Once There Was A Street Dog That Followed Me Home: The Beginning

By Elaine Campbell

Upon moving to the Colorado Desert (don't ask me why; odd things happen in my life), my sole companion, an elderly street dog I had found 14 years before, suddenly died. Beau's death set off a chain of circumstances that resulted in my adopting abandoned and discarded animals, birds and even rodents in my life to come.

This is a story of the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the disappointments and the joys of loving natural life and caring for it beyond what the rationalists call "the safe middle road," easily travelled, but to me an empty shell.

One day while hiking alone in the desert, I spied a lone dog hobbling badly through the sand and covered with blood. I knew at once that he had been attacked by a coyote. A German Shepherd mix, he was no match for the savvy wild one.

The ball having started to roll, I continued to come across, and invite into my life, a congregation of the liveliest, sweetest and saddest homeless furry friends (and some not so furry) one would ever hope to meet. Some couldn't see. Some didn't hear. Some didn't have all their limbs. But we got along as best we could. While many are with me still, many have passed on. Noel the rat, Tommy J the guinea pig, the dogs, the cats, the birds that enriched my life beyond imagination.

This is our story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elaine Campbell
• Release date: Mar 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301507443

Elaine Campbell

Though I was born in the snowy state of Wisconsin, due to the untimely death of my father, my first childhood memories are of Southern California where my mother relocated in order to try marriage a second time. The small town where we lived was idyllic with plentiful orange groves, canyons with waterfalls plunging into grateful ponds, and a view of the San Gabriel Mountain range with Mount Baldy gleaming on top. But that was not all of my childhood for my mother had the movie bug, and my younger brother and I spent much of our time in Hollywood learning the entertainment arts. Yes, we were movie kids, and being adjustable like most children, we took it in stride. After high school graduation at age 16, I joined a dance ensemble in Las Vegas with the Tony Bennett Show (Tony was a newly rising star then) at the Sahara Hotel (called "The Jewel of the Desert") on the Las Vegas Strip in order to raise tuition for the esteemed Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York City, which I decided to attend to become a serious thespian. While in Las Vegas, however, I formed a most rewarding and unusual friendship with the world's most famous gambler, Nick the Greek, that became the subject of my first published book, My Friend Nick the Greek: Life in Las Vegas in the '50s. After some years working in theatre, I took an about face and enrolled at NYU, majoring in psychology. A teaching career followed, and later a stint as public relations director at a small book publishing firm. Taking an early retirement, I returned to my roots and, having an aversion to LA smog, settled in the Colorado Desert with a stray dog I had encountered on a walk some 14 years earlier. Beau was a cocker mix and the first animal that I bonded with in my adult life. But our mutual desert adventure was to be short-lived as sweet Beau died of a stroke within a month after our relocating. My latest book, Once There Was A Street Dog That Followed Me Home: The Beginning, relates my numerous experiences in animal rescue and adoption during the years that followed, learning of the plight of "The Throwaways," many of them seniors, firsthand. Of course, it was painful knowing we had so little time together, but the ultimate rewards outweighed any consideration of sorrow. Where there is love, time is never wasted. And I'm happy to say that love of the lost and abandoned became the highpoint, as well as the foundation, of my life.

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Once There Was A Street Dog That Followed Me Home:

The Beginning

By Elaine Campbell

Copyright Elaine Campbell 2010

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To Snow

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

PREFACE

In my book My Friend Nick the Greek: Life in Las Vegas in the ‘50s, I wrote about what was near the beginning of my life.

What led to my adopting senior pets? A lifetime, of course.

This is a book from way on the other side (yes, folks, I made it!), to what are known as the mellow years, even more graphically described as the golden years. But what are they really?

I’m just beginning to find out.

At the doorway to old age, I happened to come across and invite into my life a congregation of the liveliest, sweetest and saddest furry friends (and some not so furry) one would ever hope to meet. They themselves were also at the advent of old age, looking backwards at good, and not so good, times.

This is our story.

PART ONE

Prologue to the Oldsters

The smallest feline is a masterpiece.

Leonardo Da Vinci

CHAPTER 1

Desert Digs

Don’t ask me how I found myself living alone in the middle of a desert. Odd things happen in my life. The unexpected is the norm. Having long been a city dweller, for the first few years I suffered culture shock. How did I get myself into this situation? I asked myself many times.

Ten years later, the desert was in my blood. Solitariness had become a welcome solace. But it would not have been possible, I am certain, without my natural companions.

I hadn’t lived more than a month here when my 14 year old cockapoo, Beau, suffered a stroke. He kept turning around and around in circles. I telephoned a veterinarian. He had plans to drive to Santa Barbara and couldn’t see him. That was that! However, his receptionist, after his departure, called and gave me directions to the nearest animal emergency hospital. I was grateful since I was as yet totally unfamiliar with the area. Gathering Beau in my arms, we drove posthaste to the clinic.

Beau didn’t like the desert. He missed city pavement, asphalt roads. When I’d try to coax him to take a desert walk, he’d balk at the edge of it, lift his rear end in the air, get purchase with his front legs, and was immovable. And so we had to resort to narrow country roads along the desert’s edge for our recreation. He was having nothing to do with that silly sand.

And where were the throngs of people? Replaced by prickly cacti! Harrumph! And those furious desert windstorms! It was as if Beau were saying: Is this for real? Where are we? I want to go home!

Beau did go home during the night in hospital. I received the call at 7:00 a.m. the next day. Did I want him thrown in the disposal pit at Edom Hill? Or would I prefer to make private arrangements and pick him up? The veterinarian assured me that she had all of her pets she had lost sent to Edom Hill, that it was a decision that was perfectly okay.

Beau in a garbage dump! Okay?

I picked him up that morning. He had numerous tubes inserted throughout his body. He was still warm as I carried him in my arms to the car and took him for our last journey back home.

A friend came up from Los Angeles and buried him in the yard. We planted one lone vinca plant to mark his grave. But I was still a renter, and the landlord, spying the plant, ordered me to dig it up (we were not to interfere with his landscaping). My friend and I transplanted it to the only place that was left, the desert. It is unlikely it survived in foreign soil. But at least we attempted to give it a chance. Life is life. And we wanted to honor it.

Beau had been my first animal rescue upon returning to the West after living many years in New York City. I came upon him standing on the wrong side of a fence playing with a dog on the other side that had a home. Hello little doggie, I remember saying. If you follow me home I’ll give you some food.

I was quite surprised when he took my offer to heart. As it turned out, he had a disease which affected his nerves, causing severe trembling. But with professional help, and a stalwart will, Beau and I started on our 14 year, and absolutely essential for my life, journey together.

Life now became a desert, inside as well as out. There were no more mandatory walks. No more excited greetings when I came home. No more heavenly and much appreciated massages I had learned how to give from a book written by a veterinarian. No more furry bundle beside me in sleep. No more animal presence: the movement, the sounds; the eyes ever gentle, with just a tinge of sorrow, looking up at me from a faraway place—the animal psyche, Beau’s homeland, so to speak.

Thus it was I found my second rescue dog, though I’m not certain who rescued whom. I had fears I would not be able to give it enough love, that love still being held in reserve in memoriam. Would I ever be able to love another dog as much as Beau? Perhaps it was unfair to even try. Was I being selfish, thinking only of my needs, and could I start all over again getting to know a stranger?

CHAPTER 2

The Shelter

I learned there was a no kill animal shelter nearby. Who would become a part of my destiny? Who would become my new companion, hopefully for years to come? I had no preconceived idea of my future dog. And thus it was I entered the office of Desert Pet Oasis, a small, rickety room with a lone man sitting behind a desk.

They’re out there, he said brusquely, making a circling gesture with his hand, rather than pointing in any specific direction. But it wasn’t hard to find them. I just followed the barks.

Dawn wasn’t like the other dogs, and that was why she was allowed to live in the office, rather than joining the melee outside. At first I hadn’t noticed her, cowering behind a chair in a darkened corner, and when I asked how she happened to be inside, I learned the following story.

She had been brought in by a woman who had driven her up from L.A. She explained that her husband had purchased the dog as a puppy, having been led to believe that she was a thoroughbred schnauzer. But Dawn (she was named Pepper then) was no such thing. She was a mix, six months old when I met her. Her husband flew into a rage during the rest of her