Angels with Fur: The Story of the Animals That Changed My Life and My Heart

By Melissa Wolf

Some people collect cars, exquisite paintings, antique furniture, and fragile china sets. While Melissa Wolf appreciates and occasionally enjoys a few of those things, she collects something different: living and breathing beings with four feet, a tailwhich in some cases wagsand an endless capacity for love.

For as long as she can remember, Melissa has always loved animals. In a collection of personal stories, she honors the lives of the animals that have left a mark on her heart over the years. In each tale intricately woven with emotion, she highlights the highs and lows she experienced as she loved, cared for, and attempted to save animals of every kind that included dogs, cats, horses, guinea pigs, hamsters, fish, ducks, chicken, goats, pigs, and even a cow. But as her stories tenderly reveal, Melissa never imagined how each animal, in its own way, would save and forever change her.

Angels with Fur shares a collection of stories that provide a loving tribute to the animals one woman rescued from an uncertain fate and reveal how each ultimately transformed her lifeand her heart.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 2, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491780145

Melissa Wolf

Melissa Wolf is a self-professed animal lover, business owner, mother, and wife. She currently lives in Texas with her husband, daughter, German shepherd, two cats, two horses, and six chickens. Angels with Fur is her first collection of stories about the animals in her life.

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Copyright © 2015 Melissa Wolf.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8013-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-8014-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015918627

iUniverse rev. date: 12/02/2015

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Justin

Chapter 2 Caesar

Chapter 3 Big Dog

Chapter 4 Charm

Chapter 5 Boulder

Chapter 6 Heidi

Chapter 7 Teddy

Chapter 8 Hershey

Chapter 9 Zaida

Chapter 10 Prince

Chapter 11 Dreamer

Chapter 12 The Mare the World Forgot

Chapter 13 The Return of Big Dog

Chapter 14 Dusty

Final Words

To my mom and dad: Without your unconditional love and support, I never would have had the courage to put these stories down on paper. Both of you have taught me how to love myself and others, and for that I’ll be forever grateful.

For my daughter, Payton: May you always have a love of horses. That love will teach you so much about yourself and the world around you. You will never regret giving it, and it will always be returned.

To my husband, Mike: Thank you for putting up with my animal craziness. I’m sure you didn’t know what you were getting yourself into, but I’m glad you are on this journey with me.

And finally, to Duchess, Baron, Maxx, Chelsea, Lilly, Flash, Hank, WB, and the duck quartet: Your stories were either still too painful for me to write or are still unfolding as we speak. Just know that my life and heart are better because you were in them.

Introduction

Some people collect cars, exquisite paintings, or antique furniture, while others find joy in discovering fragile china sets adorned with dainty hand-painted flowers. My parents have spent every weekend for as long as I can remember searching garage sales for books to complete their extensive book collection. Quite often, a collector remains blissfully unaware of his or her growing obsession. It begins to take on a life of its own, complete with all the demands and requirements of a living, breathing thing. While I can appreciate and even enjoy some of those things, each piece in my collection is a living, breathing being, complete with four feet, a tail—which in some cases wags—and an endless capacity for love.

I have always been more comfortable around animals than humans; their unconditionally pure love is something I’ve never needed to question. Unlike most humans, animals never have a motive outside of the desire for food or the occasional belly rub. My ability to connect to humans, on the other hand, has always been clouded by my ever-present, probing search for what people are really like—their true selves. I’ve always felt that humans can’t be trusted. They always possess other motives, most of which are far from pure. Are the motives sometimes well intentioned? Maybe. But a purely selfless motive—one unadulterated by the seed of a selfish desire that quickly grows into an ugly, choking weed of self-gratification—is extremely rare.

My husband married me knowing he was one of only a select few to breach my inner circle despite his flaw of having only two legs instead of four. At his core, Mike is a cat lover, but I assumed this was something I could change as our relationship developed. It’s not that I don’t like cats; I just don’t love them the way I have always loved other animals, especially dogs. When I was growing up, neither of my parents liked cats, which meant I didn’t get the chance to interact with them, much less live with them. From an early age, I viewed cats as—cue the stereotype—aloof, even cold. That basic difference between my husband and me would fuel many heated discussions over the years. My first Christmas present from him was a tiny black-and-white kitten, complete with a red bow tied around her neck, upon which was tied a beautiful ring. Although his intentions were sweet, that gift should have signaled trouble ahead—like one of those orange road signs we ignore and speed past on the highway.

He knew I preferred dogs, as did anyone who had ever talked to me for longer than five minutes. He simply thought he would show me that I actually liked things better his way.

Truthfully, he had never been a big animal lover in general. It wasn’t that he didn’t like animals; he just didn’t feel an overpowering need to take in and nurture every animal that came across his path. He certainly hadn’t bargained for marrying someone who did.

During the first years of our marriage, I think he believed that he could change me—or in the very least contain my animal obsession—much as I had hoped to change his love of cats. It wasn’t until my toddler’s love of horses unearthed my own previously undiscovered love of these animals that I became more in tune with the animals in my life. I believe with every fiber of my being—as do most horse people—that horses have heightened my awareness and allowed me to feel what an animal is feeling. Obviously, I don’t mean that I literally feel what it is feeling. If a horse has a tummy ache, I don’t experience a gut-wrenching, physical tummy ache, although that would certainly make horse ownership much, much easier! It’s more of an emotional awareness. When I look into a horse’s or dog’s eyes, I can see what the animal is feeling.

Horses are quite different from any other animal. Their physical size is matched only by their equally large capacity to touch a human’s heart and soul. Horses, and animals in general, are often able to sense what’s going on with me, sometimes even before I do. They are so sensitive to the inner workings of other beings that they pick up the slightest change in demeanor, facial expression, pace, or tone. In the blink of a long-lashed eye, they are able to assess my emotional state and accept me, just as I am. This is drastically different from most of the humans I have known who, no matter how good the intention, have their own motives and agendas coloring their every move.

And so, after discovering the beauty of horses, my deep connection to animals bubbled up to the surface, emerging from somewhere in the depths of my soul at what seemed to be just the perfect time. But then again, God’s timing is never off.

Many animals have come into and gone out of my life and forever left a mark, just as they probably have in yours. Most of them were either strays or unwanted and uncared for by the humans responsible for them. According to the ASPCA, an animal is beaten or abused every ten seconds. The knowledge of this physically sickens me and quite often keeps me awake at night. My brain knows that no one person can save every discarded, unloved animal in this world. My heart believes that I have to try. After all, each animal I’ve saved has saved me in its own way. And so I’ve vowed to record their stories one by one so that each has the opportunity to touch others, just as each has touched me.

CHAPTER 1

Justin

My little girl loved horses from the moment she could talk. As we drove down the Texas highway with the windows down and the wind whipping through her hair, Payton would point her sweet, pudgy little finger in the direction of the nearest pasture and say, Horsey! She never missed a single horse on our many trips in the car. The route to complete our errands was often dictated by the horses she delighted in seeing along the way. Take a right at the big oak tree on the corner might be how most people would describe the landmarks when giving directions. Not us. Our directions would be to take a left at the corner of the big pasture with the black-and-white paint horse. She would even give them the names that she imagined they should have. It was because of this that I decided to take her to a local stable to allow her an up-close-and-personal look at the objects of her fascination. Luckily, we lived less than five minutes from a large stable. It had big concrete aisles filled with stall after stall of any breed and color of horse you can imagine.

We visited the stable for two years, by which time Payton had gotten to personally know each of the thirty-five horses that lived there. By three years of age, and before she was able to read the names on the stall cards, she could tell you the horses’ names as she fed them carrots, mints, or cookies. God forbid I should get a name wrong! My mistake would be met with a swift, stern reprimand, quickly followed by the correct name. Meanwhile she would be feeding her treats to a blissfully eager, yet ever-so-gentle, giant. I began to think it was time for us to own a horse of our own.

These days, if you are looking to buy a horse, there are hundreds of websites, complete with search criteria, to help narrow the field of available horses. At that time, I had no idea where to begin, so I picked up a local newspaper and flipped to the farm section. Even then, there weren’t that many listings. But after only my second call, I had made arrangements to look at a seventeen-year-old paint gelding.

When the day came, I arrived on time at the barn that served as home to two handsome geldings. I quickly parked the truck and extricated my daughter from the car seat where she sat excitedly harnessed in the backseat. It was a beautiful, warm late-fall afternoon. We entered the small barn, and as soon as our eyes adjusted to the difference in light, we