Last-Chance Pets & The People Who Rescue Them

This is a moral area I fail miserably. 

Rescuing old pets and seeing them die will kill me daily. I know who I am,  what drives me and what kills me. 

I will be emotionally drained. I don't know if this is an excuse to protect myself. 

One thing I know about myself is that I do change everyday. I hope I become stronger to give these beautiful animals one last chance soon or work ways that this horrible fate doesn't happen to any animal. 

This piece is about my human heroes who rescue them. I bow in front of you. Thank you. I hope your acts will change my mind.

In a car on the way back from an animal shelter, with a 12-year-old chihuahua on his lap, Steve Greig felt peace. For months, since the death of his dog, Wolfgang, he had been inconsolable. “I couldn’t make sense of it,” he says. Wolfgang had been hit by a car. Greig had the idea that he could adopt a dog that nobody else wanted, to give an animal a last chance of a loving home. The chihuahua, whom he named Eeyore, was the oldest dog in the shelter and had a heart murmur and four bad knees. Eeyore spent that car journey looking out of the window, tail wagging. “It was not a no-kill shelter, so his future didn’t look that good, but he had a new lease on life,” says Greig. “I’ll never forget it. It felt like Wolfgang had a hand in letting this dog live and it was exactly what I needed.”

It was so rewarding that he soon adopted another old dog – “and one turned into another”. He now has 11. Every so often, a shelter calls him with news of a dog that might be put down and he can’t resist. “The problem with seniors in shelters is they’re the last that are looked at. If you have a senior with health problems, they’re the last of the last.” Greig lives in Colorado, but most of his dogs have been rescued from other states – from “high-kill shelters” where dogs who are elderly, disabled or can’t find homes are euthanised.

Being older – the dogs, not Greig, although he recently retired as an accountant – means they are easier to handle, he says. “It’s not like I’ve got 11 puppies running around. They, like myself, love a routine.” The oldest is 19 and the youngest is eight, but since she is an Irish wolfhound it is as though she were a centenarian. Greig gets up early, takes them out – five can walk without problems; the others usually sit in a wagon – then back for medication and breakfast. Some need more care – one of his dogs is diabetic and has stomach problems. This means boiled fish for his meals and insulin at the same time each day. “I have to plan around that. Others are on special diets as well. A couple are blind, so they won’t go out by themselves; I have to place them outside and bring them in.” Sometimes, he says with an affectionate laugh, they get lost.

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As for the inevitable, everyone goes into it knowing this. “It’s just the idea that you’ve made a difference for a short time to an animal’s life,” says Kennedy. Williams has no idea how long Libby has left, “but every day is a delight”. Crockett says he will mope around for a while once Tia goes, “then reach the conclusion there’s another poor old cat out there who needs a home”. Lewis thinks that, for Sheba and Teddy, “whatever time they’ve got left, they deserve some love”.

For Greig, going through mourning periods fairly regularly has given him an appreciation for life. “I don’t take things for granted. I constantly see how fleeting life is. I see them happy and doing well, usually much better than when they came in, and I feel like I’ve given them the best of whatever time they have left. I don’t mean to say that it’s not hard, but I comfort myself knowing how their lives could have been.”

His last-chance dogs have taught him a great lesson, he says. “The advice I always have if you want to make your life better? Realise that it’s not about you. The people I have seen that are most unhappy think everything is about them. Once you realise that almost everything isn’t, which is what these dogs have taught me, life is so good.”