Jodi, I have a few paragraphs I wrote after my mom and I had to have Hope put down, and I thought maybe you might want to put it in the Poems & Stories section of the website.  I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but feel free to read it and post it on the website if you want; here’s the link: http://danpov.blogspot.com/2010/04/hope-died.html
Thanks.  Danny 

On Wednesday, Hope collapsed and had to be rushed to Mt. Airy Animal Hospital.  We did everything in our power to keep this from happening, but Hope had to be put down.  We wanted nothing more than to nurse her back to health, but it wasn’t enough.  Just looking at her, the vet could tell she had jaundice, liver and kidney problems, and was suffering from malnourishment and dehydration.  Before she was taken in by animal control, she must have eaten some kind of bones, which became lodged in her intestines.  These prevented her from being able to keep much food and water down, even after we had a feeding tube implanted.  She was so starved after being abandoned that she tried to eat bone.  With all of Hope’s other health complications, she would not have survived surgery to remove the blockage.  So my weeping mother and I had to watch her die.

I know that animal cruelty is not the most pressing issue facing humanity.  But it does have its roots in mankind’s greatest fault: apathy.  As I sat in the room looking at poor Hope’s dead body, I found myself imagining her as a puppy.  I could picture her running around a house, her curiosity sparked by simple things like a shoe or a broom.  I could see her bright, happy eyes as they took in all of the new sights around every corner, her innocence untainted by the mundane and even the evil that we see on the news every day.  She had no idea that she was born into the hands of people so callous and heartless that they couldn’t even give her the chance of survival offered by the SPCA.  They simply dumped Hope on some corner to fend for herself, with no kind of guardianship to help her in an environment she was never meant to live in.  A fate she did nothing to deserve.
      

But she tried.  She ate what she could find in the waste that clogs the arteries of our cities.  But she couldn’t even get enough basic nutrients to keep her organs from failing, let alone sustain any muscle tissue.  To look at Hope was to look at a skeleton wrapped in skin and fur.

 

After all of the success and fulfillment I’ve gotten from successfully fostering rescue dogs, Hope’s tragic story reminds me why I got involved in dog rescue in the first place.  Wolves allowed themselves to be domesticated by humans because it offered a relationship beneficial to both species.  But that relationship has developed into something so much more than merely a symbiotic partnership.  Dogs are willing to die for their humans.  Yet so many people see them as nothing more than property that deserves life only if it is not an inconvenience.  This needs to change, and we need to work constantly to see that change.

 

I’m sorry we failed you, Hope.