Rolling Dog Farm Blog

You'd better get some Kleenex for this one.

The email subject line said: "Deaf/blind poodle pup in Sacramento has until 6pm tonight."  It was 5:16 p.m. Tuesday evening here in New Hampshire when it arrived in my inbox.  It was 2:16 p.m. on the West Coast.  The email came from a rescue coordinator for a Sacramento area shelter, and she wrote:  "…we have an approx. 4 month old poodle mix pup that came to us as a stray.  She is very thin and blind and deaf, per our veterinarians.  She is not a candidate for adoption here and rescues in California have not responded to our plea for her…. Please let me know if this is something you could do, no later than 6 pm (Pacific time) this evening."  Another sanctuary in California had recommended they contact us.

Alayne and I had just come in from afternoon chores and I'd gone up to the office to check on emails.  I read this one and asked Alayne to come upstairs to take a look.  The photo you see above is what came with the email.  We decided to say "yes," and given the time constraints, I emailed the shelter right back to say we'd take her.  They had wanted to find a foster for her, so I told them we could contact Ashley D., a wonderful lady who lives in the area, volunteers for another shelter there, and has sent us a number of disabled animals over the years.  (In December 2008, for example, Ashley had rescued Dexter from euthanasia and fostered him for a month while he recuperated from the emergency oral surgery he needed before we could fly him out to Montana.)

It turned out that the shelter staff knew Ashley, and the shelter vet had her number, so after a quick flurry of calls and emails, Ashley had graciously agreed to have them drop the puppy off at her house after work.

The shelter staff, including the shelter's vet, was delighted at how this little blind and deaf dog's fortunes had just changed in the space of an hour.  We received a number of emails from different people there that evening, thanking us and Ashley for stepping in so quickly.  In the course of all this, Alayne had decided to name the little girl Megan … Megan McDuff, to be precise, so I let Ashley and the shelter know that she now had a name.

At 11:33 p.m. our time, Ashley emailed an update on Megan and said "she is cuddled in bed to stay warm with me."

A few hours later, Megan was dead. 

Ashley was holding Megan in her arms when the end suddenly came.

Early on Wednesday morning, an email from Ashley popped into my inbox.  The subject line was simply "Megan."  I knew before I opened it that something had happened.  In her note telling me the sad news, Ashley wrote, "I'm so upset. She is just a baby and deserved so much more than this. I'm sorry that I was not able to save her."

I read Ashley's note in a state of shock.  Then I told Alayne, who was down in the kitchen.  She came running up the stairs to read it for herself.  We just sat there, staring at the email on the computer.  From a happy ending to a tragic one, just like that.  And we felt so awful for Ashley, too — to take in a dog and have her die in your bed the very night she arrived.

In my note back to Ashley yesterday morning, I said, "Thank you for giving her what was no doubt the most love she’s had in her short life.  We are so grateful to you for agreeing to take her in on such short notice and being with her on her last night.  She didn’t die alone and in a cage.  And she died having a name.  Thank you for being with her at the end."

We don't know why Megan died.  Ashley has asked the shelter's vet to do a necropsy to find out, and she dropped off Megan's body at the shelter on Wednesday morning. Whatever it was, this little girl had been through a lot in her brief four months of life.

Ashley had told us on Wednesday, "She was a sweetie, and as soon as she felt the warmth of a body, she crawled right into your lap." 

If she had to die so young, at least she was warm and cuddled and loved when her time came.  Sometimes that's all we can ask for.