Humane Society Stories

Photo by: Robert Burke
The Tampa Tribune
Originally Published Date: July 7, 2008

Pup's Devotion Is Good Medicine For Girl's Genetic Disorder

LITHIA - LITHIA - It was the online photo of a fluffy, white American Eskimo pup that enticed the Steele family south to the Humane Society of Manatee County in Bradenton.

Two growing kids and a new house. Time for a family pet.

Jay Steele, the dad, had always wanted an Eskie. But like many online come-ons, the dog disappointed - too snooty, and it shied away from his girls. Sorry, Eskie. Not your day.

Jay felt a pair of big brown eyes staring him down at the far end of the row of cages, a silent canine siren call impossible to ignore.

With the ears and tail of a chow, but with the everything-else of a gosh-darn-happy yellow Labrador retriever, Remy charmed them all: Mom Mimi and daughters Natalee, 7, and Alexandra, 2.

If a dog could giggle, Remy would be a professional.

She wanted to dance with the grown-ups, front paws on shoulders. The little girls she licked gently on the cheeks. Obviously, she had been well-loved. The shelter folks said her first family thought the 2-year-old dog was too frisky for them.

Jay heard Remy's silent mantra: When do I come home? When do I come home?

She came home.

The Steeles wanted a family pet, and they got a good one. But Remy had some surprises for them.

Smarter than her goofball persona might suggest, Remy seemed to figure out that one of her new people needed more from her than a wag and a game of chase.

Seven years before, doctors told Mimi Steele that she might want to consider terminating her pregnancy. The little girl she was carrying had a serious disorder: mosaic chromosomal trisomy 22, a genetic condition that leads to a host of problems.

If she survives, you can expect her to be severely mentally retarded, the doctors told the couple. Her body will be malformed. She'll be high-strung and temperamental. She'll need heart surgeries, a feeding tube. It will be a difficult life for you all.

Jay and Mimi said no, they would take Natalee as is.

The doctors ultimately would call them lucky. Natalee is not retarded, but bright. As Natalee puts it, everything on her right half is all good, and everything on the left side is getting better.

She has no hearing in one ear. Her right ear is just dandy, and both look so pretty with her silver earrings.

After Natalee was picked on by classmates in New York, she and her family eventually moved to the FishHawk Ranch subdivision, where she enrolled at FishHawk Creek Elementary. Jay calls it a godsend, a place where Natalee found acceptance. There, she attends regular classes and chatters at lunch with her friends.

To keep up with doctors' appointments, Jay quit his job and became a stay-at-home dad, running a home-based business as an investment adviser agent. Mimi became manager of the Babies 'R' Us in Brandon, drawn by the health benefits.

Both parents exude a comforting warmth with their daughters. Nighttime thunderstorms find both girls - and Remy - crawling into bed with them.

Although Alexandra had a 50 percent chance of being born with the disorder, she doesn't have it.

Natalee has endured two heart surgeries, one throat surgery and, through age 1, a nasal feeding tube. Now, she has a feeding tube in her belly.

Her disorder causes difficulties metabolizing food, meaning she constantly must eat and receive cans of liquid nourishment via the tube. No fun for Natalee or her parents. Mealtimes had become a powder keg of frustration, anger, torture.

Some people scoff at the idea that dogs have a sixth sense when it comes to their people.

The Steeles are not among them.

Remy became Natalee's protector. When the girl sits down, Remy wants to cuddle and groom her like a pup. At night, Remy curls around Natalee and snoozes while Jay reads bedtime stories. She wakes up the second-grader in the morning with a soft lick in the face.

But the biggest boon to the family has been Remy's self-appointed mealtime duty. Every night as the family gathers for dinner, Remy shimmies under Natalee's chair and stays put. If she were looking for dropped tidbits, she would have better luck hanging out by Alexandra, who's at the finger-food-dropping stage. But no. Remy has a job to do.

Natalee loves the attention, and, her parents say, she wants to please her watchdog. So she eats. Pasta, kielbasa, soup, even carrots, asparagus and broccoli. Remy remains all business until dinner is done.

In the four months the family has had the dog, Natalee has been able to cut down on the amount of liquid nourishment going into the dreaded feeding tube and is gaining weight rapidly.

Natalee's right side will always be a little smaller than her left, but doctors now say she has an excellent chance of an otherwise complete recovery.

Mom and Dad will continue doing all they can to make that happen. Eating is key. Remy, it seems, has that part under control.

Won’t you please make a donation to help Remy’s friends still at the shelter?

Spirit

By: Donna Wright of the Bradenton Herald
Original Pubished Date: April 19, 2008 edition of the Herald

Amazing Spirit
The stray puppy with the badly mangled leg knew where to find help.

On March 3, when he saw the maintenance man moving a filing cabinet out through the back door of the Humane Society, in the 2500 block of 14th Street West, the puppy hobbled inside, dragging his right hind leg behind him.

“He came out of nowhere,” said Ken Westergaard. “I don’t know if someone dumped him or if he came in off the street, but he was nothing but skin and bones.”

First came food — a huge bowl that he ate in no time. Then the clinic staff took a look at the dog’s right hind leg.

“From the knee down, it was so badly mangled that there was no discernible foot, and gangrene had set in,” said Joanne Sampson, clinic director. “We don’t know what happened, whether he got caught in a trap or a fence. Maybe he tried to chew his foot off.”

Despite his injuries, the hound/spaniel mix was no ordinary pooch, said Kathy Shaulis, one of the veterinarian assistants.

“I fell for him hard,” Shaulis said. “For a stray who has been that badly injured to eat gently out of the hand of a stranger is amazing. Despite the mass confusion here, this dog was gentle as could be. What is it that allows a spirit to be that pure?”

And so the injured dog got his name— Spirit. But the bad news — the leg could not be saved.

On Friday, the Humane Society’s medical staff amputated Spirit’s leg. From Saturday night through Tuesday morning, while the Humane Society was closed, Spirit went home with Shaulis so she could care for him around the clock. He healed so quickly that by Monday night he was jumping on and off her bed.

“He was so used to not using his injured leg that he doesn’t even realize it’s gone,” Shaulis said.

He also has been eating big time. In one week’s time, Spirit has gained four pounds, but is still underweight for a five-month-old.

The “curbstone setter” with the brown freckles across his nose couldn’t have arrived at a better time, said Jill Clulow, president of the Humane Society’s board of directors. “That Monday had been a really bad day. Nothing was going right and in walked this amazing dog who reminded us of why we do what we do. You could see it in his eyes. It was as if he was saying ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’ ”

Spirit certainly picked the right place to seek help, said Donna Stiteler, the Humane Society’s executive director.

“We are the only local shelter that takes on this kind of challenge,” she said. Caring for Spirit has been a costly challenge, but one Stiteler said that the shelter must handle. “We need all the help we can get to help animals in need.”

For the next few weeks, Spirit will receive more loving care until his wound heals and then he’ll head to a new home.

The update on Spirit:
Spirit was adopted by Kim Hertzog and Sonny Woods of Bradenton. It was love at first sight for Hertzog when she first met him at the shelter and Spirit will now have the luxury of sleeping in bed with his owners and running on 3 acres. He has already learned to run up the stairs. We are sure that Spirit has his new owners wrapped around his paws and will live the life he and every animal deserves.

We need your continued help to help dogs like Spirit in the future. Contact us at (941) 747-8808 or by email at info@humanesocietymanatee.org. Donate to help others like Spirit

China was abandoned in our play yard early one morning. In fact our staff saw two people running away from our property. Barely more than a puppy herself, China was very, very pregnant. She was covered in fleas and reeked of Raid insect killer, no doubt an attempt to kill the fleas. Three days after her arrival, China gave birth to seven puppies, so we now have eight homeless dogs on our hands.

We will see to it that they are all healthy, vaccinated, spayed/neutered, protected against heartworm and adopted. But this will be the end of the story. We really need to go back to the beginning and see how this could have been prevented. The owners of China could have had her spayed at our low cost spay/neuter clinic, received education on flea prevention, and maybe then they would not have abandoned her.

There are so many lessons to be learned from China’s story: