She was found wandering on the highway by some kids and grabbed up, taken along to a friends house where the teens hung out until it was time to go home. She ate and drank at the friend's house but only later, once at the home of the boy who found her, things took a turn for the worse.
The little one began to tremble uncontrollably, she had some diarrhea and seemed weak and uncomfortable.
My friend, the dear one, tried all she could to make her eat. Sometime in that first night the puppy's symptoms worsened. By the hour she seemed to get sicker, weaker, and louder.
Her wails were unnerving. She seemed to be screaming out in pain. Needless to say, there was no rest for my friend or her family.
The woman did her best to comfort the puppy into the night, stealing an hour or two of sleep throughout the weekend.
Why not take her to the veterinary hospital you might ask? They tell you up front when you call them that it's going to be over $1,000 if they have to hospitalize the animal. And as my friend said, "what if I take her in and she dies anyway?" The hospital still needs their money...veterinary care is not free and it certainly isn't cheap.
Even though many veterinarians make sacrifices on a daily basis at their own expense to provide good animal care, what they've had to pay for their training and education is nothing to compared to the overhead of being in a medical field of any kind today.
Today, I got a text message from my friend it said simply this: "the pup didn't make it...she died at the vet."
She answered my phone call in tears. She kept apologizing and saying she was just overly tired. She went on to explain she'd spent the night with the puppy on her chest and the only time she remembers not seeing the clock (she assumes she slept during that time) was between 1 and 2 a.m. Otherwise the puppy whined softly throughout the night.
She took the puppy in to the vet this morning holding out hope that maybe they could perform a medical miracle for the little thing.
"I prayed over her all night," she cried into the phone. The vet told her to leave the animal with them and they hooked her up to an IV. Some time later they called to tell her the little dog had died. It was distemper...too advanced to for even modern miracles to reverse.
Amid a new swell of tears my friend said, "I never even said goodbye to her. Maybe if I'd stayed she would have kept fighting."
I told her it was obvious that the puppy was a fighter. She fought a long hard battle with the disease and ultimately her little body couldn't rally against the ravages of neglect.
"You gave her the best gift she ever got in her life," I told my friend. "You cared where no one ever had. You held her when she'd never been cuddled...You my friend, gave her the love she might never have known...the love she deserved."
Today, in my eyes, my friend Terese is a hero. She set her enormously busy life aside for a few days to care for and love what is unfortunately a victim of our over consuming society. A small, insignificant life that might have otherwise died in a cold, wasted, heap on the side of a country road. She was fed, watered, bathed, fretted over, and loved...in those short days, that little dog received the only thing that makes a difference in the life of a dog...love.
Dogs are born to love and crave reciprocated love. They were made to be our companions through life and to teach us through their short existence that our hearts are truly made to heal. Thanks to all the courageous heroes in the world today who will take what's left of an unvalued life and give freely to it the love and light it so desperately needs and even if for only the time it takes for them to say goodbye.
