Evie

One day I got home and there was a message on the answering machine from Ron Edwards of the SEACCA animal shelter. The message was simple; he had a Saint Bernard named Evie that we simply had to take.

We had complete confidence in Ron’s ability to pick worthy dogs, and we had always wanted a Saint Bernard, so we headed for the shelter, which was in Downey, immediately.

Rescue people can be a little over the top and demanding of potential adopters, which is why they’re sometimes disparaged as “rescue Nazis.” But if there is one given, it is that once someone rescues a dog, that dog is officially under that person’s protection, and that trust will not be violated.

Debbie and I took it a step further. We considered the dog under our protection once we decided in our own mind that we would take it, even if we hadn’t yet done so.

A typical example of this would be our getting a phone call alerting us to a golden in a shelter that needed saving. It could have come at a time when we were overcrowded and had no space to take in a new dog. But since we would never leave a golden in a shelter under any circumstances, we would immediately pick the dog up.

Once we got to the shelter, though, we might find that it wasn’t a golden after all, but instead maybe a mixed breed that might have been 5 percent golden. It didn’t matter by that point; it could have been a giraffe and we would still have taken it, because the dog was mentally under our protection the moment we decided to go to the shelter. To then turn our backs on it because it was a mix would be the same in our minds as if we euthanized it ourselves.

Evie presented a slightly different dilemma. She was a Saint Bernard, and an adorable one at that, but she had a couple of other issues. For one, she was eight years old, which is very old for that breed, and she had some health problems. That in itself would not have been significant, except for the fact that one of the issues was that she was blind.

We’ve had blind dogs in our house on a number of occasions, and it’s remarkable how they adapt. They say you shouldn’t move the furniture around when you have a blind animal, but we had an average of thirty four-legged “pieces of furniture” walking around all the time. Yet blind dogs always seemed to be able to navigate the situation. And they would do it with a smile.

But Evie was huge, and not that mobile in the first place. We had a real concern about her ability to handle things, and we hated the thought of putting her through the stress that her new surroundings would involve if she wasn’t going to be happy.

On the other hand, not taking her would mean she’d stay in the shelter for a few more days and then get euthanized, because there was zero chance someone else was going to show up to adopt an elderly, blind Saint Bernard. Ron knew that as well as we did, and he had fallen in love with her, which is why he’d called us.

So we took her home. We could have used a crane to get her in and out of the car, but none was available, so we managed ourselves. And then came the scary part: introducing her to the group. They mobbed her, as they always do, and she handled it really well.

I can’t imagine what might have been in her mind, unable to see these hordes of lunatics coming over to check her out, but she just stood there stoically and waited them out. They weren’t intimidated by her size, and she wasn’t intimidated by their number or energy. It was a stalemate, which was welcome news and a good start.

It’s often fascinating to watch dogs’ personalities evolve once they’re in our house, at least as it relates to dealing with our crew. Over time they become more comfortable, and their true nature comes out, often in unpredictable ways.

With Debbie and me, Evie was totally sweet and loving; if I’ve ever met a dog that liked petting more, I can’t remember it. She would hear us walking toward her and would lower her head slightly so as to be in the petting-receiving position.

She was somewhat less tolerant of her canine friends, however. It’s not that she was aggressive toward them; it was more that she wanted nothing to do with them. She staked out a place in the corner of the living room, where we laid a dog bed, to be her permanent place of residence.

We called it “Evie’s Island,” and good luck to the dog that had the temerity to try and enter. Evie would sense their presence and growl angrily as a warning. If that didn’t do the trick, she’d bark and snap at them, and she had to do it only once. The offending dog would immediately retreat back across the imaginary causeway, never to return.

Fortunately, Evie was house-trained, so she would leave the island to go out to the yard a couple of times a day. Suffice it to say that the other dogs cleared a path for her to walk; nobody was inclined to mess with Miss Evie.

One day we were babysitting a friend’s golden retriever, Lincoln. The friend had adopted Lincoln from us not long before and didn’t want to put him in a boarding facility when he went on vacation, so we took him in to stay with us.

Debbie was out of the house and I was working in my office when Lincoln unwisely ventured onto Evie’s Island. I didn’t see it happen, but I heard the scream and came running. Lincoln had made a rookie mistake, and the irascible Evie had reacted to the invasion by biting his ear off.

Actually, I’m exaggerating; I only thought that was what had happened. It turned out that she hadn’t bitten the ear entirely off; she’d just torn it some. But it created a huge amount of blood, especially since Lincoln was shaking his head with the pain, thereby spraying the blood around the room.

I grabbed Lincoln and ran with him to the car, and we were off to the vet’s office. It turned out to be a much less serious injury than I had feared, and the vet quickly sewed him up, assuring me that the ear would be as good as new in a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, Debbie had come home and seen the blood everywhere. It looked like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had been filmed in the place. I wasn’t home, so there was no way for her to know what happened, and in her panic she couldn’t tell if any dogs were missing.

So she frantically called the various vets that we dealt with to find out if I had brought in an emergency case. She ultimately tracked me down while Lincoln was having his ear repaired, and I assured her that everything was fine.

And then it hit me. Debbie had been calling animal hospitals, not human ones. How did she know the blood wasn’t mine? I was missing, and it’s not like she’d conducted a DNA test to determine that the blood was canine in origin. How did she know I wasn’t in some emergency room somewhere, being prepped for surgery?

I pointed this out to her in an effort to make her feel guilty, an effort that as far as I could tell was completely unsuccessful.

So maybe there was a lesson in all of that for me; I’m not sure. But there certainly was a lesson for the dogs.

Nobody, but nobody, was to enter Evie’s Island.