Dogs taken home from the cages at the SPCA seem to hold a special affection and love for their owners. Those owners are likely to experience at least an equal measure of blessings and joys.
The story below is an excerpt from our March/April 2015 issue. For the full story download our FREE iOS app or view our digital edition for FREE today!
There aren’t many subjects that I’m more passionate about than my dogs Lucky and Lily.
I love my dogs. They are easier to love than children, less complicated than a spouse.
I guess it’s the unconditional-love thing. My wife doesn’t greet me, tail a-waggin’, every day when I come home.
But Lily and Lucky do.
My wife doesn’t follow me to the door with sad eyes every morning when I leave for work.
But Lily and Lucky do.
Some people think “rescue” dogs are best. I’m not talking about dogs that rescue people, like the Saint Bernard, but orphan dogs – those wonderful, pitiful dogs that look at you through the cages at the SPCA or local dog pound.
Lily was such an orphan. She was picked up off the streets of southeast Roanoke as a frightened puppy. Alison and I had lost Rusty, our beagle-mix rescue of 10 years, just three months earlier. She was ready, I wasn’t quite there, but then I heard about this poor little puppy who was scared to death by all the barking and noise in the RVSPCA holding quarters.
When I first met Lily, she was in a separate part of the kennel to isolate her from some of the noise. It is so hard going to the pound and walking among the cages, having those pleading eyes begging you. I wish I could take them all. So does Alison. But that day there was a four-month-old scared puppy jumping up on the pen reaching for human contact. How could I say no?
On the way home in my Mini Cooper, she rode in the driver’s seat between my legs, shaking and scared. It was our anniversary and we’d planned to go out to dinner, but when my wife saw her, after the tears, we built a fire and spent the evening on the floor with our anniversary present. Over the years there’ve been some nice trips and expensive jewelry, but my wife says I’ll never top that anniversary present.
Lily was the name given at the SPCA and we thought it fit this very feminine little dog. The SPCA guessed she was half beagle and half collie (because of her long collie-like nose). Everyone complimented her beautiful markings, black and tan with a white collar and four white paws.
As a Christmas surprise for Alison, I ordered a DNA kit, swabbed her cheek and sent it off to the lab. Surprise, no beagle blood. She was 50 percent Treeing Walker Coon Hound, 25 percent collie, and 25 percent some sort of miniature. The photo they sent along of that breed showed a hound standing with paws up on a tree, baying. It was an image my wife and I had seen many times as we walked Lily each day. She was always looking up and seemed to spot every squirrel in the woods… on the ground and high in the trees.
Lily is five now and has brought us great joy and good exercise, insuring that my wife and I get a brisk 2.2-mile hike every morning. Heavy rain is the only excuse allowed.
After four years with Miss Lily, something remarkable happened in December 2013. We live on a small neighborhood lake near LewisGale, surrounded by the late Marion Via’s conservation-easement woodlands, the lake, a neighborhood common area and the acres of wetlands. It feels like we’re living out in the country and Lily is allowed to roam a bit around the lake.
One afternoon in mid-December she came home with a strange black dog in tow. There was no collar or any identification on this very friendly, big, young dog who looked like a Lab, but one who hadn’t eaten in a week. That evening I walked the neighborhood in search of anyone missing a dog.
We kept him overnight, fed him, introduced him to our three cats and observed that he seemed to have had some experience with the feline form, steering clear and reciprocating by ignoring them right back. Next day, Alison took him to the vet, who pronounced his 47 pounds as 10 to 15 pounds underweight and opined that he’d probably been on his own for some time. No embedded chip and testicles intact both signaled to the vet that the dog may have been abandoned. He gave us the name of the local Labrador retriever rescue group, posted “Slim” on their website and we paid $240 for all the necessary shots.
The Lab folks were very helpful, eager to post, but in a politically correct manner suggested to my wife that we also should contact the “Hound Rescue.” Seems old Slim’s long, tubular frame didn’t quite fit the Lab confirmation, at least not to the trained eye.
Posts on Craigslist, Facebook and The Roanoke Times classifieds produced a number of calls and a couple of visits from folks who thought Slim might be their lost pet. But it was not to be.
Everyone loved Slim, no one quite so much as Alison who each day made new purchases of collars, leashes, a wire-frame kennel so he wouldn’t eat the furniture, and tons of organic dog food which he consumed with relish. I could tell right away that the moniker Slim might not be appropriate for long.
After two weeks and no luck trying to find an owner and with Christmas bearing down, I found myself over at the Rescue Mission outlet store on Williamson Road, buying an Orvis bed, just like Lily’s, for our new house guest.
And so it was that the big black dog that our rescue Lily brought to our back door became a part of our family. Today Lucky – his name an homage to the way he came into our lives – weighs in at 74 pounds, and his DNA test shows he’s half Lab and half American fox hound. He’s the happiest, most energetic, fun-loving companion a family could ever hope for.
Lucky and Lily live their lives as working dogs, running the Canadian geese around Medmont Lake and keeping the deer, squirrel, skunk, and rabbit population agile and alert on the back nine at Hidden Valley.
One of life’s greatest pleasures is our morning nature walks and the pure joy of watching the two of them out on the trail, doing exactly what they were bred to do: hunt. The blend of sight hound and scent hound, the retriever and the hound, is a beautiful thing to watch. As we walk the two-mile trail, they must cover at least 10 miles hunting through the woodlands with noses on fire, glued to the ground as they race along, veering and darting as the scent trail leads them on. When the scent is strong and close, the hound blood erupts into a cacophony of high-pitched, urgent barking, signaling the chase is on. With a lot of training and the use of hunting-dog training collars, we’re able to call off the chase with a vibrating signal to their collars (no shock, just a physical reminder that it’s time to return for a small chicken treat.)
My wife and I both feel blessed to have Lily and Lucky in our lives. Sometimes when life turns hard and we’re beset with worries and doubts, we hit that early-morning trail behind our two dogs and the dark clouds begin to lift and we wonder: Were we sent to rescue them or were they sent to rescue us?
There are good dogs, loving dogs, locked up behind bars today all around this valley. They need you . . . and maybe you need them too.
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