Together Again
Shelters unite dog, owner after separation
A fter taking her toddler and fleeing domestic turmoil two months ago, Nina Malone was desperate to get back the 13-year-old dog that she had to leave behind in Florida.
They had been through so much together. In the 10 years since she had adopted the Rhodesian ridge-back mix in Bellevue, Wash., they’d moved to the Chicago and San Francisco Bay areas, back to Seattle and then to Florida.
When Malone was pregnant with her son Kelly, who will be 3 at the end of this month, Sadie the dog would lie with her head over Malone’s stomach, as if looking after the life within.
This week, after a lot of telephone calls, emails and tears, animal shelters in two different states brought the dog and her humans back together.
“I felt this is right — this is the way the world is supposed to work,” said the exuberant Malone in between
ball tosses for Sadie outside the Santa Fe Animal Shelter on Thursday. “I’m so happy.”
Malone’s separation from her canine companion came after changes in her domestic life prompted her to leave Florida suddenly.
“I had to leave,” she said. “I had no friends or family down there. I was feeling not safe.”
With emergency relocation money from a local program, she had to leave within 48 hours. She said she arranged for people she knew in Florida to take care of Sadie, while she came to Santa Fe, where she had lived 15 years ago while learning massage therapy and where she still has friends.
The arrangements for Sadie’s care didn’t work out, and Malone’s attempts to find someone through Craigslist who could drive the dog to New Mexico failed. Initially without Malone’s knowledge, Sadie was dropped off at an animal shelter in West Palm Beach.
But Sadie had a microchip, and even if all the other information on the owner was out of date, Malone still had the same cellphone number. Su Jackson Ross with the Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League in West Palm Beach called, Malone said, initially frosty but professional under the impression she had simply abandoned her dog. Then Malone tearfully poured out her story.
“I could tell she had a personal investment from that moment on. We were working together,” Malone said.
Efforts to find truckers through a humanitarian program who could give Sadie a lift to Santa Fe came up empty. “I was getting nervous and scared because she was older,” Malone said of Sadie, fearing the stress would harm her frosty-muzzled pet’s health and maybe even lead her to die alone in the shelter.
Some photos Malone sent the shelter of better times together and a presentation from staff to the Florida shelter’s board resulted in a decision: They’d fly Sadie to New Mexico.
The shelter coordinated the transfer with the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, whose executive director, Mary Martin, drove to the Albuquerque airport to pick up the dog on Tuesday. When Malone was able to see Sadie again that afternoon, she said the unflappable pet’s response seemed to be, “Oh, yeah, there you are. It’s about time.”
“The fact is Sadie is the sweetest little dog in the world,” Jackson Ross said over the telephone Thursday of the 70-pounder. “The shelter is not the place for (an old) dog. We really needed to get Sadie out as soon as possible.”
That was both for the dog’s sake and the shelter’s sake, Jackson Ross added, noting that with 500 animals housed there, they need to move animals out as quickly as possible to make room for more.
Working together
“This is an example of how shelters work together to connect animals with their owners,” said Ben Swan, spokesman for the Santa Fe shelter. “They (Florida shelter) knew the dog had been loved.”
Malone and Kelly are staying at Casa Familia, an emergency shelter for women and children in Santa Fe, but she thinks she has found a foster home that will take Sadie by this weekend. And Malone said she has a job possibility that eventually would allow them to live together again.
“Either way, I’m just really blessed,” Malone said. “I’m just so grateful for Su and her compassion — all of them, all the people who worked with her.”