It is unfortunate… but my adopting Snow or fostering her does not seem to have been meant to be.
Somehow, after several people expressed unwarranted concern for Lucy’s well-being that her vet and her oncologist did not share (perhaps because they have actually met me and my dog.. just a thought to consider) over me intending to do all I could to help Snow… Mugen is the one that got sick.
Mugen picked up kennel cough. Likely from me bringing it home to him from the shelter and in spite of the fact that I did everything I could to keep disease out of my home. I suspect that Snow picked it up somehow and hadn’t presented with symptoms just yet and then someone in my family (which could include me) passed it to Mugen through contact with her but I haven’t received a return phone call from the shelter to confirm my thoughts… and to be honest, I don’t blame them for not calling me back. IF Snow does have KC, they have a potential outbreak on their hands and are dealing with that and should be.
What I have done, is contact a local GSD rescue, asking them to look into Snow’s situation and see if they could find potential foster placement for Snow in order to get her out of the shelter and get her well, if need be. I have called the shelter to explain my circumstances. I hope I can get someone at the shelter to return my call because if my suspicions are correct, they could really use the money I am trying to give them to help pay for treating at least one dog. I am going to head down there today and see if I can figure out where we should go from here.
If anyone has any suggestions for more things I could be doing to help get Snow out of this shelter, I would be grateful to hear them. I can’t, in good conscience, bring her home when there is kennel cough in my house though, unless she’s already a KC patient, in which case, I suppose I could install a lot of plastic sheeting and confine her and Mugen to the basement with my daughter, who is also carrying around the hookenpocky, and set up a force field and a hazmat team.
Oh… by the way, that was a joke.
I have no more information for you about her right now and won’t until I can get in touch with either the rescue, or the shelter and I will update further as soon as I do. I know that a lot of people are concerned about her well being and unfortunately… I’m just one person and I have a sick dog and I am the only person who has reached out to help Snow outside of the wonderful shelter staff. I don’t have a network of people who can save her, my city does not have resources for dogs like Snow to get into rescue because we have almost no locally based rescues and the GSD rescue I mentioned… is active about 6 hours drive away from where I live. So… if they do choose to pick up Snow, it’s going to be a while before they can even get here.
This is where I deviate from talking about Snow to get some things off my chest.
It still amuses me to no end that Mugen is the one that’s sick and no one expressed concern for HIS well-being when giving me grief about attempting to rescue Snow. No doubt the irony of this circumstance would fail to amuse the naysayers and yes, I am bitter and angry about it.
I write about Lucy a lot. I have a connection with this dog that I cannot really explain to you, I love every dog that comes into my life, but Lucy may very well be my heart dog. I have never been so emotionally attached to one of my dogs. I love them all, but Lucy is different somehow.. in a way I can’t even put into words. When Lucy’s time comes, it is going to absolutely destroy me and I don’t know how I will cope.
But just because I have written about Lucy a lot does not mean that I share every single minute detail of our lives. The fact is, I don’t because there are things that are none of anyone’s business. There are details that I have embellished in my writings and perhaps, even lied about (admit it, you have lied on the internet too) because I don’t like telling people details about my life that are none of their business, so I make stuff up for the specific purpose of making the story flow.
You have to understand that I am a writer by trade. It is what I do, it is how I live and breathe.
Any emotional connection you may feel to my dogs is an emotional connection that you have experienced through me. It is my feeling and my thought that gets poured into everything I write about Lucy. It is my soul and my bond with her that you see.
It is not Lucy that you see at all when I write about her.
What you see, is me.
There are only two people in this world that are not part of my family, that really see Lucy and can claim a genuine emotional connection… to her… and they are the wonderful women who rescued her when she was sitting in a shelter in the middle of nowhere. They had the courage to pick up the pieces of her life and put her back together and then these amazing ladies gave her to me and asked for only one thing in return. They asked that I love her for the rest of her life. I’m taking it one step further. I will love Lucy for the rest of mine.
I intend to pay their generosity and kindness forward to another dog. It’s the right thing. It’s what they would do in my place and I know it.
If I have learned anything from this experience with Snow, it is that there will always be ignorance in this world and the waves of ignorant masses are never ending. Try as you may, you will not ever be able to educate every ignorant person and some are far too content in their own ignorance to be bothered with asking for help, even when they know they are in over their heads and really need it.
I don’t have the patience to educate every ignorant person in this world, but I do have the patience to clean up a few of their messes and try to make life a little easier for the people, and dogs, that I touch. It’s what I can do.
Rather than focusing on me and what I can do, tell me what is it that you are doing? How are you changing the life of one person, or animal, today? What are you doing to make the world a better place?
How are you paying forward the generosity and kindness of others?
What can you do?
