Blog the Change: Old Dog Haven

Because April is National Volunteer , Blog the Changes suggested we write about our favorite volunteer or volunteer organization. It should not come as a surprise to anyone reading here that I am going to write about Old Dog Haven.

We are taking a break from fostering right now because of everything else going on in our lives, but if we foster again, and for some reason don’t go through Old Dog Haven, the bar has been set very high. ODH was a joy to work with, from application right up to the final decision making.

On some level, I am sad I have never met Judith, the woman who runs the organization. We have talked on the phone and emailed quite a bit over the last 14 months, but we have never met face to face. In fact, I have only ever met one other person associated with the rescue, and that was the woman who transported Howie from his temporary foster home to ours.

And yet, we never had any problem getting what we needed for Howie. ODH has a great relationship with the vets they work with, so there was never a problem with having to pay for medical care. They trusted our judgment when it came to what treatments were right for him and what medications may or may not be needed.

When Howie was at the height of his snapping, they were just as concerned about our safety (more concerned than we were) as they were about him.

And that final night, when we took him to an emergency vet after midnight, we chose not to call the rescue. We knew we were empowered to make the decision, and we did. But that did mean that the next morning, I had to call Judith and let her know that we made the choice to say goodbye without her having had any expectation of that happening. He had only been diagnosed with renal failure the month before, and we were getting ready to bring him back in for a new round of blood work to see if the diet was helping. Until that night when everything went badly very quickly, he had actually been doing really well.

But I called the next morning, and there was no questioning of our decision. (Judith actually thanked us for not feeling the need to wake her up at 2am for the final decision.) We were told that they trusted that we made the right decision and thank you for taking such good care of him. The emergency vet was not one that worked with ODH on a regular basis, so we had paid on our card. Judith called them and got the charge switched to the rescue’s account first thing.
Judith and ODH made fostering easy. Howie made it a joy.