Flying a Dog

This is the story of a little dog named Todd.  I first heard of Todd several weeks ago when Marleen Oetzel at  Lost and Found Dogs told me his story..... West Virginia, caught in a steel trap and then left outside for a week until he was taken to Wetzel County Animal Shelter.  From there, Rozy Cozart, the director took him to her vet, Dr. Shockey.  Dr. Shockey kept Todd for several weeks, several surgeries, lots of suffering.  The staff loved Todd - he is such a brave little dog with a huge heart.  No matter what they did to him, he still loved.

When the big day came for Todd to be discharged, Marleen called and asked if I could fly him from West Virginia to her in Delaware so that he could go to his forever home.  So, on  March 8, 2011, I flew to Parkersburg airport, right on the Ohio River that separates West Virginia and Ohio - a gorgeous day to be in the air - clouds above me, snow-scattered ground below me that got whiter as I flew northwest. 

It took Todd a while to leave the Vet Hospital - none of the staff wanted him to go.....
lots of sweet goodbyes...







but finally they did let him go with Rozy.  I am certain they still miss him and will never forget him.

Todd is the kind of dog that you meet all the time and once in a lifetime.  He is a lucky dog because the idiot who caught him in the trap and then let him stay on his front porch for a week in a West Virginia January one of the coldest in recent memory must have had some kind of thought in his idiot brain.  Maybe he wanted to be a hero to his three children,  who knows?  In any event, he put Todd (with a gangrenous back leg and a front leg crushed to the bone) in a wire crate in the back of a pickup truck and took him to Rozy at the Animal Shelter.  Rozy took him into her arms and never looked back...... except that she plans to press criminal charges.  She has told me that the county prosecutor always fails to prosecute her charges but she keeps trying because it is her moral duty.  

Todd is going to be fine.
 

     
But the idiot who was so cruel to him is always going to be an idiot.  And, barring some miracle, his children are going to grow up thinking that idiocy and cruelty are the normal way of things... and so it goes and so it goes. 

But people like Rozy and Marleen and Dr. Shockey and his wonderful staff, and my friend Susanne Kogut our local SPCA and Rhonda Beach down in North Carolina, all those other angels who dedicate their lives to countering animal cruelty and abuse never give up.  I admire that so much, and am humbled by their service to animals and to humanity.  As you might have gathered from my polemics above, I am not as evolved as they are in my journey to true humanity. I keep trying, though.

Wish me luck.
 
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