… and then there was one.

Update by Niki Kapsambelis

This is the hardest kind of story to tell.

In rescue, we celebrate the matching of dogs with homes, the redemption of the misunderstood, the promise of new hope for the disenfranchised, the joy of being present for the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Those are the rewards of what can often be a thankless job.

Then there is the flip side of rescue, the stories we do not like to hear. But hear them we should, and tell them we must, because sometimes it’s important to remember the stories that do not have happy endings.

In August, Sarah was contacted by a colleague in Kentucky: Would she take a litter of 4-week-old pups? Their mother was dead. They needed care. Although MABCR’s kennel was full, and adoptions have slowed in tandem with the sluggish economy, Sarah agreed to take them. The celebrated “August Eight” came to Victory Farm.

To make that happen, many people, myself included, sponsored these pups. (Because really, how do you say no to an orphan?) In my case, I had just sold some concert tickets that I no longer needed. I donated the proceeds to the puppies, chalking off my good deed for the day. I also planned to serve as a foster home.

When they arrived, Sarah set to caring for them, posting pictures on this blog so readers could track their progress. At the farm, the puppies walked on grass for the first time. They met other dogs. They interacted with their admirers, who doted on them. They followed people who walked around their exercise pen.

The August Eight were supposed to be a heartwarming story: Orphaned when their mother was hit by a car, they seemed surrounded by good karma when they arrived at the farm. People were already lining up to adopt them. Unfortunately, real life doesn’t always follow the prescribed happy ending. It soon became apparent that two of the puppies were extremely sick.

In retrospect, the first two to die had never seemed right. One had a head that was misshapen; at first it seemed like the goofy bequest of a baby daddy (the litter was sired by at least two different dogs), but as the days progressed, it was apparent that this dog and the smallest black-and-white pup were not thriving. They were lethargic and eating poorly, but puppies have survived worse.

Then the seizures happened. One of the puppies seized for 45 minutes. Then the other started seizing. They couldn’t bounce back; they were too young and there was too much ground to make up. They were euthanized, and the worst part is, we may never know exactly why they seized.

Here is what we do know about the puppies: Their late mother, a purebred border collie, was allowed to roam. That’s how she became pregnant, and it’s also how she died; she was hit by a car when her litter was somewhere around two weeks old. Someone, possibly their mother’s owner, thought the puppies should have docked tails, so when they were infants, the tails were wrapped with clear rubber bands – a technique known as banding that is perfectly fine with, say, sheep, but dangerous in a dog, which has more than mere cartilage in its tail. Though the bands were removed when they came into rescue, veterinary opinion is that it’s possible this procedure contributed to their decline. Also possible is that the loss of their mother deprived them of the nutrients and care that would have helped them weather what came next.

For Sarah, the death of the first two pups marked the beginning of a grueling chapter in MABCR. Having expected to place these puppies in homes – the happiest of tasks – she was then left instead to discuss the remaining six with veterinarians, report symptoms, and lose sleep  over their sudden and rapid deterioration. They were never robust eaters, and eventually they stopped eating much of anything. They endured subcutaneous hydration, and Sarah tried to coax them with formula NutriCal, molasses, a slurry made with premium wet dog food – anything to get them nutrition. She cleaned bloody stool. She fed them yogurt to try and rebuild in their digestive tracts what antibiotics had wiped away.

Nothing worked. One by one, they declined. A puppy who weakly wagged as she gave him NutriCal was gone within hours.

Today, just one of the August Eight is alive. He awoke; his siblings did not. He found himself alone and puzzled. The odds are strong that he will eventually share their fate, and we may never know why.

By definition, rescue volunteers are people who love dogs. That’s why reading a story like the one about the August Eight is so hard; we don’t want to believe that things like this happen. If we just care enough, know enough, donate enough, work enough, we can save them, right?

Not always. But if we do not tell their story, we do not honor their brief lives. We do not acknowledge the effort that happened, from Kentucky to Maryland, to try and keep them alive. We do not fully appreciate the small miracles that happen in rescue when things do go right.

So we must read their story, and remember it. When we do, we honor the lives that are lost, and in doing so, we can perhaps learn to rededicate ourselves to the work at hand.