Little Boy Blue: A Puppy's Rescue From Death Row and His Owner's Journey for Truth by Kavin Kim

Author:Kavin, Kim [Kavin, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9780764165269
Goodreads: 13777816
Publisher: Barron's Educational Series
Published: 2012-09-01T06:31:04+00:00

Loving, and Letting Go

My niece Kate Deurr is one of the people who helped to convince me that I could handle the responsibility of fostering two dogs. She and my nephew live in a modest home in Wall Township, New Jersey, where, from morning till night, she looks over two energy-packed pre-teen daughters, an autistic son, and, for the past few months, two foster babies. In her spare time, which she somehow finds tucked away in the deep recesses of her ever-giving soul, Kate opens her home to dogs who are being rescued by Canines in Need of Ocean Township. It’s a group like the one that saved Blue—a team of volunteers who work with people in the South to move dogs up North and put them into foster care until permanent homes can be found.

On the day I called her to tell her what I was preparing to do, I expected to hear kids screaming and babies crying and dogs barking in the background—the kind of mutinous cacophany that most people only need imagine once before deciding that fostering a homeless dog is simply too much of a hassle. Instead, though, we enjoyed a quiet half hour conversation. She told me the foster dogs were no problem at all. They are, to her mind, just one more blessing in her day-to-day life. Like Blue, most of them arrive from North Carolina.

She has lost count of how many dogs she has fostered, but she thinks it’s in the neighborhood of fifty or sixty during the past five years. Most of the dogs come through her home like transient borders, just needing a warm bed for a few days or a couple of weeks, but a few have left lasting impressions on her entire family. There was Wyatt the Labradoodle, for one. “He was such a beautiful boy,” she says. “I got e-mails from as far away as Canada from people willing to drive to New Jersey to take him.” There was also Willie the Terrier. “He was a pee-er,” she told me. “He couldn’t hold it and wait to go out. I had him right around Easter, and my whole house smelled like pee.” With her encouragement, Willie was adopted by a family whose house had a doggy door that he could use at any time. He not only stopped wrecking the carpets, but he also went on to become a therapy dog and remains a beloved family member today.

Kate seemed to know her own foster dogs the way I was getting to know Izzy and Summer after spending just a few hours with them in my car—not just as numbers moving through a system, but as individuals with distinct personalities and needs. This is key to the adoption process. The better the fosters get to know the dogs, the better the rescuers can match them with homes where they are likely to fit in and remain happy forever.

I decided to learn as much as possible about Izzy and Summer so that I could give Lulu’s Rescue some great nuggets to include in their online profiles.

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