People don’t rescue dogs, dogs do.
After Echo’s coyote kill, Tiffany was relentless. Nothing was off limits: pet stores, hardware stores, the sheriff’s canine agility course. If they let dogs through the door, Echo went. If it was swarming with animals, well too bad, just deal with it. I fell into bed each night too exhausted to worry about what sunrise would bring, until the morning the APB hit my desk: an illegal puppy mill had been raided, and hundreds of dogs were in motion.
With Seattle already overrun, Kitsap Animal Shelter was coordinating any and all foster homes able to take sick, traumatized, and undernourished dogs.
Tiffany’s team met the trucks at an empty warehouse near highway 3. Brooks and I hung back at the car, happy that Echo was at home. The whole place stunk of fear.
Dogs were triaged, numbers read from a list, names were called, and the stacks of donated collars dwindled, before the last emaciated shadow was carried out to a waiting car.
“Are we done?” I asked Brooks, feeling sick.
“No. Tiffany hasn’t left.”
“Let’s just go, she might be dealing with things you don’t want to see,” I said, trying to be gentle, but Brooks was a career nurse practitioner. It was like telling Echo to heel.
“Maybe they’re just scared,” she muttered, and headed for the entrance.
Twenty-five minutes later, Sirius Black lay at my feet, doing his best to be invisible – and quite suddenly, Echo the Black was no longer unemployed.
Sirius Black, moments after he was named.
We borrowed a crate, knowing that Sirius would have to revise his opinion of one, if he was to succeed in finding his forever home. Keeping interaction with Echo to a minimum was a must. It was her house, her water and food bowl, and each item must be reclaimed, by us, before offering them to Sirius. The introduction took hours and the evening was filled with stinking mess after mess on the hardwood floors, as Brooks worked through a starter diet, quieting Sirius’ digestive nightmare, caused by continuous malnutrition and neglect.
Brooks took Echo into the master bedroom for the night and I slept upstairs with Sirius’ crate tucked tight to the bed, my fingers through the wire mesh, so he could feel my warmth, but if I slept, my hand would fall away, and the howling would begin again.
Sirius slept for most of his first days, gaining strength, and Echo, for her part, stayed out of it, unless we moved too quickly, or raised our voices, then she would be underfoot, growling…
… until Sirius’ first day at the beach.
We went without supervision, because Tiffany was preoccupied with the impossible:
Sirius wasn’t the last dog rescued that day.
Tiffany had remained for hours, just sitting, head down, hidden in her long hair, before Tony’s black-and-tan skeleton had crawled from the shadows of his crate.
Not every dog survived the journey. Tony arrived with one paw on the rainbow bridge.
I have earlier photos of Tony. They are too horrid to post.
Sirius, not quite sure about the sand.
Sirius didn’t want to follow Echo onto the sand and froze when the ground shifted under his paws. Brooks held the leash while I took photos to send to Tiffany’s team, asking for their suggestions, but instead, those images chronicle the moment Echo’s true calling was revealed:
Echo had been born to rescue others and It was our job was to get out of the way and let her work.
Sirius was a purebred Coon Hound and could climb trees. He was always on top of something, and soon started to chew… everything, so I had Echo explain to him what was fair game.
Somehow our couch survived, but Echo’s bed had to be exchanged for a quilt, large enough for two dogs and every morning I’d find Echo hogging the middle and poor Sirius, half on the floor, would still be clinging to his big sister.
When Echo first arrived, I could not get her food onto the floor without her first knocking it from my hand and then devouring the resulting mess from the hardwood. My solution was to put her in another room until all was ready, but Tiffany had another idea: I was to make a big deal of putting her food in my mouth, while making Echo wait, and then spit it into her bowl. I thought Tiffany was crazy, until, just a few days later, I could safely take Echo’s bowl away mid-meal and still count to five on that hand.
With Sirius in the mix, Echo wanted to be the boss, but there can only be one, so I repeated the process with Sirius, and low-and-behold, Echo mimicked me, even carefully puncturing an eggshell with her canine, so Sirius could suck it.
Scary photo. Getting up close with a dog that kills coyotes is…
(Look again, there are two muzzles in the screen grab.)
Sirius was nearly half Echo’s size by the time he was healthy, trained, and a young couple had fallen in love with his photo.
He left us with one stipulation, (well, two): his new home had to have a beach, but most importantly, there must be another dog.
Tony moved in with Echo the day Sirius left…
Sir Tony, while he was still a knight.
His Majesty, Tony the Fearless, after his first year with his forever family.
After Tony found his family, Echo took dogs in as her schedule allowed, her pack growing over the years.
Most of Echo’s pack at its peak.
P.S. Sirius crossed over the big lake to live by Dog Disneyland, the largest dog park in the state.
When I last checked, he had a new best friend, and his forever family needed another couch.
All grown up
I guess we didn’t need to crate train him after all.