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The Spark In His Eye
We asked Kathleen about Papa Ollie, for that's what she called him, and heard a most amazing story. Kathleen met Papa in May of 1997. An acquaintance of hers was driving down the street and saw what Kathleen described as the most pitiful dog on earth. He was walking slowly, dragging a chain behind him. He weighed, as it turned out later, only five pounds. His ears were black from frostbite. His nose was broken. He had no hair. He looked impossibly ancient. When Kathleen saw him, her first reaction was to cry. Her second was to get him to a vet. After an exam, the verdict was quick; the poor suffering animal should be put down. Most of us believe that our dogs will tell us when its time for them to go. Kathleen looked in Papa Ollie's eyes, and what she saw was a strong spark of life. So she went to a second vet, and the process of healing began. One of the first discoveries was that Papa had a hole in the roof of his mouth almost big enough to put two fingers into. A lot of what he tried to eat came out his nose, which was one reason he was so pathetically thin. For months, Papa was on a regimen of antibiotics. He had reconstructive surgery on his palate, and Kathleen cooked his food and fed it to him by spoon for a long time. She rubbed salve into his tattered ears every day. And little by little, he gained weight (all the way to eleven pounds), and got some hair back. He even started eating some dry food, although he had gained a fondness for being spoon-fed. He learned to boss everyone in the household around, and that spark never left his eye. In the meantime, Kathleen's detective work yielded results. Papa Ollie was reported missing by the grandchildren of his owner. From them, she learned that he had been born in 1980, and was almost seventeen and a half years old when he made his escape. He had spent the vast majority of his life chained outside. On the most bitterly cold days, he was allowed to come inside and be chained in the kitchen. The people wanted Papa back. Kathleen refused. After his recuperation, Papa Ollie was amazingly spry for his age. When he ran, his little rear end sort of shuffled about, and Kathleen says that he had a gait like that of a Tennessee walking horse. And he always had a big grin. "Such a bright little soul," she says. Almost the only real trouble he had was his partial deafness. He got the name Papa because he could pick up on the hard sound of the Ps and know that he was being called. Toward the end of 1999, closing on the age of 20, Papa Ollie was diagnosed with cancer. As strong a dog as he was, he still had no chance. On December 23, he couldn't stand up. Kathleen looked into his eyes, and the spark she had seen 31 months earlier was gone. She dressed him in his warm Christmas sweater and took him to the vet, where she sent him to the Rainbow Bridge for a well-deserved rest. It is said that each of us will be met at the Bridge by the special dogs in our lives. Kathleen, we can say confidently, will have quite a pack overwhelming her, and Papa Ollie is sure to be close to the front. Was the effort worth it? Can two and a half years of love wipe out seventeen and a half years of misery? We choose to believe that the spark in Papa Ollie's eyes proved that he never gave up, that he knew that there would be a Kathleen Winter for him if only he would wait for her faithfully, and that he waits for her faithfully even now. When our conversation was drawing to a close, Kathleen said of Papa Ollie, "He was …" She started that sentence a few times and couldn’t seem to find a good enough way to end it. Finally, she chose to quote the words of his vet. "He was a fine old gentleman." |
On
our first visit to the Web site for Dachshund Rescue of Ohio, Inc., better known
as Kathleen's Wild Wiener Ranch, the first thing we noticed was a dog who was not
up for adoption. We saw the same photo that you are seeing now, and we fell in
love with that ancient, knowing and very sweet face.