I've decided to write the story of my foster dogs, but to make it personal, I'll do it one by one, the way I knew them.
The Story of Chloe
Chloe came into my home as an 11-week old greyhound/lab mix puppy. At that point in my volunteer life, I was not only fostering dogs, but helping maintain a list of dogs being held by private owners, who needed homes soon. My duty was to call and encourage the people to attend our events and find out which dogs really needed to go into foster care and which ones could stay where they were at.
So I see a picture of a puppy in a DIAPER which is the photo the owner has sent to us of Chloe to advertise her on the website. She also marked not housetrained, but we were talking about a very young pup. So I call this person up. I thought perhaps the puppy would be adopted quickly if not pictured in a diaper. So I ask her for another photo and about potty training, and she responds, "Well I keep hitting her with a stick every time she pees in the house but she just won't stop!"
My response was, "Well, I just heard about an opening in our foster care system, would you like to bring her over immediately?" So Chloe was at my house a few hours later, and legally signed over to me, away from that evil woman. One of those moments that make all this worthwhile.
I see right away the pup is thin and has a kind of cough. Her long face gave her a droopy, sad demeanor. Very good natured, too placid. Not playful like a puppy.... perfectly behaved. So the next day I take the dog in to my work (a different vet, but a good surgeon) and she says to me, "This dog has been kicked in the chest"....hard enough to give her something called a diaphamous hernia, which needed to be surgically repaired. Usually dogs get this being hit by a car or squeezed in a car door, something like that!
So I arranged for my group to pay for this surgery, and we prepped Chloe for the procedure. She came through with flying colors, but during the surgery the doctor detected a heart murmur had formed. It was bad enough, you could feel it with just your hand on the side of her ribs, Thump-whoosh dump, Thump-woosh dump, instead of Tha-dump, Tha-dump.
After the surgery she recovered nicely, but still did not have much energy although she was growing big. We had her heart checked again, and they called her a grade 4.....grade 5 is the worst. They were not even sure if her heart would last until she was an adult and were afraid she might just keel over dead any time.
I was torn. Was it fair to give her to someone, not even knowing if she would grow up? She was so SWEET. Should I just put her down? Keep her? I didn't really know. So I wrote up an appealing description of her for our website and included the fact that the pup needed to go to a heart specialist and be further diagnosed to find out how bad her heart was and that donations were needed more than an adopter. This, of course, included her long, black sad face looking mournfully at the camera.
Well, people came forward for Chloe. Several made small donations, but one lady donated 900.00. She had a dog that had died of heart failure and could not take it to the heart specialist in time....so she felt it gave her closure to raise money for Chloe's MRI. So we take the pup over the bridge to Portland to see him, together, despite the fact that the lady cannot adopt Chloe herself. The doctor was really awesome, and after extensive tests, felt that Chloe would possibly never be very active, but she would be able to live a normal lifespan, probably until the early geriatric stage at least, and at that point medication would be able to help her. She basicaly had a hole in her heart but not a large one, so her heart will always have to work hard, but it should work.
So we were able to put her up for adoption for reals, and after a time, a person came forward who not only had a heart murmur herself, but she had a cat named Chloe with a heart murmur too and she had the money to support a medically compromised dog. So Chloe became Zoey and got herself a forever home.
At the end of the story is a side note or two...one is that three years later the family that adopted Chloe, now Zoey, contacted us for help because she had gotten so big, unruly and overactive! They had spoiled her rotten and I directed them to train her and treat her like a normal dog, and I hope they did.
By now, Chloe must be around 8, so I don't know if she is still around or not, but I sure hope she got better behaved! But she certainly wasn't keeling over dead or lying around listlessly...it sounded like she was ruling the household!
And the other side note, one of the people who donated to Chloe's fund is the very same person who just recently adopted my little Harry that I have told you all about, we had stayed friends.
I wish I had the pictures but they are lost inside a computer that crashed, that I'm still saving hoping I can get the pictures out someday. But her story and before and after pictures (one skinny and sad as a pup and another as a grown up, homely adult) were the very best fundraising tools I ever found, except perhaps the story of Prince, which I will tell too. About four years later I used her story and pictures in a presentation, along with Prince and other dogs and pictures, that raised 9,000 for that group. Afterwards, everyone told me they donated "because of the poor kicked puppy!"
All I can say is God works in mysterious ways.
And by the way, greyhound lab mixes are UGLY....she came out really homely........lol
Did you guys like that one?
