Pet Talk

by Cathy Davis
    OK, I’ll admit it. I didn’t want to do it but I finally gave in. I had two of my grandchildren for the weekend and my plan was to fill their days with all kinds of activities. We took a ride to Grammy’s “blue house” which is what they call where I live, to do some crafts and visit with “Old Gramp”, we went out to the animal shelter to play with the kittens and puppies and big cats, we played trains and cars and rocket ships, and just had a wonderful time.
    But I was coming down with a cold and by the end of day two, I resorted to the one thing I said I’d never do. I turned on the TV. There isn’t much on TV any more that is suitable for a 2- and 4-year old. But last night we stumbled upon a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, “A Dog Named Christmas.”
    Grammy was hooked. It was a story all about a young man’s efforts to place 36 animal shelter dogs in foster homes over the Christmas holidays and how his foster dog affected his family, most specifically his father. A typical Hallmark movie, there were moments of tears and moments of joy and I found myself talking to the TV out loud at the end, raising my voice slightly and shaking my finger “you better go back and adopt that dog”. 
    If you ever get a chance to watch that movie you really need to, and no, Hallmark movies aren’t just for “chicks.”
    What I loved most about this movie, aside from the young man’s passion to help these animals, was the portrayal of the animal shelter.  So many times movies just get it all wrong. It’s like they don’t do their research or something, but in this movie the shelter was small, sparsely staffed by loving caring individuals, and you could tell that the building was older, but clean, the cages older, but clean and most of all you could tell that the animals in this shelter were loved very much.
    At Houlton Humane, that’s what matters most to us. We have a very small staff, just one full time and three part time employees, but they are the very best.  They are loving, caring, gentle people who cheer every time an animal goes to a new home, who cry when we lose one to a disease or injury, who nurse little baby kittens that lost their momma and get up every two hours to bottle feed them. They are people who work for very little pay, who know they have to be there for their shift because we don’t have a huge staff to draw a substitute from. They rarely take their vacations, or sick days, because they know the animals depend on them.
    In the movie, the animal shelter was only asking for people to foster their dogs over the Christmas holiday. They could bring them back Dec. 26. In real life, Houlton Humane is embarking on a mission to place animals in forever homes by Dec. 23. I know it’s asking a lot, I know that it’s hard to find 40 or 50 new homes in just four weeks, but I am convinced that if you have a passion for animals and you visit the shelter, you could do what this boy did in the movie. Start making some calls. If you truly have the 300+ friends that your Facebook page says you have, there are 300 people you can tell about the dogs and cats available for adoption at the shelter. Out of those 300, maybe one might be interested, but each of those 300 can share your message with their 300 friends and before you know it, empty shelter.
    That’s our goal. If you can’t visit the shelter, visit us on Facebook, or our website, or petfinder.com for photos of our adoptable animals. Let’s make the holidays happy for all our four legged friends – let’s find homes for all of them.
    Thank you for your donations, your prayers, your support and from our family to yours, Happy Thanksgiving.