It's remarkably similar to my New Year's Day fortune, so much so that I sort of felt like I'd been short changed. Also, I really couldn't think of anything different I might be doing over the weekend.
Then Friday came.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a dog person. In a big way. And one of my great passions is dog rescue. I volunteer with the wonderful A Leg Up Rescue, a local group that takes dogs whose time has run out at shelters and finds homes for them. ALUR has a network of foster families who provide temporary homes for the dogs until permanent homes are found. It's a great system that allows us to save a lot of dogs who otherwise would be euthanized simply because their time ran out.
I started volunteering with ALUR after we adopted our little tripaw, Lillie, through them. Then our first two fosters, Possum and Greta, never left, as I just couldn't imagine them living anywhere else. So I was fairly certain that I'd failed as a foster dad, as clearly I could never let the dogs go.
Because we now have 7 dogs, I told myself that the only sensible thing to do was admit that I was powerless over the canine spell and reluctantly stop fostering. It seemed the reasonable thing to do, right?
Except that passions aren't reasonable. So when I got a call asking if I would go pick up a dog from a shelter, I said yes. To be honest, I did it because it seemed fool-proof. Someone else with ALUR had seen the dog and wanted to foster her. I was just being asked to pick her up. She would be at our house for a couple of hours max, after which she would be safe and sound but not with us.
One of the things you learn very quickly when you become involved in dog rescue is that it's unpredictable. Shelters can be chaotic, information isn't always accurate or current, and in general things just don't often go according to plan. So when I arrived at the shelter and asked for the dog I was supposed to be picking up, I wasn't surprised to find that she'd been adopted only a few hours earlier.
That was good news. The people who adopted her really wanted her, driving several hours to pick her up after seeing her picture on a rescue site. Not only did she now have a good home, it meant there was now space for another foster dog in the ALUR family. I'd been given the identification number of a second dog to check on, and as she was still at the shelter I decided to take her.
While I was waiting for this dog to be brought out I started talking to another person from a dog rescue group. (There tend to be a lot of us crowding the waiting areas of shelters, and you can always identify us because we're the ones letting giant pit bulls lick our faces and eyeing with suspicion anyone who walks in with a dog on a leash or an animal in a carrier looking as if they might be surrendering a pet.) Both I and this woman had the shelter's list of dogs who were "due out" (shelter slang for "to be killed") in the next day or so. Depending on space, shelters usually evaluate dogs twice a week to determine if the chances of the dog being adopted are high enough to warrant giving the animal another week to live. The longer a dog has been in the shelter, the less likely it is that he'll be granted an extension.
Fortunately, the due out list was fairly short, meaning that there were maybe a dozen dogs on it. The other rescuer was taking half of them. Of the others, several were too large for ALUR (we specialize in smaller dogs) and several had extreme medical or behavioral problems that made them ineligible for adoption. But there were two candidates that seemed good -- both male Chihuahuas.
This wasn't surprising. Northern California is drowning in Chihuahuas and Chi mixes, to the point where we're actually shipping hundreds of them to parts of the country where small dogs are a rarity. I have four Chihuahua/Chihuahua-esque beasts of my own, so I'm partial to these little ones and seeing them in shelters is particularly upsetting because I always imagine my dogs in there (as they all once were) and what would have happened if some other rescue volunteer hadn't pulled them.
The two boys at this shelter could have been twins. Both were light brown. Both had white stripes down the centers of their faces. Both were friendly and happy boys. And both were going to be killed if someone didn't help them.
I knew I couldn't take both. This is the dog rescuer's Sophie's Choice, and no one wants to make it. You want to take every dog. But there's only so much room, and so you make tough choices. Who is most likely to be adopted? Do you take that one or do you take the one you know probably won't be adopted?
I decided to check with the staff and gauge the likelihood of either dog being granted a stay of execution. That would give them another week. If they were still there, then maybe we would have room in a foster home for them. The staff member I spoke to looked them up and reassured me that both were likely to have more time.
Relieved, I picked up the little dachshund girl I'd pulled and started to leave. Just as I was pushing open the door the shelter director walked out of her office. When she saw me she stopped and asked who I was picking up and how everything was going with ALUR. I told her who I was pulling and mentioned the two Chihuahua boys and how I was really hoping both would be adopted soon.
That's when she took the list from my hand, looked at the dogs whose ID numbers I'd circled, and said, "Well, this one will get at least another week, but this one has been here a long time and we need the room. He'll be put down tomorrow."
I wrote to some of the folks with ALUR and asked if anyone could take the little guy, who of course I'd already named, thus breaking Rule 2 of the rescuer's code. I was calling him Jasper. Also, I was falling in love with him. So was Greta. He was exactly her size, and the two of them were tearing around like mad things and having a great time. Greta doesn't get much of that with her brothers and sisters, most of whom are not the playing types.
It would be nice for her to have a playmate, I thought. And it's not like he takes up that much room.
It was happening again. I didn't want to let him go.
And then someone offered to take him. I had two days with Jasper and then his new foster parents arrived to take him home. Fortunately, they are seasoned foster parents and know all too well how hard it is to say goodbye. They kept the transfer brief, and before I could throw myself on Jasper and start wailing, they were gone.
Ten minutes later it hit me -- I wasn't sad. Well, I was sad, but I was happy too. Jasper was still with people who would love him. And soon, hopefully, he would be in a permanent home. We had saved him. And if I could do it once I could do it again. I didn't have to stop fostering. It was possible to let go, and every time I did it would make room for another dog.
People often ask me how I can be involved in dog rescue and not get depressed. "There are so many," they say. "You can't save them all."
No, I can't. But I can save one, and then another, and then another. And those will be two, three, sixty, a hundred dogs who won't be scared anymore, who will know what it's like to have their unconditional love returned, who won't be among the millions of dogs euthanized each year. If my heart has to break a little every time I say goodbye to one of them, it's more than made up for by knowing there's another dog waiting to be given a chance and that I can give it to her.
So my fortune was right. I did do something different this weekend. Did I enjoy it? Not at the time. But now, yes. I made a difference in the life of one little dog, but he made an even bigger difference in mine.
Lucky Numbers: 2 9 12 19 30 43
