By Geoff Slater
I value rescue organizations for what they are, which is a way to match dogs from bad circumstances with good homes. Like most who have already written, my dog is a rescue dog, although not from Vermont Dog Rescue. In my case, my dog is from a rescue organization in Baltimore, which is not quite the South but somewhat close.
We got our dog Raven, a border collie/husky mix, from Baltimore’s Cocker Spaniel Adoption Center. Our experience in adopting Raven was very much the same as others have described. We had to fill out an application, which my wife and I jokingly described as asking for more information than we would have had to provide for adopting a human child. Even though they were located in Baltimore, they still sent someone from a sister organization in Boston to do a home inspection to make sure they weren’t sending our dog from one bad situation to another. Raven had also had all of her shots and had been spayed.
Before Raven came to us she had been in a foster home full of dogs. But it wasn’t the home of hoarders but instead a family that provided a way station to a better life and a home to make sure that the dogs were not kept in cages. The rescue organization was also going to drive her all the way from Baltimore to Fayston before being foiled by a snowstorm. Instead we met the next weekend halfway in Newburgh, New York. That day was Super Bowl Sunday in 2001, a Super Bowl that the Baltimore Ravens won. Like most Patriots fans, I have no love for the football Ravens, but her name and the Baltimore Ravens food bowl that she eats from is a fond memory of her foster family and the Cocker Spaniel Adoption Center.
The Cocker Spaniel Adoption Center, like most rescue organizations, relies on volunteers and donations to do what they can in their own way. Like most of us, they are not equipped to change the world but do what they can. Raven’s foster family has poured their hearts and their lives into providing a better future for individual dogs. It’s unrealistic and unfair to suggest, as Marie Leotta seems to do in her most recent In My View column, that they are irresponsible if they are not also advocates and lobbyists.
Without the Cocker Spaniel Adoption Center, Raven would probably be dead and we would have spent the last 14 years without one of the best friends we have ever had. It’s clear from the many letters that The Valley Reporter has received that Vermont Dog Rescue has saved many dogs and brought the same joy to many others. We should value them for what they do and not criticize them for not being something else.
Slater lives in Fayston.
