The Saga of Bennie.
I’m a New Yorker living in the middle of the Bible Belt. Please! Don’t ask me how I got here. It’s a long story!
Anyway so here I am, and there we go. When I first got here, I saw this place was badly broke and needed fixin’. It would be simpler if I could have just poured some BBQ sauce on it. (smiling out loud)
I’m an idea person. Not so great on the follow through but I have lots of wonderful ideas. When I first got here – geez has it been almost nine years ago? – access to the World Wide Web was in its infancy. I thought of a cool name…. Volunteer Solutions. A little double entredre there. Tennessee is the Volunteer State and the solution was for newcomers here to find some cause to help out with, so that they could feel less estranged from their new environment.
Nine years ago, if you Yahoo’ed “Volunteer Solution” you came up with nothing. I didn’t Yahoo or Google it now to check, but I think it’s well into the 10s of thousands. I’m like the lady in the commercial who says “Hey…. it was my idea to clean with citrus. Why didn’t I patent it?” LOL
Let’s roll….. with Volunteer Solutions. I had a lot of great ideas to solve numerous community problems down here.
I discovered that small town people know that they are broke. They just don’t want fixin’!
Now to the Saga of Bennie… Because I am so lazy I am just going to cut and paste this little email exchange.
Molli, (never trust a woman who has to put a cutesy “i” on the end of Molli! LOL)
I didn’t see this email right away. Since it came from a different email address, it went into the junk mail file.
Harmony [Another insertion. Harmony? Do people really name their children that? LOL] called me this morning and it was disappointing to find out that Bennie (that is the name I gave the shih tzu in my mind, after I saw and held him last Saturday) won’t be able to even see a vet until Monday. I called my own vet’s office (Dr. Harris at Airways) and they said to give heartworm treatments to a dog under 20 pounds would run $340.00, but they could take him right away and get started.
I have been crying the whole day about this (not that it takes much to make me cry lately!). One part of me says I should come and get Bennie and take him to my vet and get him treated at my own expense. The more rational part of my mind says, if he is as sick as he seems now, he may not even survive the treatment. The lady at Dr. Harris’s said that one of the first things they do is run some tests to see if the patient can survive the treatment and that there are three days of hospitalization required.
Gary at [the kennel that keeps my current brat dog!] says that someone called him about a shih tzu. He said “oh, were you supposed to be taking that dog?” Gary recommended (becuase he is backed up and dealing with his own grief at the moment) that the vet shave him clean to relieve his discomfort and that he would start grooming him later on. I asked Harmony if “Bennie” was in an air conditioned environment. After some slight hesitation on her part, she answered, “yes.”
I just wanted to let you know what was going on – from my point of view. I guess I am totally confused at how this dog was allowed to go without treatment for so long. Was the “adopting” person expected to pick up the expenses of his treatment and grooming. I am just so sad, thinking that he has been there for some time after being removed from his neglectful environment originally, and needing a home, and I have been here all along.
Molli with an “i” responded that all dogs are tested for heartworm upon entering the shelter and that they have an agreement with a particular vet to do the treatment for 1/2 of the cost of my vet. To make a short story long, they delay treatment until they can get the money to treat the dog – however they don’t publicize the need for the treatment for the dog. Furthermore they don’t make it easy for people to donate the money that is needed for the humane society by starting a Paypal account for donations.
Molli with an i further states: ” In our mind, it is worth the risk of their not surviving the treatment than the other option of putting them all to sleep.”
We’re talking a pure bred shih tzu here! Excuuuuuuuuuse me? What am I missing here?
I don’t have a particular hankering to have a shih tzu dog. I could get a brand new puppy with no health problems for less than what my vet would cost to treat this one. I just don’t understand how this works….leave the dog to die naturally, rather than putting the dog to sleep?
I hit upon a Volunteer Solution for me. I would volunteer to donate $200 to get the dog treated ASAP, so he could have a hope of surviving whether I take him or not.
The response from the UnHumane Society to the unWidow?
None. They can’t expedite his treatment, nor will they attempt to. He will just lay around listless (as he was when I saw him) while those spaghetti like worms fill up his heart.
The law of attraction is always operable. I am heartsick, and so it’s no surprise I would attract a dog that is heart sick.
What disturbs me about this incident, and what has disturbed me about this place from day one of my arriving here in April of 1996, is there are solutions here for every single one of this community’s problems. Why the suggestions for the solutions are not accepted and acted upon, tells me they like their problems and want to keep them.
There is an obvious post script to this story. I admitted myself to Pathways after writing this and I called every day to check on “Bennie.”
Immediately after I got out of there, I went over to the humane society, “Bennie” was nowhere to be found, and instead I saw Foxy!
Originally Published Jan. 13 2013
