The Rescue at Dead Dog Beach (15 page)

I tried Martha again later. At last, she answered.

“Sandra told me what happened,” she said when I told her about Evelyn.

“Can you talk to your vet? He's not taking my calls, and we can't just leave her here. She needs to be euthanized, Martha.” I wanted the vet to come to the beach, to do it before she woke up and felt the pain of her injuries.

“Sandra thinks she'll be all right when she wakes up. We should give her a fighting chance.”

I wish I could say I respected that line of thinking, but I couldn't. It was selfish.

“Martha, she was crushed. The most humane thing we can do is end her suffering.”

“Let's wait and see how she does, Stephen. We can make a decision when she wakes up. I know an organization that helped a dog with similar injuries—they got a wheelchair apparatus so he could walk.”

Did she just start talking about wheelchairs?

“Evelyn is a street dog, Martha. People didn't want to help her
before
she was run over by a car. What makes you think anyone will go to such extremes for her now?”

Martha started crying. “The only reason I didn't do anything before is that I had no money.”

I went off. “So how much money do you have
now
? Do you think vet bills, rehab, and doggy wheelchairs are all going to be free?”

All I heard was sobbing on the other end of the line.

“Martha, I know these dogs better than anyone. I owe it to Evelyn to give her the dignity she deserves. Please! I'm begging you to call the vet and ask him to come down here.”

“Let's wait until I hear back about the wheelchair.”

My final words to her weren't pretty. I hung up.

I went back to Evelyn. Nothing had changed. I talked quietly to her, petted her face, and begged her to let go.

I arrived home late and in need of a drink, as I had the night before.

When I got back to the boathouse in the morning, Evelyn raised her head from the floor. I was surprised and happy to see her smiling face, but I could immediately sense her distress and pain. The look in her eyes was a plea for help. I lay on the filthy floor next to her and held her head. I couldn't help but feel I had failed her.

I was desperate, so I called Martha again.

“I'm still waiting to hear about the wheelchair,” she chirped.

I held my tongue. I begged her to call the vet.

A couple of hours later, she called back. “Can you take Evelyn to the vet's office? I've made arrangements to pay for the visit.”

I was alone, and Evelyn was a big dog. I knew that any movement would be agony. I wasn't willing to do that to her.

“Is there any way you can convince him to come here? I can't move her.”

A short while later, she called back. “Okay, he's coming. Can you meet him on the side of the freeway by the toll booth near Palmas del Mar and show him the way?”

I waited nearly two hours, but at last he arrived, and he followed me to the beach. Once again, Evelyn was clearly happy to see me. The vet had a quick look at her.

“You made the right decision.” The injuries were too extensive. Her spine and pelvis were crushed, and her internal organs were shutting down. I could have guessed all this, but now I felt a little better about choosing to end her life.

As the vet injected the lethal dose into a vein in her front leg, I held Evelyn's face, stared into her eyes, and told her how much I loved her. Within moments, I felt her spirit leave her body. I spoke softly, “No more pain, sweetie.”

The vet got up and walked back to his truck without a word. I was alone, holding Evelyn.

I carried her to the graveyard and buried her, my dogs at my side the entire time. They were very quiet. I sat in the sand with the pack until dark. I was exhausted.

In the days that followed, I ran into Sandra and Sonia at the beach. They were sad about Evelyn, and questioned what I'd done.

“I wish you had given God a chance to heal her,” Sonia said, with Sandra translating for me. (Since I spent 90 percent of my waking hours with the dogs, I never mastered Spanish the way I'd intended when we got to Puerto Rico.)

I didn't want to argue with her. She believed what she believed. I knew it wasn't the last time I'd have a conversation like this. The choice to humanely euthanize a dog is controversial in the rescue world. I hadn't experienced it until now. But I never doubted that I'd done the right thing by Evelyn, just as I'd done the right thing by my beloved Achates in the end.

A
round this time, I got an e-mail from a woman named Melanie Shapiro in San Juan. Months earlier, Betsy Freedman, the Save a Sato representative in Boston, had promised me, “Help is on the way.” As it turned out, Melanie was that help.

Melanie worked with a group that rescued stray cats in Old San Juan. But she also had contacts at a privately run rescue shelter near San Juan, and she wanted to take some of my dogs there. However, as I learned in our initial exchange, Melanie lived over an hour away and didn't have a car, so I wasn't sure exactly how she was going to be able to help me at my beach. And given my experience with Martha, I was doubly wary of another outsider's intentions, however good they might be.

But as always, the dogs came first, and I couldn't turn Melanie away without giving her a chance. When I spoke with her on the phone a few days later, we made a plan for her to come and see my dogs for herself.

One morning at the end of the week, I drove to San Jan to pick her up. She'd given me an address, and told me to wait in the car for her. I arrived on time, and waited. And waited. I didn't really want to bug her, but after forty-five minutes cooling my heels in the truck, I relented and called her cell. No answer.

Then, a few moments after I hung up, she appeared on the balcony of her apartment.

“I'll be right down! I'm just getting a cup of tea!”

Judging from her obvious bed head, I figured she hadn't even gotten up yet, at least not until I'd called and woken her up. It wasn't her fault that I hate when people make me wait, but I'd gotten up extra early and driven ninety minutes through brutal rush hour traffic to get here, and, to make matters worse, I was now really late to feed the dogs. I had a set schedule with them, and I knew they counted on it. I didn't appreciate wasting my time waiting for a stranger.

Finally, Melanie came down. As she approached the car, I took note that she was wearing shorts and flip-flops, exactly what I had suggested she
not
wear to the beach. Caring for the dogs was tough, dirty work. And her fair, freckled skin was going to take a beating in the tropical midday sun. But I wasn't her father, so I didn't say anything. She lived on the island, so I figured she knew what she was doing.

“I hope you don't mind, I asked Mary Eldergill to meet us. She's another rescuer from the south side of the island,” she said on the drive to Yabucoa.

Great, that's all I needed, another do-gooder getting in the way of what really needed to be done. I guess my skepticism showed on my face.

“Don't worry, she's a veteran at this. She's been rescuing dogs for more than twenty years.”

As I navigated the long narrow approach road to the beach, I rolled the window down and whistled for my pack. They popped out of the vegetation and fell in line along the side and rear of the truck as I pulled into the parking area near the metal storage containers. I jumped out and got my usual hero's welcome.

Melanie stayed in the truck, her mouth agape. I couldn't tell if she was impressed or apprehensive. It was
a lot of dogs
.

“You can get out,” I said. “The dogs are fine.”

She didn't budge, so I went around to the passenger side and opened the door for her.

“Are they contagious?” she asked as she stepped gingerly from the vehicle. I was surprised by her unease given her experience rescuing street dogs.

“I told you to wear long pants and real shoes.”

“Oh my God. I had no idea there'd be so many dogs. They look awful. What happened to them?”

Clearly she'd forgotten, or ignored, our phone conversation.

“I did warn you,” I said.

“Well, you know, Steve, sometimes people exaggerate.”

“I knew it! I had a feeling you didn't really believe me when we talked on the phone.”

This is where the situation got weird. My powers of observation had gotten pretty good over the last year, and if there was one thing I could spot at a distance, it was a non–dog person. Melanie's body language was defensive and her tone of voice was strained. She held her hands in tight fists under her chin as she repeated, “There's a good doggie, there's a good doggie,” over and over. What the hell was she even doing here?

Her vibe was transferring to the dogs, and some of the more hyper ones were getting a little frenzied, which was annoying the alphas—exactly how fights started.

“Melanie? You're not going to make me regret bringing you here, are you?” I said it calmly with a half smile, but I wanted it to be obvious to her that I was serious. “Just shadow me, get to know the dogs by watching them, okay? No talking, no touching, no eye contact with the dogs. You relax and they'll relax. It's easy.” I fully trusted my dogs to behave well toward her, but I didn't want them fighting because she'd gotten them into a funky mood.

A few hours passed, and still no sign of Melanie's friend Mary. Meanwhile, Melanie's lack of preparation for the day was manifesting itself all over the place. First there was the bad clothing and shoes. But she'd also forgotten to bring the snacks, water, and sunblock I'd told her to on the phone. I had to give her some lotion I had in the truck, and, as the day wore on, she worked her way through my own water and snack provisions.

I was pretty close to fed up and about to suggest we pack it in when, lo and behold, a beat-up old VW van came zooming into the lot. The driver's-side' door opened to reveal Mary, her wild, frizzy hair blowing in the sea breeze and a crazy-ass crooked smile. Even though she was hours and hours late, it was impossible to stay mad at this woman.

I immediately led her on a tour of the beach.

“I've been doing this a long, long time, Steve, and this is by far the worst I've ever seen.”

“I know some of them look pretty bad, but they're in a lot better shape now than they were when I first found them.”

It was then that Mary noticed my beautiful white shepherd, Jess. When Pam and I had found him months earlier, he was afraid of his own shadow and couldn't be touched. We guessed that someone had thrown boiling oil over his back and neck, and he was covered in horrible third-degree burns. Once, I'd been standing in line at a food vendor when a street dog had gotten too close to the food stand. The vendor's wife got angry and threw a ladle of hot oil at the dog. Fortunately, the dog was fast that day and got out of the way in time. I had a feeling Jess hadn't been so lucky.

As if the burns weren't enough, Jess had several gashes across his flanks, likely the result of a machete. Since knife wounds were pretty common among my dogs, I had made it a point to learn how to suture. I'd been buying pig parts at the grocery store and practicing my stitching skills on them. I'd gotten damn good at it.

The day I met Jess, I'd gone home to do some Internet research on treating severe burns. It took a while for Jess to trust me, but once he did, I was able to treat and suture his flank wounds. Then came the difficult task of scrubbing the wounds clean and dressing his burns with antibiotic cream every single day. Most of the time he would howl in agony and try to get away, and when I was done the little bugger would promptly roll in the sand, but over time it was apparent that he was slowly healing. The remarkable thing was that no matter how much he protested the treatment, or how much pain he must have been in, he never once growled at me or bit me, not even when I had to trim the edges of his flesh and scrape his wounds to suture them properly shut.

Poor Jess was still covered in ugly battle scars.

“I can't believe what a sweetheart he is,” Mary said when I told her Jess's story. “After what he's been through? Amazing.” I was really happy that my dogs liked her, which I always took as a good sign.

Mary opened the side door of her van and started pulling out plastic tubs filled with medical supplies, which we spent the rest of the day using on the dogs. We gave them vaccinations, vitamin boosters, and dewormer. In no time I was overloaded with information and supplies I could only have dreamed of in the past. Evidently Mary had some connection that supplied her with dog medications.

“You are most definitely the Mother Teresa of dogs,” I said.

It was getting late, and we'd done more than I ever thought possible. I was exhausted but beaming like a kid in a candy store. It had been a long time since I'd felt so hopeful.

“Okay, let's figure out who I can take with me today,” Mary said, scanning the pack.

“What?” I was a little taken aback.

“You can't take care of this many dogs by yourself, Steve. I have a few spaces at my place.”

She chose the motherless puppies and a few of the smaller dogs. I had no idea how many dogs this lady had managed to save in all the years she'd been rescuing. All I knew was that she was helping more in this one trip than anyone had done in the entire previous year.

“Mary, what do I owe you for the medication?”

“Nothing, Steve. I've got this.”

I was overwhelmed with gratitude as I helped her load the dogs into her van.

She got in and started to pull away, then stopped and stuck her head out the window.

“Hey, Steve! Why don't you and your wife break away from here after your morning rounds Saturday and come see me in Salinas. I've got more meds I'd like to give you for your dogs. I really didn't know what to expect today, so I didn't bring everything with me. And you can meet
my
pack.”