The Dog Who Healed A Family. Jo Coudert

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СКАЧАТЬ to the news media. After breakfast, dazed by the camera and lights but, as always, polite, Snoopy sat on a desk at the Casper Humane Society and obligingly cocked her head to show off the new leash that was a gift from Cathy. And that night, in Fort Wayne, the Topps were caught between laughter and tears as they saw their old girl peer out at them from the television set.

      With the interview behind her, Snoopy set out for North Platte, 350 miles away, in the company of Myrtie Bain, a Humane Society official in Casper who had volunteered for the longest single hop on Snoopy’s journey. The two of them stopped overnight in Alliance, and Snoopy, taking a stroll before turning in, got a thorn in her paw. Having come to rely on the kindness of strangers, she held quite still while Myrtie removed it, and then continued to limp until Myrtie accused her of doing it just to get sympathy. Her sneezes, however, were genuine, and Myrtie put her to bed early, covering her with towels to keep off drafts.

      In North Platte at noon the next day, more reporters and cameramen awaited them, but as soon as she’d been interviewed, Snoopy was back on the road for a 138-mile trip to Grand Island. Twice more that day she was passed along, arriving in Lincoln, Nebraska, after dark and so tired that she curled up in the first doggie bed she spotted despite the growls of its rightful owner.

      In the morning her sneezing was worse and she refused to drink any water. Word of this was sent along with her, and as soon as she arrived in Omaha on the next leg, she was checked over by the Humane Society vet, who found her fever had dropped but she was dehydrated. A messenger was dispatched to the nearest store for Gatorade, to the fascination of reporters, who from then on headlined her as “Snoopy, the Gatorade Dog.”

      With a gift of a new wicker sleeping basket and a note in the log being kept of her journey—“Happy to be part of the chain reuniting Snoopy with her family”—Nebraska passed the little dog on to Iowa. After a change of car and driver in Des Moines, Snoopy sped on and by nightfall was in Cedar Rapids. Pat Hubbard, in whose home she spent the night, was sufficiently concerned about her to set an alarm and get up three times in the night to force-feed her Gatorade. Snoopy seemed stronger in the morning, and the Puppy Express rolled on.

      As happens to travelers, Snoopy’s outfit grew baggy and wrinkled, her sweater stretching so much that she tripped on it with almost every step. This did not go unnoticed, and by the time she reached Davenport, she was sporting a new sweater, as well as a collection of toys, food and water dishes and her own traveling bag to carry them in. The log, in addition to noting when she had been fed and walked, began to fill with comments in the margin: “Fantastic little dog!” “What a luv!” “Insists on sitting in the front seat, preferably in a lap.” “Likes the radio on.” “Hate to give her up! Great companion!”

      At nightfall of her fifth and last full day on the road, Snoopy was in Chicago, her next-to-last stop. Whether it was that she was getting close to home or just because her cold had run its course, she was clearly feeling better. Indeed, the vet who examined her told the reporters, “For an old lady who’s been traveling all week and has come more than thirteen hundred miles, she’s in grand shape. She’s going to make it home tomorrow just fine.” The Topps, watching the nightly update of Snoopy’s journey on the Fort Wayne TV stations, broke into cheers.

      The next day was Saturday, March 17. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, the little dog sported a new green coat with a green derby pinned to the collar. The Chicago press did one last interview with her, and then Snoopy had nothing to do but nap until Skip Cochrane arrived from Fort Wayne to drive her the 160 miles home.

      Hours before Snoopy and Skip were expected in Fort Wayne, the Topps were waiting excitedly at the Humane Society. Jodi and Matthew worked on a room-sized banner that read “Welcome Home, Snoopy! From Rock Springs, Wyoming, to Fort Wayne, Indiana, via the Puppy Express,” with her route outlined across the bottom and their signatures in the corner. Reporters from the Fort Wayne TV stations and newspapers, on hand to report the happy ending to Snoopy’s story, interviewed the Topps and the shelter’s staff, in particular Rod Hale, whose idea the Puppy Express had been. One interviewer asked him why the volunteers had done it. Why had thirteen staff members of ten Humane Societies and animal shelters gone to so much trouble for one little dog?

      Rod told him what one volunteer had said to him on the phone. “It would have been so easy to tell Nancy Topp that nothing could be done. Instead, you gave all of us a chance to make a loving, caring gesture. Thank you for that.”

      Somewhere amid the fuss and confusion, Rod found time to draw Nancy aside and give her word that Snoopy would be arriving home with her boarding bill marked “Paid.” An anonymous friend of the Humane Society in Casper had taken care of it.

      “I thought I was through with crying,” Nancy said as the warm tears bathed her eyes. “Maybe it was worth our little dog and us going through all this just so we’d find out how kind people can be.”

      The CB radio crackled and Skip Cochrane’s voice filled the crowded room. “Coming in! The Puppy Express is coming in!”

      Nancy and Joe and the children rushed out in the subfreezing air, the reporters on their heels. Around the corner came the pickup truck, lights flashing, siren sounding. “Snoopy’s here!” shouted the children. “Snoopy’s home!”

      And there the little dog was, sitting up on the front seat in her St. Patrick’s Day outfit, peering nearsightedly out of the window at all the commotion. After two months of separation from her family, after a week on the road, after traveling across five states for fifteen hundred miles in the company of strangers, Snoopy had reached the end of her odyssey.

      Nancy got to the truck first. In the instant before she snatched the door open, Snoopy recognized her. Barking wildly, she scrambled into Nancy’s arms. Then Joe was there, and the children. Laughing, crying, they hugged Snoopy and each other. The family that didn’t give up on even its smallest member was back together again.

      Sweet Elizabeth

      Jane Bartlett first saw the white rabbit in a pet shop window at Easter time. The other rabbits were jostling for places at a bowl of chow, but this one was sitting up on her haunches, gazing solemnly back at the faces pressed against the glass staring at her. One ear stood up stiff and straight, as a proper rabbit’s ear should, but the other flopped forward over one eye, making her look as raffish as a little old lady who has taken a drop too much and knocked her hat askew.

      An executive of the company in which Jane was a trainee came by, stopped to say hello and chuckled at the sight of the rabbit. Mr. Corwin was a friendly, fatherly man, and as they stood there smiling at the funny-looking creature, Jane found herself telling him stories about Dumb Bunny, the white rabbit she’d had as a small child who drank coffee from her father’s breakfast cup and once leaped after a crumb in the toaster, singeing his whiskers into tight little black corkscrews. Some of the homesickness Jane was feeling at being new in New York City must have been in her voice, for on Easter morning her doorbell rang and a deliveryman handed her a box.

      She set it on the floor while she read the card, and Robert, her tomcat, always curious about packages, strolled over to sniff it. Suddenly he crouched, tail twitching, ready to spring. Jane cautiously raised the lid of the box and up popped the rabbit with the tipsy ear. The cat hissed fiercely. Peering nearsightedly at him, the rabbit shook her head, giving herself a resounding thwack in the nose with her floppy ear, hopped out of the box and made straight for the cat. He retreated. She pressed pleasantly forward. He turned and fled. She pursued. He jumped up on a table. She looked dazedly around, baffled by the disappearance of her newfound friend.

      Jane picked her up to console her, and the rabbit began nuzzling her arm affectionately. “Don’t try to butter me up,” Jane told her sternly. “A city apartment is no place for a rabbit. You’re going straight СКАЧАТЬ