Aka: "Sooty"; "Boots"; "Bear", (or "Bubba", as he was originally known); various injured & rescued wildlife
There have been countless other animals in our lives besides those who have lived with us. Injured birds, rescued turtles and snakes on the road and all kinds of wildlife like chipmunks, squirrels, deer, raccoons, the occasional fisher, grouse, tons of waterfowl like geese, ducks, Great Blue Herons and Bitterns. But there have also been a few domestics that we took in without being able to keep for one reason or another. (I know -- hard to believe!)
The story of"Bear" is a little different. Bear was listed on the Oswego County Humane Society's section of Petfinder.com March of 2003. He was originally named "Bubba" but that just didn't fit him. We went through a lot of names before settling on Bear. It fit him and I think he liked it. I'm getting ahead of myself here. First off, he had shown up at a family's home in the country and the people that found him called OCHS to find out what they should do.
In the case of "Sooty", we were living in a trailer park that made renters pay an extra $15 a month for each pet, regardless of whether it was an inside or outside one. I think that is totally ludicrous if the pet is inside like a cat that doesn't affect the trailer park property whatsoever. Anyway, we found this gorgeous little boy smack dab in the middle of a very dark country road in January of 1991. It was apparent to us he had been dumped. We took him home and knew we couldn't keep him but had heard about a place called Wanderer's Rest in Canastota, New York, that supposedly had a no-kill policy. (We later found out that isn't true.) We gave him to them and then called a week later to see if he'd been adopted out only to find someone had come in and claimed him saying he was theirs. We knew this couldn't be true unless somehow they had driven the hour north to drop him out in the country and then had a change of heart. The likely reason is they thought by saying he was theirs, they wouldn't have to pay an adoption fee.
OCHS doesn't have a shelter yet but they do adopt out animals through Petfinder. After about a week of his being listed on the OCHS site, we found out Bear had been hit by a car. This was in the middle of a huge power outage across CNY and the people whose house he was at couldn't stay home because they were due to be without power for at least a few days. When I heard that they weren't going to take him to the vet until the next day, I called and offered to do it for them. It turned out they already had and he was fine aside from some bruising in his hip and lungs. We then looked at him and thought he might make a good pal for Ellie so we went to their house, met Bear and took him home. Mind you, Bear is a Rottweiler-German Shepherd mix. This is one big doggy! He got along great with Ellie but we just didn't want a dog that big so we decided we would foster him for OCHS. We kept him overnight and the very next evening someone called and was very excited after seeing him on Petfinder and wanted to come see him. They came over around 8pm that night and took him home. We knew when we decided to foster him that he would leave us some day but we didn't expect it to be so soon. It was hard for us. He is a very sweet dog and we already miss him. But he is in a very loving, animal-friendly home and we know he will be happy. But this experience made us realize we aren't cut out for fostering. At least not yet...
One day in November of 1996 on the way home from work while driving through a town named Texas on Lake Ontario, Herb witnessed a very sad scene. He saw a beautiful, (although thin), Springer/Lab mix leaning over sniffing the limp body of another dog who'd probably been hit by a car. Herb stopped to see if anyone knew whose dog the living one was to try make sure it was off the road, but no one knew who she belonged to. He took her to a gas station and then called me at home. He wanted to bring her home before she was the next casualty. Of course, I relented and he brought the soon-to-be-named "Boots"to our animal-friendly home. Boots was a very sweet, mild-mannered, well-behaved dog. Again, we knew we couldn't keep her, we had seven or eight pets at that time and were just at our limit so we asked around to see if anyone wanted her but had no luck. Then Herb called his sister in Michigan to see if she would be interested. Terri is also an animal-lover and when she learned Boots was part Springer, she said sure, she'd take her. I think we brought her to Terri the following Thanksgiving or Christmas.
Boots crossed the Rainbow Bridge in May of 2004 after many happy years with Terri & family.
