Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover's Soul

by Jack Canfield

  Although Annie’s friend never did return to our home, he did show up again at the clinic a month later. I had no idea that this was going to be anything but a routine appointment. Walking into the exam room, I glanced at the chart—a golden retriever, one of our most popular breeds. I petted the high-spirited dog as I asked his new owner, “So how’d this beautiful boy come into your life?”

  “It’s a funny thing, Doc,” she said. “He showed up at our house a couple times but always left within a day or two. He was hanging around with another dog, but when he came back to stay this last time he was alone.”

  I started to laugh as I finally recognized my old friend. Crouching in front of him for a more appropriate hello, I said to his new owner, “Let me guess: the other dog was about so high, shaggy and black with a gray muzzle.”

  Astonished, she asked, “How could you possibly know that?”

  We compared our stories and were both thrilled that, in the end, the two nomads had each found themselves a loving and permanent home.

  Jennifer Coates, D.V.M.

  Brooks and

  the Roadside Dog

  Normally, a dead animal would not have caught Brooks’s eye. The old man was used to seeing them on the side of the gravel road near his home in rural West Virginia. However, the dead dog lying partially in the road looked so much like his own Labrador, Jake, that he was compelled to pull the truck over to get a closer look. Jake didn’t leave the yard, but Brooks wanted to be sure. As he opened his door, motion near the tree line caught his eye. It was a smaller dog, definitely a mixed breed of some sort, carefully eyeing Brooks.

  “Come here, boy,” Brooks called, but the timid mutt scampered a few yards farther. “All right. Have it your way.” Clearly the dead Lab was not Jake, so Brooks moved the dog to the soft earth of the shoulder and then continued in his truck the half mile down the road to his house.

  The next day Brooks was returning home from church when he noticed the dead dog still on the side of the road. This time, the mutt was lying beside it. As Brooks slowly pulled up, the skittish dog scampered back to the tree line, his ribs clearly visible from lack of food.

  “Come on, boy! Get in this truck and come get a meal!” Brooks shouted, but the mutt once again moved away from him and toward the forest.

  “This must have been your buddy. Pretty broken up over it, ain’t cha?” The mutt slowly took a few more paces backward into the cover of the trees. “Dern you, boy. You gonna starve to death.”

  As he drove his truck home, Brooks muttered to himself, “Dern dog.”

  Later that afternoon Brooks sat at his kitchen table trying to concentrate on the newspaper. “Dern dog,” he said, unable to get his mind off the mutt. Thinking chores might help distract him and ease his frustration, he headed out the back door to the woodpile. Every stroke he made with his ax, he grumbled, “Dern dog. Dern dog.”

  He finally made one last, heavy stroke of the ax into a large log. “Dern it!” he yelled. He stormed back to the house and grabbed his truck keys. He knew what he had to do.

  Driving back to the spot, he saw the mutt was lying in the same place next to the dead Lab. Once again, he scampered to the tree line when he heard the truck pull up. Brooks got out holding a can of dog food. “Come on, boy. Come eat! You gonna die, boy, if you don’t eat!” But the dog again ran at the sound of the booming voice.

  “You stubborn dog!” Brooks called after him. “You don’t want nothin’ but your buddy here to come back to life, do ya?”

  Brooks looked at the miscellaneous equipment in the back of his truck. “You gonna make me do somethin’ silly, boy,” Brooks said as he grabbed a tarp and some work gloves out of the bed of the truck.

  The dead dog’s body was heavy as Brooks hoisted it into his truck. “Come on, boy. Come with your friend,” Brooks said as he slowly drove the truck with the Lab’s paws hanging over the tailgate. The mutt kept a careful eye on the scene and then reluctantly followed the Lab, making sure to stay a safe twenty yards back. “That’s it,” Brooks whispered. “You come with your buddy.”

  It took a while to get to Brooks’s home. The mutt followed the entire way, trailing at a cautious distance. As the truck reached the driveway, Jake, as usual, began barking and ran to greet Brooks.

  “Be down, Jake! You gonna scare off our friend here!” Brooks called from his truck window.

  To Brooks’s surprise, the mutt saw Jake and ran like a racing greyhound straight for him. Jake was caught off guard by the sudden rush of an unfamiliar dog. However, Jake had a gentle nature and he assumed an apprehensive stance as the mutt licked him again and again, playfully pawing him.

  “You think that’s your old buddy come to life!” Brooks laughed loudly. He continued laughing, so hard, in fact, that he had to support himself on the truck. He watched with delight as the ecstatic mutt jumped all around Brooks’s old Lab. Jake stared at his owner in complete confusion.

  “Dern dog!” Brooks bellowed with laughter.

  Loyal, as the mutt came to be known, never left Jake’s side after that moment. Jake warmed to him and eventually the two wove a tight bond. The dogs served as Brooks’s faithful companions for many years. Friends and family swore it was the happiness these two dogs brought Brooks that kept him healthy and happy into his later years of life.

  Shannon McCarty

  Can’t Help Falling in Love

  A good dog deserves a good home.

  Proverb

  Every once in a while an animal enters our shelter and touches hearts in a special way. Tino was that kind of fellow.

  He came to the Humane Society Silicon Valley (HSSV) as a stray on July 5 sporting an ID tag in the shape of a purple bone. Repeated efforts to contact his human companion failed. After completion of his legal holding time, Tino was checked for health and behavior and deemed adoptable. He settled into his new home: kennel nine.

  At first the large black and tan Siberian husky/German shepherd mix didn’t turn heads. Understandably. He was a rather plain-looking guy, a little paunchy and rarely sought the attention of passersby. His salt-and-pepper muzzle and yellow teeth didn’t help either. Flecks of gray, coupled with his quiet manner, suggested to all that this guy was eight years old and counting. Since the majority of customers who visit HSSV are looking for puppies or small dogs, Tino’s prospects for a quick turnaround were slim at best.

  As his stay extended throughout the month of July, a funny thing happened. Both staff and volunteers alike began to take note of this sweet old guy and wanted to spend quality time with him. Tino’s life skyrocketed from ho-hum to sizzle as dog socializers began scheduling community outings and adoption counselors advised customers to view the special boy in kennel nine. Unfortunately, all this additional PR did nothing to move Tino into a loving home. Potential adopters continued to voice various reasons why Tino wasn’t quite right: too big, too old, too something or other.

  Tino’s fate looked bleak.

  Upstairs, someone else was becoming the object of shelter PR. Laura, the new communications manager, joined the staff on July 9. After several weeks of settling into her busy new job, she found herself darting downstairs several times a day to visit our animal guests. And it wasn’t very long before she noticed the cutie in kennel nine. Laura always had a soft spot for older dogs—they are loving, easy to train, and unlike puppies, there is no second-guessing as to how big they are going to get. Laura’s job as communications manager allowed her to champion Tino’s cause in a special, very public way. She featured his photo and bio in several community newspapers. She also featured him as a cyberpet on our Web site. She was sure someone would see his smiling face and fall in love, just as she had.

  But despite Laura’s continuing efforts, nothing happened. Even though it is HSSV’s policy that adoptable animals can stay on as long as they are happy and healthy, the Tino Fan Club worried. Mid-September was approaching and he had already racked up more shelter days than any dog in recent memory.

  Arou
nd that time, a bolt of lightning ignited Laura’s imagination. Maybe a little flash and dash might call attention to this low-key canine. With that insight, Laura made an executive decision: Tino’s name would be changed to Elvis. On September 19—Tino’s seventy-seventh day at the shelter—fate stepped in.

  Laura was in the kennels dispensing her daily ration of doggy treats when a kindly seventy-six-year-old gentleman named Maurice approached her. “I’m an old guy looking for an old dog,” he said. “I want a gentle dog who won’t sit on the furniture and is smart enough to use a doggy door.”

  With Maurice close behind, Laura marched up to kennel nine. “Meet Elvis,” she said.

  Laura held her breath, waiting for sparks to fly.

  Nothing. Elvis stayed focused on Laura and her treat sack.

  “He seems a lot more interested in you than in me,” Maurice announced, disappointed.

  Laura’s hopes were dashed. No sparks. No fireworks. The attraction so crucial for the human/animal bond to take hold just wasn’t happening for Maurice and Elvis.

  A saddened Maurice left the adoption kennel and walked around to the courtyard. He glanced back at kennel nine. There was Elvis. For some reason, Elvis had run out into the open and stood at the fence. Their eyes met. In that moment Maurice knew he couldn’t leave him there. And that was that.

  A few days after the adoption, Maurice took Elvis to the vet for a general checkup. He had a few things wrong: a little lump that needed to be removed and a sty on his eye, but nothing major. The vet cleaned his teeth and said that Elvis was in pretty good shape—for an old guy. In keeping with the spirit of his namesake, Elvis boasts one more attribute. The vet told Maurice that Elvis “has hips to die for.”

  So now Elvis and Maurice’s days are filled with three long walks, visits to the Las Palmas Dog Park in Sunnyvale and quiet evenings sitting together. They even share treats every now and then.

  Maurice told me that last week he prepared a nice banana split for himself. He left it on the counter and went into the garage for a minute. When he returned, it was nowhere in sight. Elvis, who was sitting nearby, had a smirk on his face. It was the whipped cream on his nose that gave him away.

  Elvis touchedmany hearts during his lengthy stay here— our dog socializers, adoption counselors, Maurice—but most of all, our communications manager, Laura. Her tireless efforts paid off on the day her special ward was adopted. In order to spread the good news, she wrote a memo to her colleagues that day. It read: “Elvis has left the building.”

  Patricia Smith

  The Miracle of Love

  When there is great love, there are always miracles.

  Willa Cather

  If ever there was a dog in need of a miracle, it was this dog. Cast off on the side of a busy street in the spring of 2002, the older pit bull mix had lost everything important in her life, even her name. Things only got worse when she ran into the road and was hit by a car. Left with a shattered leg and eyes full of pain, she was dropped off at the local animal control facility. If a rescue volunteer from a private shelter had not noticed her, her life might have come to an end the very next day. Instead, she was welcomed at Little Shelter Animal Rescue and Adoption Center in Huntington, New York, where she was given a new name: Foxy.

  That summer was a season of rebirth for Foxy. After three surgeries and physical therapy, Foxy learned how to walk again, but because of her age and breed mix, the shelter staff felt that Foxy was probably unadoptable. They went out of their way to make her life at the shelter a pleasant one. The staff noticed right away that Foxy wasn’t like the other shelter dogs: she seemed to be more interested in people than in dogs. So they made her their unofficial mascot. By day, she enjoyed walks on a leash, while the other dogs wrestled and chased one another; and by night, she snuggled in a little blue bed in an office, while the others slept in cages.

  Yet somehow Foxy knew that the shelter was not her forever-home. Every weekend she looked on as people walked over to the big wall with pictures of the available dogs and cats. Patiently, she waited sixteen long months. But no one ever asked to see her.

  Just when it seemed that fortune had forgotten Foxy, Mrs. Maguire and her son Kevin arrived. Kevin saw the older dog limping by. He thought she might be a good match for his elderly mother. Foxy agreed. She put on the show of her life. She rolled on her back and waved her paws toward Mrs. Maguire as if to say, You’ve come for me at last! Mrs. Maguire knew that there was no need to meet any other dogs. Foxy was her girl.

  Whether taking long, slow walks around the neighborhood or putting her long, black snout into the stream that ran behind the house, Foxy was home. Sitting side by side on the couch, Mrs. Maguire would stroke Foxy’s silky fur for what seemed like hours at a time. From one floppy black ear to the other, joy was written all over Foxy’s face. Mrs. Maguire would tell her, “From the moment I saw you, I thought you were beautiful.” She and Mrs. Maguire had truly become the best of friends.

  Every night at eleven o’clock, Mrs. Maguire would take out her flashlight and bring Foxy outside for the last walk of the day. They would walk carefully down the steep flight of steps outside the front door, especially when the winter’s ice and snow blanketed the ground. This routine continued until a bitterly cold January night, when Mrs. Maguire slipped and went crashing down the stairs.

  “Help! Oh, dear God. Please help me,” cried out Mrs. Maguire, as pain froma broken hip left her unable tomove. The frozen ground began to numb her body, and all Mrs. Maguire could do was wave her flashlight around in the darkness. As if answering her prayer, Foxy moved beside her and then pushed her body on top of Mrs. Maguire.

  “Now it’s just the two of us,” the woman whispered, as Foxy tried her best to keep Mrs. Maguire warm. Before long, this otherwise quiet dog began barking frantically into the night sky.

  Over an hour and a half later,Mrs. Maguire’s neighbors— after shutting off their TV—heard Foxy’s cries for help. Investigating, they immediately called for assistance. By the next day, Foxy’s face was splashed across the front page of the newspaper and TV news. The cast-off dog had become a hero!

  During the months following that fateful night, Foxy received many awards and honors. The grandest one of all resulted in Foxy’s being escorted into New York City for a weekend celebration. Upon checking into her luxurious hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton, Foxy made herself right at home as she stretched out on the lounge and enjoyed the dog food that was presented by room service, complete with a silver tray and china bowl. After hermeal, Foxy was escorted down to the grand ballroom at the Ritz, which had come alive with music, flowers and 250 guests, some of whom attended with their own pets. Mrs. Maguire, Foxy and the president of Little Shelter stood side by side as the CEO of the Hartz Mountain Corporation presented themwith the 2003Heroes ofHartz Award. Mrs. Maguire’s eyes rarely left Foxy. The love in the older woman’s eyes was impossible to miss: that love had created a miracle in Foxy’s life, and now it had been repaid a thousandfold.

  Valery Selzer Siegel

  The Dumpster Dog Finds a Home

  Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends the animals, especially for animals who are suffering; . . . for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry; . . . and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion and gentle hands and kindly words. Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals and so to share the blessings of the merciful.

  Albert Schweitzer

  It was a bitter cold winter day in Michigan when the call came from Midwest Boston Terrier Rescue (MWBTR). “Can you take a senior girl in bad shape?” Gwen, cofounder of MWBTR, asked. “She is a little old lady who is very nonthreatening, and I think she would get along with your dogs.” I said yes. It was the start of our journey with a small, sick, frail dog whom we named Lacey.

  When I met her, I whispered the same thing to her that I have whispered to all the dogs we have fostered in our home. I hold them and tell them, “You are safe now; you have b
een rescued. No one will ever hurt you again.” It may sound strange, but I can tell that they understand. They breathe deeply and relax—some of them almost collapse. It never matters where they come from, whether I have picked them up on their last day of life at a shelter, or they come from an owner who no longer has a place for them. When I am handed a confused soul at the end of a leash, my response is always the same: I give them a little piece of my heart, and they begin to heal.

  Lacey’s story had a sad start. Shewas found one February day, half dead, in a Dumpster by the local animal control. They decided that she was unadoptable—too sick and too old. A volunteer from another rescue group happened to visit the shelter a few days later. Although she didn’t usually go there, the volunteer asked to go to the back area— where the unadoptable dogs are housed. She asked about the frail little Boston terrier and was told Lacey would be euthanized. The kindhearted volunteer said, “Oh, no, I will take her. I know someone who has a place for her.” She called MWBTR and with that call set Lacey back on the road to life.

  Lacey was taken to the vet, who said that her blood levels were dangerously off, she was malnourished and most of her teeth were decayed. She weighed barely thirteen pounds. Her coat was very thin, and it was painfully obvious that she had produced many litters of puppies. She had to be placed on antibiotics for several weeks until she was well enough to stand surgery.