Hero Dogs by Wilma Melville

Author:Wilma Melville
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Twenty-three

“THEY’RE ALL DEAD.”

As Ana and Dusty and Harley worked their way across the Ground Zero rubble piles, I was still in Hawaii, but hadn’t left the condo since the towers collapsed. Meanwhile, the phones at our tiny Ojai office were ringing off the hook. People were clamoring for updates about the dogs and more information about the foundation. People also began asking the question I had been asking long ago—why did America have so few search dogs? People began to give selflessly. Some donations were small, some large, but everybody gave. It was too late to affect the current deployment, but they knew that when the next disaster hit, we couldn’t be left asking that same question.

The SDF was used to a few mailed-in donations a month. It didn’t take more than a day or two for our understaffed and overstretched office to become swamped. We didn’t have a robust computer system at the time, so everything was done by hand and voice. What we needed above all else was more phone lines. I tasked a volunteer to get more installed and quickly received a message the phone company couldn’t install them until next week.

“Give me the phone guy’s number,” I said. Our country had just been attacked and fellow Americans were trusting the SDF to take their support seriously. I was in no mood for waiting patiently. When I got the phone guy on the line I bombarded him. “Do you see those dogs on television searching Ground Zero? Those dogs are from our foundation in our hometown! They need our support, and we need more phone lines right now. I would say today, but I don’t want to sound unreasonable.”

The phones were in the next day.

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