pet connection

Last week a stray puppy changed my life for the better, leaving paw prints on my heart that will never fade.

Her name was Maddie, and she was in pain. Rushed to the Whitman County Humane Society in Pullman, Wash., where I work, she whimpered as she was pulled from the crate in the back of the van and set gently on the ground for the shelter team to examine her. Her front paw was held tightly to her chest as she hobbled around on three legs. Despite the extreme pain, Maddie was full of love in the form of sweet smelling puppy kisses, which she did not hesitate to shower on the entire staff.

“It definitely looks broken,” said the shelter manager, Teresa, “We better get her to the veterinarian as soon as possible.”

Unaware of Maddie’s situation, I asked how she came to us, and how she ended up with such an injury. Teresa told me Maddie was found on the streets of Spokane as a stray, hit by a car left to die. The Spokane shelter took her in but did not have the financial resources to pay for the costly surgery of fixing a broken leg. Our humane society has a special service available to all surrounding animal shelters, called the HOPE fund, which is a charity service set up solely for providing medical treatment to stray animals in desperate need of help. Just a couple of weeks before, our Pullman shelter took in a 6-week-old puppy with a badly broken leg. After her costly treatment, the HOPE fund was left with just enough to cover the cost of one more animal. When Teresa received the call from Spokane asking her if she would take in Maddie for the needed treatment, there was no hesitation from her that they would open the door in the last place the puppy could come to for help.

Maddie covered everyone with puppy kisses and was put back in the crate to make the needed trip to the vet. After vets in the area  found Maddie’s break was too complex (in a growth plate, near a nerve) to for a routine operation, Maddie was taken to the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University, where the orthopedics department could care for her severe break. Maddie was scheduled for surgery to fix the break.

Caring for Maddie had taken up the last of our HOPE fund resources, so I began using all of the media training I learned from my college courses. I wrote her story and called newspapers and radio shows to try to get their help in talking about the HOPE fund,. I rushed up to the vet school to get a picture of Maddie to go with her story.Maddie was carried to me in the waiting room at the vet school, tail waggingand body wriggling, but now with an enormous red cast on her front leg. Guessing by Maddie’s whole spirit, which continued to lap me up in kisses, you would never know anything in her was broken.

My husband, the vet school staff and I walked outside to take pictures of Maddie with her new cast, which she seemed to show off as she bounded around on the freshly trimmed grass, with the most agility a three-legged dog could muster. My husband took out his camera to take pictures, and there began an unbelievably humorous struggle to have Maddie pose for the camera. We struggled to hold cookies in front of her to have her look at the camera. For a moment she would look at the cookie, but before we could get a shot she would flip around and run to another person, hopeful to find a play partner. Pat desperately tried to get “the photo of all photos,” but Maddie just wasn’t having it. As he crouched next to her face, I tried to distract her with cookies and praise. She all the sudden diverted her attention from me and decided the camera was a much better object of her affectiona as she began licking the camera lens. We laughed as Pat wiped the drool from the camera, and managed to catch a few shots of the joyful pup. Only a dog can be in that much pain, but be so happy!

Soon after my visit, Maddie was able to get her much needed surgery to repair her leg, thanks to the generosity of donors who supported the HOPE fund. The story ends even better though, as Maddie was placed immediately with a new loving mom, one of the orthopedic veterinarians from the vet school, who welcomed her into her new family. Although the work is not over, and I am still working on raising money for the next stray animal that fund will need help, I can’t help but smile when I think of the help we were able to offer Maddie; but more than that, the joy she was able to offer us.

Images by Pat Shannon