Betty Boop

Betty Boop

Today Kim and I picked up a twelve-year-old white resume stray that Kim has chosen to call Betty. Cecil passed away six weeks ago and Kim has decided that she wants to dedicate her dog affections to aged dogs that have no home. Everyone who knows Kim knows that she has a lot of love to give and dogs are a favorite object for her. There is only so much that humming birds and quail can do to fill the gap that Cecil has left in Kim’s heart. She is already spoiling the poor birds to the point where they may never be comfortable on their own in the wild again. The local Escondido feed store already has Kim’s number and is wondering how they can interest her in some pigs and/or chickens. She is instantly a top flight customer of the feed business. We spent about an hour at the Frosted Faces rescue center on the road to Ramona. This was theoretically an interview, but I don’t really remember being asked any questions. Mostly what we did was wait for the foster parent that had been caring for the dog for the past few months.

To begin with, Betty is blind by virtue of matching cataracts. We were told that many of the senior dogs are blind. Betty’s blindness is probably the result of her diabetes, for which she needs to be given insulin injections twice a day. Not so many adoptive dog parents are willing to take on a seriously ill dog like Betty, but that all makes Betty more attractive to Kim because she wants to help the neediest dogs she can find. From what I have seen of the shelter, Betty is not the neediest perhaps, but she came into the center two months ago all skin and bones, weighing in at eight pounds. After two months of serious foster care, Betty is tipping the scales at fourteen and rising. We figure her fighting weight is about seventeen or eighteen pounds.

Betty is sort of food-focused, which is somewhat understandable given that she has clearly seen some lean times. The rescue shelter and foster home had the delicate balance of strengthening Betty by bulking her up, but dong so without over feeding her and throwing her blood sugar out of whack. These are very serious and dedicated volunteers. The woman who fostered Betty has had to get a glucose profile of Betty by taking blood sugar readings every hour in a twelve hour timeframe (the time in between her insulin shots). Taking a blood sugar reading on a dog is pretty much like taking it on a human. It requires a small blood sample put into a glucose meter. The suggested way to do that with a dog is to pin prick one of its foot pads. Needless to say, most dogs do not enjoy getting their foot pads pricked hourly for a whole day. But this dedicated young woman did just that and managed to do it in a way that both got the needed medical information and still maintained Betty’s trust. In fact, when Betty heard the voice of her foster mother, her tail immediately started to wag and she perked up from her docile and sedate way in the shelter foyer.

We were told that this calm, quiet and docile went through a personality change when she was at her foster home. She is supposedly still mostly calm and quiet, but also more playful and more affectionate. We were told that she is far more animated when she is in a calmer place like a private home versus a group home like the shelter. Even Betty’s foster home had another dog and two cats, so that was perhaps not her best venue if calmness is her preference.

Once we had watched foster mom test Betty’s glucose and give her her insulin shot (done while she was focused on gobbling down her dinner), we were asked if we still wanted to take her. Specifically, we were asked if we preferred permanent fostering, which has the Frosted Faces Foundation picking up the medical tab for Betty for the rest of he3r natural life, of outright adoption, which makes Betty our responsibility. As wonderful as the Foundation’s program of inducing people to take older dogs by paying their medical bills, we chose to do an outright adoption on the theory that we can afford what perhaps some others cannot. While the volunteers did not act shocked or surprised at our option, my guess is that there was some high-fiving after we left. They did say that this has been a busy week. While we waited on the porch for the paperwork, we met a woman who was picking up a dog to foster while the shelter looked for a permanent home. The little rotund Chihuahua that she was fostering had a skin condition which cause him to have patches of missing hair. The volunteer was trying to make it easy for the foster mom to take him home so she put a diaper around his posterior section. The problem was that the small diaper didn’t fit so she went to find a medium sized one. When that too didn’t fit, she finally brought the Grande one and strapped it around the little fellow. It wasn’t the swiftest outfit he had ever worn, but off he went for his new home with the foster mother telling us that she got far more from fostering during these strange and upsetting times than she felt she was giving.

During our hour at the shelter, getting medical instruction, watching Betty get fed, watching other injured or aged dogs lounge around after their early dinners, all with the slightest hint of a zoo smell in the air, we saw perhaps ten volunteers, tirelessly cleaning up after dogs, feeding dogs from various special labeled Tupperware containers in the refrigerator and helping dogs find their way in the labyrinth of the shelter home. These people clearly love animals and have hearts of gold. These are not glamorous jobs and there is mostly no one to notice the hard work. The least we can do is take Betty to a better home and relieve the shelter from having to worry about her.

We took Betty home after having a new family photo taken for the Frosted Faces website. Betty is an animal that has come to accept her fate and the fact that her existence is in the hands of others and the gods. That means that she is docile and goes along as necessary with whom and to where she is taken. She got into Cecil’s old car bed that he rode across the country several times. SHe seemed fine with car travel and settled down for the ride home. Once home, she spent an hour or two walking around slowly, bumping into things for undoubtedly not the last time. Familiarization is obviously key to a blind dog. Once she had been outside a few times with Kim and realized where and how she should do her business, she settled into the sofa with us. Kim lectured her sweetly about how this is what we would be doing, enjoying the coolness of the house (it is mighty hot outside this week), watching movies and 2020 election updates (Betty has already declared herself 100% blue). She slept the full night without moving a muscle on the bed between Kim and I and is clearly liking the calmness of the household.

I showed Betty to some colleagues on our Zoom call this morning and explained that we were caring for her to remind us that we are not the oldest and neediest beings on the planet and that others in greater need deserve the dignity of a pleasant end-of-life experience. I expect Betty to turn into Betty Boop with low-volume enthusiasm and gratitude for her good fortune.