had told her how it happened with no hint of shame or remorse. The poodle had been kept in a stacked wire cage, and gotten her paw stuck in the wire floor. A dog in the cage below had chewed it off while she screamed with no one to hear or help her.

Can you imagine having your hand held in a vise while it was eaten from your arm? How about being blind so that all your other senses are heightened, and being forced to endure such a thing?


I named her the poodle Sweetie Pie, because she was one. This sad, abused little dog was so incredibly responsive to the least bit of kindness given her, I never thought to call her anything else. Anytime Sweetie Pie was near me, she practically melted into me - she craved affection so badly. Sweetie Pie was no trouble at all. Even blind, she followed the sighted dogs everywhere, hobbling on three legs while she carryied her maimed leg in the air. She quickly housetrained.


It was not hard for me to understand why she killed and ate her babies, in fact, it was probably the smartest move she ever made. After that, she was no longer useful. Remember, the breeder got rid of her because she was a bad mother, not because she was injured or in agony. Dogs with missing eyes and limbs are still breedable. They can still make money.

A friend of mine in recently asked me how I let it go. "I dream about them," she said. I told her, in order to continue doing rescue, I make myself focus on the dogs I save. Were I to dwell on the thousands of others like Sweetie Pie, still suffering with no warmth or compassion, no help or relief, I don't think I could bear to go on. I have to "let go and let God". That allows me to continue functioning. And like the starfish in the parable, there are many sentient beings out there who are safe and living well because I function. I suspect that most rescuers have similar coping mechanisms that work for them.

Sweetie Pie was adopted by a wonderful woman named Crystal, a human being with a huge heart and enough love for a whole herd of tortured little puppymill survivors. The last time I saw Sweetie Pie, it was in a photograph. She was beautifully groomed and wore a bright pink collar. She was laying on a white chenille bedspread with her best friend, a little puppymill dachshund. Crystal said she had fit right into the family and was doing great! I've long since lost touch with Crystal, and that picture resides on some old computer that now sits rusting in a junkyard somewhere. But I can see it in my mind as clear as I saw it the first time.

If you live in Missouri, or if you have a friend or relative who lives in Missouri, please ask them to go out on Tuesday and vote YES on Proposition B. We have to start somewhere. Having the law in place is a good beginning, I think. Then we can work on the next step - making the law work for all the Sweetie Pies still suffering in loneliness and neglect, terror and endless torture. A wise man once said the journey of a lifetime begins with a single step. So the first eye-teeth of justice for one third of the Triad of Helpless Beings begins the same way, with a single step. Missouri is poised to take that first step.

Please. Let's do everything in our power to make sure we do.

Calvin Takes A Treat

Those of you who occasionally kill abject boredom reading my blogs might remember my mentioning a nine year-old silver pug named Calvin (see New Age of Rescue, April 22). After a long trip in a rescue van driven by my friend, Lisa W.,Calvin arrived at a rescue barn near St. Louis. I was there, too. It was unrequited love at first sight. I was in love. Calvin was not impressed.

Four months later, I can safely say that Calvin has been one tough egg to crack. Nine years in a puppymill had produced a 14 pound pug with legs wobbly from disuse, a bland affect, and a deeply ingrained certainty that human beings are all-powerful and full of bad intentions. 

Pug certainty is a hard thing to dispel.

Like most newly arrived puppymill survivors, Calvin enjoyed the company of other dogs, but would go to the ends of the earth to avoid any human - namely, me. "Cagey" is the word i used to describe him. Calvin's eyes never left me. When I zigged, Calvin zagged. He wasn't really fast, but he knew how to avoid the tackle. When I did manage to catch him, keeping him became the hard part. Calvin writhed like a sackful of snakes - it was all I could do just to hang on.


Worse yet was trying to get medicine down Calvin. For the first few days, he would not touch a piece of kibble to save his soul. He had horrible diarrhea - a reaction, no doubt, to the incredible stress in his life - but I couldn't get any meds down him because he wouldn't eat. Not braunschweiger, not chicken, nothing. After rotating the tastiest stuff I could find through the rarefied air under Calvin's nose, I was on the verge of surrender. Calving would eyeball the dish of food, then raise his mug to give me the bad-eye. He would not touch anything in the bowl

After a week, I finally noticed him showing some interest in the puppy's food. Yes, he had definitely discovered a fondness for Purina Puppy Chow with soft morsels. At last, I could breath a sigh of relief. Calvin was eating. But if I put a pill in it, even in a chunk of something delectable, Calvin would eyeball me until I left his range of vision, then eat around the medicine. I had to smash them to ribbons, then mix them in some soft food until they were invisible.


My old standby medication delivery system has always been braunschweiger - it's yummy and really, really sticky. After a few weeks, Calvin got to expect his little bit of liver sausage every morning and evening. I found that if I crushed a pill and kneaded it into the mushy stuff, Calvin would eat it, as long as I wasn't watching. Of course, I had to sit it down on the floor first. But it worked! Through it all, I did my best to be as non-threatening as I could in every way. When  I picked Calvin up to put him in his private dining quarters, I kissed him and scratched his ears, telling him what a "good man" he was. He would squirm fiercely and try to break free of me.

Every night at bedtime, Calvin would peer into my bedroom and watch alertly as the other pugs climbed the pet stairs onto the bed. Sometimes he would leave, then come back, leave, then back again to watch the flurry of curly tails in motion. After a couple of weeks of observance, he felt comfortable enough with the nightly ritual to stay in the room with the evil human. Then one night, it happened.

I looked up just before turning off the light, and there was Calvin. True, he was in the farthest reaches of Serta country, where I couldn't possibly touch him.  But there he was. It was the first crack in Calvin's armor. He had been watching for weeks as familiar dogs climbed the steps suffering no ill effects, and a decision in my favor had been made. As nonchalantly as I could (I was euphoric), being careful not to look in his direction, I turned out the light. But I could feel his presence there, and I knew those beady little eyes were pointed right at me. Watching.

Sleeping on the bed with me and the rest of the pack quickly became a nightly event for Calvin. After a couple of months, I noticed he had moved within reach. I began to gently scratch his chin, being careful never to come at him from overhead, or to extend my touches beyond very brief intervals. I would scratch his chin and chest, then move on to the pug next door without fanfare. Calvin got to like this, and petting time got a little bit longer almost every day. Sometimes he'd become annoyed and move. Other times, he'd stretch his head upward and close his eyes. 

Every morning at 6:30am, meds were delivered for those dogs who need it, followed by breakfast for everyone.  By this time, I no longer had to crush Calvin's meds and knead his braunschweiger like playdough. He loved braunschweiger so much, he gobbled it down whole. Calvin knew the routine now and actually allowed me to pick him up for breakfast. Any  squirming was from excitement - he knew it was chow time. We were making progress.


But Calvin still refused to take anything from a human hand. Even his beloved braunschweiger was off limits if I held it out to him. I still had to drop it before he would touch it.


With the other dogs in the household, Calvin was like a calm, wise grandfather. They all seemed to love his quiet energy. He always slept in the middle of a big pug pile. Everything was subject to his sharp scrutiny. Calvin assessed everything for what seemed an impossibly long time for a dog. You could see the cogs rotating in that little brain, but nothing other than his own observations had an iota of influence on him. Calvin had been around the block a few times. He was no dummy.


A couple of weeks ago, I held out a piece of braunschweiger to Calvin, just as I always did, waiting for him to give me that look until I dropped it on the floor. Very gently, I felt Calvin's mouth on my fingers. He licked tentatively at the treat. I pushed a little. It sort of rolled into his mouth and disappeared.


"Good man!" I said. "What a good man!" 


The second and third treats went much better. Something had clicked - Calvin knew. Taking treats became routine. If the treats were not quickly forthcoming, I got the old man bark until I stepped it up. I marveled for the umpteenth time at dogs' powerful ability to forgive and change.


This morning, Calvin fell in with a pack of pugs following me out into the yard. When I bent down to greet them, he did a joyous happy dance along with his fellows. His tail does not wag, but it's held high and tightly curled. In the far corner of the yard was the pug I'd picked up late the night before, standing and staring, afraid to come closer.


"Can you have a word with her, Good Man?" I asked, being careful not to look directly into those frightened eyes.

Calvin said he would.

Teach Your Children

A few years back, I got a call from a rescue group upstate I'd never heard of or spoken with before. They had a blind pug puppy they'd rescued from an outdoor pen and were looking for a breed-specific rescue to take her.

A week later on a Saturday afternoon, I was parked at a corner gas station on Broadway in the Soulard neighborhood of St. Louis. It was February and still a bit nippy, so I sat in the transport van and watched participants arriving for the Barkus Dog Parade. If you never been to the dog parade in Soulard and you live within reasonable driving distance, I highly recommend it. Everyone's invited. Dogs of all breeds, shapes and sizes parade through the neighborhood dragging two-leggers behind them - many in costume, some dressed to match their humans, which is a real hoot! I found it so entertaining just watching people and dogs preparing for the event, I didn't even see the RV pull up. A sandy-haired young woman knocking on my window startled me. Then I saw Baby.

"Here she is!" she smiled. "She's a sweetheart, but she can't see a thing." With that, she handed me a bundle of squirming six-month-old pug puppy and an envelope of vet records and took off with her friends and their own costumed canines. I looked at the blind pug puppy in my hands. Baby was walleyed, both orbs out of focus and clearly useless. I sat her in the car seat. She immediately jumped out and paddled her way back up to the driver's seat. "Well," I said, "they shoulda named you 'Fearless'!" Needless to say, she rode back to Illinois on the driver's lap. Baby was unusual, the first blind puppy I'd had. Although I had placed many blind dogs over the years, most were adults.

At home, I sat Baby on the ground in the back yard. After the requisite sniffs, she started spinning in tight circles that seemed to widen more and more as she spun. I was terrified I'd gotten a mentally ill dog, a whirling dervish that would never be adoptable! Even the other dogs were fearful, ogling this odd behavior with great trepidation. No one got too close. Baby spun and spun until she grazed the edge of a tree trunk.

Suddenly, she stopped.

As I watched in amazement, Baby located and thoroughly examined the tree with her nose and paws. After a minute or so, seemingly satisfied, she moved to the other side. The spinning commenced.

 It was not insanity I was witnessing. It was navigation.

Baby had adapted to her blindness incredibly well. In fact, she had developed her own technique for making her way through unfamiliar terrain. I dubbed it "circular navigation".

Baby was an incredible teacher, an energetic and amazing young pup. But who'd want a blind puppy? Puppies are ideally for families. But when people go to adopt a puppy for a child, they want perfection. They want the expensive sneakers, the state-of-the-art game console, the perfect puppy.

A young woman named Chris - a single mom of three - put a dent in my tidy assumption by adopting Baby. She called after speaking with her vet about the ramifications of having one sighted dog and one blind dog. "He asked me what made me think I could tell the difference", she laughed. I silently thanked that vet for knowing something most people do not: As humans, we depend heavily on vision. It is our first sense. But dogs are different. Hearing and smell are primary. Vision is third. Once a blind dog learns it's surroundings, few people can tell the difference.

Over the years, I've gotten a few pics from Chris and her family, all with Baby featured prominently. Unless you looked very closely at the smiling family holding their two dogs and one cat before the lit Christmas tree, you wouldn't notice anything unusual about that fawn pug in the middle.

Rather than choose a puppy for her family who fit the general public's ideal, Chris chose a puppy most people would probably want euthanized. In doing so, she had given her family a tremendous gift.

Kids with perfect puppies would never get to witness the wonder of "circular navigation", or experience the amazement of seeing a sightless animal walk a hallway and turn corners as if they had 20/20 vision. They would never use their imaginations to walk through the house with their eyes closed, never experience that empathy that might give them an insight into what replaces darkness in a blind dog's world. They'd never love something that others might perceive as defective. They'd miss the very important lesson that perfection is not necessarily what most people think it is, nor is it all it's cracked up to be.

Would Baby help instill an exceptional compassion and insight into her adoptive family? Maybe.

I so wish that, in choosing a pet for their kids, more parents would consider what message they are conveying:

I bought a purebred puppy for my child: Buy what you want. Overpopulation among companion animals is not our problem.

I adopted a rescued animal for my child: This animal is worth loving, too; there are just too many animals. 

Our pet is neutered: We care about animal suffering and about the millions being killed because there are not enough homes for them all. We will not contribute to that. Our pet is a family member, his/her well-being is our responsibility.

I adopted a deaf puppy for my child: This animal is worth loving. From this experience, you will gain insight into a soundless world. You will learn hand signals, and know how to protect another being from dangers they can't hear.

I adopted a puppy with no eyes for my child: this animal deserves a loving home. You will learn how other senses compensate for lack of vision. You will love a being whose appearance may horrify others and through this, learn to love the soul and not the exterior.

I adopted a senior dog for my child:  The elderly should be well-cared for and treated with love and respect, not discarded. Loss is a natural part of life. Sometimes doing the right thing requires a bit of sacrifice.

When I originally went to write the blog called "Teach Your Children", I wanted to include examples of families who had adopted special pets, but I ran into a roadblock.

There weren't any.

Other than Chris, I could find no one with children who had added a special pet to their families.

My question is this: Do we really want a ME society?

I think back on the Special Olympians who stopped their competition to help a fallen comrade. Is it just me, or wouldn't we like all of our children to grow up with that kind of heart? In a world where reality TV rules and contestants eliminate each other any way they can for cash prizes, do we ever stop to wonder what they've sold?

Baby is still out there somewhere. I've lost touch with her wonderful family, but I'll never forget them. Or her. Because it was such a special experience.

I learned something priceless.

G O O D B Y E

Today I said goodbye to Tessa, a blind pug of indeterminate age who had survived a puppymill to spend her final; two years of life here with me.

Tessa came to me in a load of retired breeders. She was the oddest-looking pug - short, squat and wearing oversized skin that rolled when you grabbed it  - it was like holding a water balloon. My roommate quickly nicknamed her Tub-A-Goo - I christened her with her formal name. 

It quickly became apparent that Tessa had major issues, courtesy of human greed. Wall-to-wall pigmentary keratitis ensured that the the little ladypug had zero vision. Though she was trustworthy on the bed we shared, she proved unhousetrainable. Blood work we had done showed kidney disease, and that was the kiss of death for her adoption potential. Although we did post her as "available for adoption", no one ever even asked about Tessa. We put her on prescription food, and expected her to die in six months or less.

Two years later, I carried her in to our vet to find her in congestive heart failure. She was suffering, struggling to breath, and I could not allow that to go on. We sent Tessa to the Rainbow Bridge.

Usually, when a pug is never adopted, I feel I've failed them. I really cannot say that about Tessa. It's probably not much of an understatement to say that it would have taken a saint to adopt a blind, unhousetrainable old pug with kidney disease. Saints are in short supply.

So Tessa stayed in this house, a rescue house. But she knew it was her house. She knew the geography of the house and the yard like the back of her paw, used the pet door, and fell into a steadfast routine here that she adhered to religiously. Each morning, we delivered meds (Tessa took an antihistamine twice daily for allergies), then Tessa was placed in a kennel and fed her special diet. After her meal, she retired to a doughnut bed in the bathroom. There she slept until I got home from work. We'd go outside for awhile, then do evening meds. Tessa looked forward to this - her meds were delivered in braunschweiger. After meds came bedtime for Tessa. If I was too slow to let her in my room, she would patiently rest her chin on the bars of the safety gate across the hallway until I came to open it, or lift her over.

Tessa was one of my "special" pugs - the odd ones who were allowed to sit in the bathroom while I bathed, or on the bed as I watched a movie. My girls. At mealtimes, Tessa did the "Four-Paw Shuffle" - it was the most animated we ever saw her. At bedtime, she wandered down the hall to my room and waited to be lifted onto the bed. She always had to lay right next to me so she could rest her chin somewhere on my body.If it was warm and I moved her away, she'd come right back. Occasionally, she would come into the bedroom and lose her sense of direction, staring at an end table or closet door when she really wanted the bed. On these occasions, I would lean over the edge on the bed and blow a stream of soft air in her direction. As soon as it hit her, the tail started to wag, she'd turn and come straight for me.  I'd lift her up and tuck her in for the night. "There's my Tessa".


Today, I am crying and I'll continue doing so on and off all day. I've put my phone away. I just want to curl up in a ball. I miss her so much already...the little pug no one wanted...she stayed long enough to tear me apart when she left.


I try to remember the good things. Tessa loved me, and she knew I loved her - she knew that very well, and was utterly secure in that love. I never left her anywhere that she did not know I would come back for her. I know this with a certainty. For any lengthy trip to the vet or groomer, she was never scared when I picked her up - just impatient ("It's about time," she'd sigh). She had two really good years here, post-puppymill, years filled with love and belonging. It was the closest thing she ever had to a real home - in Tessa's case, I guess it was a real home.


I'll never forget you, Tessa. And I'll think of you often from now until I get to join you. I know one day I'll think of you and smile. I'll talk about you with people who knew you, and we'll laugh about some silly thing you did. But not today. Today my heart is in ashes.


I love you, Tessa. Goodbye.