Late last year, I signed up to foster dogs for Muttville, and after finding homes for a few lovely pooches, I got an urgent call from Sherri. This dog, she said, needed a place where he’d be the only dog in the house. A wonderful family had taken him as a foster, and he didn’t get along with their lab. That evening I received Archie, and my life changed.
He was emaciated and his red coat was threadbare in patches, but his tail couldn’t stop wagging. Immediately I felt that this was one of those special animals that Muttville exists to save: a dog that has been hard done by all his life and is still waiting to be someone’s good boy and constant companion, the pet that completes your life. A dog waiting for his people.
Still I thought Archie would be someone else’s dog.
As he put on weight, he grew back into his shaggy paws and powerful frame, and his amazing copper-and-flame coat became lustrous and fluffy. The training Muttville provided meant soon his furry butt was hitting the ground the moment the treat bag came out and before the syllable ‘sit’ passed my lips. I showed him to some very nice prospective adopters- an older couple, a young political operative, a hip software engineer- but with each one, his inability to get along with other dogs promised problems these folks wouldn’t experience with other animals. Soon it became clear that it would be harder to place this boy with a good home than his fantastic looks, generally docile temperament and universal love of any human being would indicate.
When you do dog rescue, there are essentially two different perspectives you can use to approach the prospect of doing as much good as you can. One is the mass strategy, whereby you help as many dogs as you can in the time you have, and as a rescue organization, that’s certainly what Muttville rightly does, and they sometimes have to make some hard decisions about which dogs they can help and where best to allocate their limited resources of foster homes and shelter space and volunteer time.
But as an individual person devoting your time and your home to saving dogs, sometimes you have to look at the dog in front of you, the one that circumstance and fate have placed before you and decide whether to devote every measure of your resources to them.
I’m more of a spiritual than a religious person, but that feeling of duty I have to the animal that has been placed in my care, the bond that grows with this creature that has been placed in your path is one of the closest things I feel to communion with the godly.
So it was with Archie. And when I looked into his droopy face and deep brown eyes, I knew it was both my duty and my luck to keep him at my side, and I have never regretted adopting him for my own.
Now he wakes up every day when I do and starts my day off with that nonstop wagging tail. He is my partner on hikes, beach walks, and car rides, and helps me make new friends everywhere I go. Sometimes I think he’s more like an exasperated old grandpa who indulges my young man’s foolishness as his roommate. But there are times when I come home and he just wants to snuggle that I see the puppy he once was and I’m endlessly glad I got the chance to let that joy come out here in the twilight of his years.
If you adopted a Muttville dog, we would love to feature you in an upcoming ‘Success Story’. Please contact success_stories@muttville.org with the Subject line ‘Success Story’
Adopt. Foster. Volunteer. Donate.
10/11/12
Are you the proud parent of a Muttville dog? Send us your story! Include three of your favorite photos and send it to success_stories@muttville.org with the subject line 'Success Story'.
