By Kathy Chaffin
kchaffin@salisburypost.com
To look at Valley Girl lying on her tan bed leisurely chewing on a rawhide bone, you would never suspect that she was hours away from being a casualty of the recession.
It was almost six weeks ago when Sharon Hucks and Bonnie Stevens headed to the Rowan County Animal Shelter to adopt a dog as a friend for their Australian shepherd, Maggie.
Though they have two small dogs ó a rat terrier named Little Bit and a Maltese-poodle mix named Pixie ó they spend most of their time indoors, leaving Maggie outside alone. Accompanied by their friend, ReRe Martin, Hucks and Stevens began looking over the dogs in the outdoor kennels.
“They were either too young, too big or too old,” Hucks said. Stevens noticed a black dog with brown highlights cowered down at the back and said, “What’s wrong with this one?”
When they looked closer, Hucks said they could see that one of the dog’s back legs appeared to be bleeding. They could also see blood on the kennel floor.
When an employee at the Animal Shelter was unable to get the dog out, Hucks went in and got it herself.
“We noticed all four feet were mangled and bleeding,” she said. “There were no pads on the paws,” she said, “no toenails on the toes. Bones were exposed and tendons …”
Hucks said Stevens was so upset by the dog’s condition that she started crying.
Even with the wounds, the dog was friendly, Hucks said. “I think it was just her nature,” she said, “and I think she just knew she needed help.”
An employee in the front office told the three women what had happened. The dog’s owner had called the Animal Shelter saying she was bringing her in because she was losing her house and couldn’t afford to take care of her anymore.
Hucks said they were told the woman had tied the dog in the back of her truck, but the dog jumped out en route and the woman dragged the dog along behind until she realized what had happened and stopped.
The dog had only been at the shelter about an hour, Hucks said they were told. When Hucks asked why shelter workers hadn’t done anything for the dog, she said the employee said they were planning to euthanize the dog.
If that was the case, Hucks said she asked why the dog was being left to suffer. She said the employee said the contractor who gases unwanted cats and dogs in the carbon monoxide chamber wouldn’t be in until the following day.
Animal Control Supervisor Clai Martin, however, said the dog would have been euthanized that same day.
He said the employee Hucks talked to said she felt like the dog’s owner might change her mind and come back after the dog, and she wanted to give her time to do that. “The owner was that distraught,” he said.
Once before, a woman had brought six cats to the Animal Shelter and got really upset when she called back shortly afterward to find out that they had already been euthanized. The employee remembered that case, he said, and wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again.
“She thought she was doing the right thing,” Martin said of the employee. When the woman arrived with the dog, Martin said, “it hopped right out of the truck like everything was fine.
“It wasn’t limping or anything like that. There was a little bit of blood on the concrete.”
As it turned out, the woman did call back to the Animal Shelter, Martin said, but by that time, Hucks had taken the dog to the vet.
Hucks said she refused to pay the adoption fees for the dog, and she and her friends took it straight to Lazy 5 Ranch Veterinary Clinic.
There, Dr. Corrie Connolly recommended that the dog be put under anesthesia while she trimmed her torn tissue and cleaned up the wounds. “She was really worried about the infection because of the environment we took her from,” Hucks said.
The dog spent two nights at the clinic, where she was also given a rabies shot and other vaccinations and checked for worms because none of them knew know anything about her previous care. The bill was almost $600.
Hucks and Stevens carried the dog to their home in McBride Place near Faith. They named her Valley, short for Valley Girl, gave her the prescribed antibiotics and pain medication and changed her bandages daily.
“That was at least a two-hour ordeal when we first started because we had to take our time,” she said. “We were dealing with raw flesh so it was very painful for her.”
Hucks photographed the wounds from the time they first arrived home throughout the healing process.
Two days after bringing her home, they took Valley back to Lazy 5 Veterinary Clinic, where Connolly changed her bandages and checked to make sure the wounds were healing. “She added an additional antibiotic because there were a couple of spots that looked like they may have started getting some outward signs of infection,” Hucks said.
The bill was $70.
Back at home, Hucks said Valley’s appetite started decreasing on Saturday and by Sunday, she was barely eating. “The combination of all the medicines was starting to upset her stomach,” she said.
On Monday, Valley wouldn’t eat at all. That night, Hucks said the dog started running a high fever. “We took a wet towel and laid it across her for 15 minutes,” she said. “We just got lucky that the fever broke.”
By Tuesday, Valley was feeling better, and on Wednesday she was eating like she was starving.
Hucks said they couldn’t afford the cost of taking Valley back and forth to the veterinary clinic, so they called a good friend whose wife is a vet and she agreed to come check Valley’s wounds every three or four days.
The bandages were removed for good a week and a half ago, and she’s been doing fine ever since.
Valley loves her new home. She’s bonded with the other dogs, especially Pixie. The white Maltese-poodle mix likes to snuggle up against Valley on her bed.
Now that her wounds are healing, Hucks said they’re letting Valley go outside for a little bit at a time. “We just want to make sure that she doesn’t overdo it because this is all brand new flesh,” she said.
Hucks said she and Stevens and their friend, ReRe Martin, met with Clai Martin two days after picking up the dog at the Animal Shelter.
“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think these people are villains,” Hucks said. “I’m not somebody from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). I’m not to that extreme, but I do have compassion for any animal that is left to suffer and to be in pain like this one was.”
Hucks said Martin told them it was a bad judgment call. “I told them I wasn’t satisfied with that answer and that they really needed to do something and see that things like that don’t happen again,” she said.
A couple of weeks later, Hucks said she called Martin’s supervisor, Rowan County Health Department Director Leonard Wood.
“I told him the one thing that galls me on this whole ordeal is that there is absolutely no accountability,” she said.
“I said, ‘Leonard, if the shoe had been on the other foot and this dog had been sitting on my front porch in that condition … there would have been neglect charges or abuse charges filed and the animal would have been taken.”
Contact Kathy Chaffin at 704-797-4249.