 Angel's Story
Angel
was a 3-year-old female Wheaten who was given up because her owner’s
new fiancé did not like Angel. The owner was planning to
euthanize Angel, when a co-worker stepped in and offered to take
Angel off her hands. Angel was afraid of this Good
Samaritan’s other dog, so the new owner began looking for another
home for Angel after only a few days. A friend of hers
contacted WIN, but by the time we got in touch with the owner, she
had already given Angel away to another family. This family
had just lost an elderly Basset Hound to cancer and decided to adopt
Angel to fill that void. I had some misgivings about an
on-the-rebound adoption like this, so I asked that my name and phone
number be given to the new family in case they ran into some
problems and needed some support.
Less than two weeks later, I received another
call about Angel. The new family had an invisible fence
that had failed to contain Angel on quite a few occasions.
They were also beginning to realize that there was a huge difference
between an elderly Basset Hound and a three-year-old terrier.
A Wheaten simply was not a good match for them, and they wanted to
give Angel up.
Angel arrived at my house on December 23rd,
having been through three homes in three weeks. She was
understandably confused, but seemed to be a very sweet dog.
She was not crate trained, so I immediately began to work on helping
her to develop a positive association with the crate. I was
amazed at how quickly she took to it; within a week she was entering
the crate freely as if she had been doing so all of her life.
She was a bit overweight, so I put her on a reduced calorie dog food
and carefully monitored her food intake. The original
owner had not provided her veterinary records, and everyone who had
attempted to obtain them had failed. The owners who had
surrendered her had taken her to their vet, and they had started her
over again on the core vaccines, since her vaccination history was
unknown. I took her to my vet for one booster shot and
to be microchipped, and shortly after that started working on
finding a new home for her.
 I found a local candidate who looked very
promising, but the adoption fell through at the last minute when the
woman decided that she could not take on another dog at that time.
I started looking for another candidate, but was having trouble
finding anyone suitable. I didn’t want to place her in another
home with an invisible fence, and I wanted to be especially careful
about where I placed her because she had been bounced around so many
times already.
It was about this time that an application came
in from a young lady in Dallas, Texas.
Her parents had adopted a dog from WIN a few years earlier.
She had just moved into her own duplex and wanted a dog of her own.
Gwen knew the family and wanted to place a female with Gillean, to
minimize the possibility of conflicts with the parents’ male
Wheaten, because the dogs would be visiting each other fairly often.
I had not thought about dong a long-distance adoption, but after
speaking with Gillean, I knew that she would provide Angel with just
the kind of home that she needed.
I took Angel to a groomer for a makeover, and
then on Monday, January 17th, I took her to Philadelphia
International Airport and got her on a nonstop flight to Dallas.
Goodbyes are always tough, but it is even harder to hand a dog over
to the airline personnel, rather than directly to a new owner.
But I knew that this was what was best for Angel, and that in a few
hours’ time she would begin a new life that would be far better than
the old life she was leaving behind.
Angel arrived in Dallas on schedule, and is
adapting very well to her new surroundings. She has been
introduced to Gillean’s parents’ Wheaten Houdini, and has also met
two other Wheatens in her neighborhood. Angel has
been through a lot of upheaval in a short amount of time, but I am
confident that she has found the ideal home that she so richly
deserves.
Special thanks to my dad who looked after Angel
when I was working and helped me to get her to the airport.
Rob H.
Cherry Hill, NJ
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