Sweet Georgia on my mind: The happy ending

This is the flier we put together to help publicize Georgia, her adorable charms and talents, and her need for a home—pronto. It reads:

Hi. My name is Georgia. I am about 10 months old. I used to live in a building in the hallway. No one fed me very much or paid much attention to me. But some guys in the building gave me to some nice people who are supposed to help me. I am very affectionate and happy, even though I have no idea what’s going on right now. I know how to sit and shake and am learning how to stay and lie down already. I am housetrained, too! I’m not crate trained yet, but I’m a quick learner and am very food motivated so I think with a little more training I will really learn to like my crate (so far I think it’s just for eating and I don’t mind it then).

Unfortunately, the people who are helping me right now have two other female pit bulls, and that seems like a lot of ladies all in one condo, even to me. So they can’t come home until I find a new place to stay, either for a while or forever.

If you can help out, please call XXX.

If I were writing that flier today, I think I would include something about how when she ran down the hallway of our condo building after a ball, she looked like a miniature deer bounding through a forest clearing. I would maybe throw something in about how she was a dainty and well-mannered eater, despite the fact that she probably had more food in the week she was with us than she had in the whole month prior to that. I might add that the little lamb in the photo above was in serious danger of drowning in dog saliva, but that it might remain intact for years since she was not a stuffie slayer. I would still not include the part about how she was definitely condo trained (as in, she did not have accidents in our condo) but that she was having trouble getting the hang of building trained (as in, she sometimes confused outside of the condo with the real outside, though in her defense she was experiencing about 12,000 new things that week and a mistake here and there was entirely understandable). I would also not mention how tempting it was for us to fall for her, for fear of discouraging a potential adopter.

The day after I posted the flier above at our vet office, my phone rang.

"Hi,it's Ymelda...from the vet. I was off yesterday, but I'm wondering if you still have Georgia."

As a matter of fact I did have Georgia, right at the other end of the leash in my hand. She and I were just getting ready to take food rations over to Toni and Téa. As it happens, the vet was exactly halfway between the condo we lived in and our dog sleepover camp. Would, um, right now be a good time to stop by so Ymelda and Georgia could meet?

"You want to meet me. You know you do."

This exact moment is the beginning of the end of my part of Georgia, sweet Georgia's story, but it's really just the beginning of her story. Because it turns out that Ymelda, whom I have always liked, loved Georgia. She was moving to a dog-friendly building in just two weeks. Her friend and co-worker, Jackie, would live just downstairs and they were already sorting out joint dog walking schedules. Ymelda was even pre-approved as an adopter through Chicagoland Bully Breed Rescue, which is the group we worked through to begin some sort of paperwork and accountability for her welfare. 

"My friend Lucy is kind of fluffy, but I love her anyway."

I sometimes see Georgia when I am at the vet. She and Ymelda walk to work together when the weather suits—a canine version of Take Your Daughter to Work Day. She met Toni and Téa once. As expected, Toni liked Georgia just fine but Téa felt that perhaps she wasn't really a dog we wanted to hang out with, effective immediately. (Téa can be very particular about who she wants as a friend, even though it means she misses out on meeting some very cool dogs.) I got to hear about Georgia's reaction to the Great Blizzard of 2011 (pro-snow but not a big fan of snowbanks—thank goodness she had a new winter coat!). I know that, like Téa, she can be particular when choosing friends. And I heard that she just celebrated a birthday, complete with her very own cake:

"If I can just get my paws on that cake, all of my wishes will have come true!"

We are grateful that our friend took Georgia when a stranger offered her up, even though our friend had nowhere to keep her. We're grateful that we were able to play a small part in helping sweet Georgia along the way. We're grateful for the timing, mishaps and dumb luck that brought Georgia and Ymelda together. But I think we are most grateful every time we hear a Georgia story from Ymelda because it is clear that she is loved and protected in a way she might never have known otherwise.

Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you
Georgia
Georgia

I said just an old sweet song

Keeps Georgia on my mind

Many thanks to Ymelda for contributing the photos included in this post and for opening her heart and her home to sweet Georgia.

Sweet Georgia on my mind: The middle

Having just been given a bundle of pit bull in need of some rescuing and learning that our two favorite rescues were full-up, we found ourselves lacking a clear vision for next steps. Additionally, since this had come up a bit suddenly (as in, "I'm on my way with a dog I need to give you. Where are you?"), we hadn't even eaten our lunch and I was getting a bit testy due to the hunger pangs. So we headed home.

As we walked into our condo, I mentioned that we might do well to at least give poor Smelly (as we were temporarily calling her) a bit of food. I was certain she had gone a long while since her last meal and wouldn't turn her nose up at anything we had to offer. Chris announced that while that he thought that was a good idea, he was giving her a bath first—no arguments. We were only going to have her around for another hour or so, but it could at least be a more pleasant hour. 

Chris has a whole routine that he goes through with T2 and baths. Lots of talking and finger massaging and "good, good girl" comments are included. The canine lady on the receiving end gets a lift in (whether she wants it or not) then gets wrapped in a warm, fluffy towel at the end and lifted back out again to commence the zoomy, air-drying portion of the process. I wish I had thought to take a photo of this little girl's bath (most likely her first bath ever). You could just see in her face that while she might not entirely understand what was going on or why, she was willing to let us do what we needed to do and be a good sport about it.

After a little running around when she was finished, she came over (smelling delightful!) to the kitchen area of our loft where I was putting together a little kibble and ground chicken for her. Not enough to make her sick, since who knew what or when she had last eaten, but enough to stop the grumble in her belly and buy a little more affection from her. I set the food down and watched her wander up to it for a sniff. I'm not sure she entirely understood what I was putting on the floor. She was just beginning to realize that it was food and that the whole bowl was for her when she heard Chris coming toward us, having finished cleaning the tub. Bless her heart if she didn't completely abandoned that bowl of food immediately, prance over to check on him and give his hand a little lick before finishing her meal.

"What luck—someone has left a fluffy bunny for me to nibble on!"

Somewhere in the process, I texted a friend who had a connection with one of the larger shelters here in Chicago. I was hoping she had insight into their policies on taking strays. She did. Without going into the gory and disappointing details here, I'll cut to the chase: The shelter publicly states an open policy for animal drop-offs and relinquishing. The catch is that if the animal brought in is a stray, it goes immediately to Animal Care & Control. I have yet to see that fact in any of their literature—and believe me, I've looked. So that was the end of that option.

Apparently this next step in the process was going to take a little more thinking than we had anticipated.

The next day seemed to bring no further ideas, insight or options other than the acknowledgement that T2 would be staying for an indefinite time at sleepover camp. As the owner of our daycare/sleepover camp facility put it, "Three bitches in one home is too many." (We later revised that to "Four bitches in one home is too many," which I continue to quote every once in a while when the occasion suits.) The other realization that came was that we couldn't, if she was staying for more than a few hours, continue to call her Smelly. This is how she came to be known as Georgia...sweet Georgia on my mind.

The next several days were a whirl of activity and stress. I took little Georgia with me every time I walked out the door, extolling her virtues and need for a home to anyone within listening distance. We posted on Facebook. We made flyers and tacked them up at Starbuck's, pet stores, the lobby of our building. We drove to our daycare/sleepover camp each day to drop off a day's worth of food for Toni and Téa. (Yes, I know it would have been easier to take it over in bulk, but I felt like I wanted to do something for my own girls every day as well and taking them food was about all I could come up with.)

"I just met a cat! I am pretty sure it didn't want to be my friend—even though I think I would have liked it. Exhausting!"

As you may remember, we love our vet and our vet loves us. I just knew if I took Georgia to the vet with me to post a flyer, someone there would click with her, either adopting her themselves or sending a friend or family member our way who would fall in love with her. As I was pulling up, I got a call from a potential adoptive family (actually, the friend who gave me the down-low on the shelter process I mentioned above). They had fallen for sweet Georgia, but well-meaning friends/volunteers (from the shelter mentioned above) got involved. My friend felt compelled to explain (aka, drag out in great length in the hopes that she would feel better delivering this difficult and unfounded message) her explanation for what we suspected from the minute the well-meaning volunteers laid eyes on sweet Georgia: She seemed fantastic, but gosh, you just never know with a pit bull so there was no way the friends/volunteers could give their approval of her...since she wasn't part of their program. So the recommendation was, if this friend wanted a pit bull, skip Georgia (apparently now known in their minds as The Loose Cannon) and take one of the shelter pit bulls. (For the record, it has taken me a long time to tell this story because of this particular part of it. While this family may not have been the right family for Georgia, neither she nor we deserved the behind-the-back treatment and excuses aimed at her pit-bull-ness that the volunteers brought to the situation.)

With that on my mind, I walked into the vet's office with my "dog available" flyer...and stopped dead. No one I knew was at the desk (I basically thought I knew everyone). So I hemmed and hawed and stammered out my story and handed over my flyer to the new person. And then I just stood there. I was done. I had no more ideas, no other places I hadn't paraded her sweet face and posted a flyer, nowhere to take her little self except back to our home—while our girls remained in sleepover camp purgatory (comfortably so, of course, but Glenda the Good Witch had it right when she said to Dorothy, "There's no place like home.").

So I did what I am certain anyone in my position would have done. I took Georgia back to the car, had a good cry and then drove her home. 

Georgia, Georgia,
No peace, no peace I find
Just this old, sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind

Sweet Georgia on my mind: The beginning

As I've mentioned before, we have a friend who seems to stumble onto pit bulls in need all of the time. We appreciate the good intentions and we certainly appreciate anyone who's advocating on behalf of pit bulls, particularly in such a hands-on way, so we try to be supportive.... And by "be supportive," we initially intended that to mean, "Yay you, friend! You did a great thing here for this dog! You saved it's life! Let us buy you a pint!"


It turns out that our support was required in a much more active manner. We were sitting in a restaurant one Saturday afternoon waiting for our lunch when Chris' phone rang: "Okay, you're where? You have the dog? We're in Andersonville.... Uh, okay sure. Call us when you get closer." Our well-intentioned friend lives in a decidedly non-pet building. Apparently we were her back-up plan...or possibly her Plan A. It's hard to know for sure.


Fast-forward 20 minutes. Our lunch was in our car in to-go boxes. Rescues-of-choice one and two had already responded that they were full-up. We were definitely in brainstorming mode, though not quite in panic mode. At least T2 were at sleepover camp for the night since we had a party to co-host that evening—that gave us one less pair of things to worry about.


Our friend pulled up and rushed around the car to open the door. I couldn't even see a dog from where I was standing four feet away. When Chris reached in to lift out the petite bag of bones that was curled up on the seat, I felt my heart break a little on her behalf. Sweet, sweet girl with no meat on her, no understanding of what was going on, no idea whether we were good people or bad people—and still her little tail gave the teeniest hopeful beat and her tongue flicked out in the most hesitant way toward Chris' chin to show that she came in friendship. 

And then the smell hit me. It's entirely possible that 50 percent of her body weight that day was the accumulation of every bit of dirt and stench that she had ever come across.

This photo is not from the day we took her home (though the woeful expression captures the moment we met her). She came to us as naked and tagless as the day she was born. Of course.

We got the back story: Someone had stopped our friend on the street because he had seen her walking a neighborhood pit bull. There was a dog in his building who had been kicked out of the apartment her "family" lived in and she was now living in the hallway. He had checked with the owners; they wanted nothing to do with her. Did our friend have any interest in taking the pit bull with her? Hell yes, she did! 

As she handed us the bag of dog treats she had picked up at a convenience store, she asked what our plan was. We were forced to admit that we would have to get back to her on that, but not to worry—we would figure something out. And then Smelly* and I snuggled up together in the backseat of the car, Chris got behind the wheel and off we went.

I say Georgia
Georgia
A song of you
Comes as sweet and clear
As moonlight through the pines

* Smelly was not the name we gave her, just for the record. But at this point, it was the only moniker that suited her.