Dusty

In 2013, I signed up to foster a dog with a local rescue.  When I arrived on transport night, the dog that I had been assigned had been taken home by another volunteer.  I took Dusty instead and soon realized God had sent me an Angel.  Dusty had been part of a jail dog program in Georgia before transport to NJ.  I didn’t know that until his file caught up with him a few days later.  He was beautifully trained and had the gentlest, most compassionate and intuitive nature imaginable.  He greeted every human and dog with complete joy and I proudly took him everywhere with me.  We were regulars at the dog park where he had many friends.  My friends never visited without bringing (their dogs) his friends with them.  The neighbor dogs came to our yard to play in the evenings and over the course of 5 years, he and I fostered 60 dogs, one at a time, and he welcomed every one.  We came to be the team who specialized with reactive and fear aggressive fosters.  He worked his magic, like a therapy dog for dogs, giving each one just the right amount of patience, interaction and compassion based on their needs and on their timeline.  It was beautiful to watch as he won them over, they began to trust and they began to flourish.  He changed my life in a magnificent way and he brought me pride and joy every single day.  We retired from fostering when a reactive, aggressive foster was returned after a year in a home.  She was in worse shape than before in terms of behavior, she was malnourished and in poor condition and he loved her just the way she needed him to, that gave her confidence and we nursed her back to health.  Around that time, Dusty was diagnosed with Lupus and it felt like she had come back to us for a reason, they were happy together.  She progressed and we enjoyed road trips across county and beach outings planned just for them.  Life was good and then Dusty suddenly began losing weight.  He spent a few weeks in the hospital and had his spleen which had ruptured, removed.  He was recovering beautifully, his sister was now showing him compassion, comforting and cuddling him.  He had even put the 7 lbs back on when the biopsy results arrived in April.  Kidney cancer, devastating, we lost our Angel boy on 8/23, a week before his 10th birthday.  He helped so many, he loved everyone, he was loyal and loving, he truly was pure joy. Although my heart is broken and I miss my companion every minute, I am grateful that I was blessed to ever have such an amazing creature in my life and I’m also grateful to the handler who raised and trained him for 3 months in the jail dog program.  We had an amazing life together, may my baby Rest In Peace.