Rescue Dog?

The only dog I ever had was Muffy. We got her from a neighbor when I was seven—though we didn’t have high hopes of keeping her (my dad had dispatched with a cat we’d had). But we four kids pleaded so earnestly that we wore him down.

Muff was a mutt—part Maltese and part ?? But she was instantly a special part of the family. My brother Nels trained her (using cheese) to sit, shake, roll over, and eventually to close the front door. She hated getting bathed—but was at her most playful immediately afterward.

In 1977, while my mother was on a trip to Scotland and my father on business in Alaska, we three younger kids were farmed out to stay with family. Nels held the fort at home in California. One day, he came home to find Muffy licking a wound in her side. It didn’t look too bad, but he decided to take her to the vet.

It was actually a deep puncture, most likely a bite from a big dog. Muffy had to have it stitched up with drainage tubes placed to help the healing. We came home to Franken-pup. It was a shock.

I don’t recall Muffy ever liking other dogs but, certainly after this trauma, she went ballistic whenever she caught sight of any dog. It was sometimes easier to just take her barking self back inside the house. This is why what happened next in her life is so miraculous.

One day, my brother Chris and I were out playing when we came across a large German shepherd that had been hit by a car. He was lying in blood. We ran home and told my mom. Always a compassionate woman, she got us in our Buick station wagon and had us show her where the dog was. With no fear of what an injured animal might do to her, she and some onlookers picked up the shepherd and put him in the vehicle.

Without consulting my father, Mom authorized the vet to operate on an unknown dog we weren’t even sure would live. It was an expensive operation. And that was just the beginning of concerns. After the surgery and a day’s rest, the vet wanted the German shepherd off his hands. Where would we take him? —certainly not home to Muffy, our fiend in sheep’s clothing.

We decided to put “Valor” (our name for the injured dog) in a room by himself and keep the door closed. Valor crawled under a desk and collapsed. That was his spot from then on.

The first surprise was that Muffy didn’t bark when we carried this big strange dog into the house. It seemed she could sense or smell the injury. We decided to see how she would respond to Valor. Holding Muff very tightly, we opened the door to Valor’s den.

Still no barking. Muffy sniffed—and pulled with all her strength to get closer to this imposing beast. She seemed to especially note that the dog’s injury (and stitches) were in the same place she had been hurt. After examining the wound, she immediately curled up and nestled herself against Valor—who seemed quite at home with her there.

The last thing we had expected was to leave the room without our own dog. We got busy (at my dad’s insistence) looking for Valor’s owner. We canvassed the neighborhoods around us, but no one we asked had lost a dog.

Each day Valor got a little stronger. Determined to show he had been raised properly, he wouldn’t go on newspapers, but walked out his sliding glass door—painfully—each day to do relieve himself.

Muffy accompanied him like a bodyguard and heaped fury on the poor Husky next door for daring to poke her nose through the fence. Yet, with her charge, Muff was a tender companion.

I can’t remember whether we put an ad in the newspaper or my mom saw an ad. I only remember my mom spoke with someone on the phone who had lost two dogs. “Would you like to come see if this dog is yours?” she asked.

Like a true drama, the story gets weird here. The person my mom spoke with on the phone wasn’t the owner of the two lost dogs—but he was surely in the doghouse! His sister had moved and asked him to watch her two dogs in the process. They both promptly escaped him—likely looking for a home that was no longer “home.”

The brother really cared about his sister’s two dogs, but he had only found one of the escapees. Many days passed with no sign of the other.

We answered the door and ushered our guest to the den. Standing in the doorway, the man wasn’t sure; the light wasn’t very good under the desk and, with stitches, Valor’s appearance was altered.

But Valor’s tail was all over the place. The man knelt down. Valor struggled to his feet and over to our visitor, licking the tears that were falling from his eyes. It was a special moment—especially for my dad, who was finally reimbursed for the surgery.

Valor was soon home with his longtime friend—a little white dog named Fluffy—really!

Mom never doubted how the story would turn out (at least she never showed doubt). Our Muffy was not a changed canine; she continued to freak out whenever any other dog appeared. But her time with Valor was noble and sweet and miraculous. I still miss her.

For the picture book version of the story of "Muffy & Valor," see https://www.amazon.com/Muffy-Valor-Story-Karl-Beckstrand-ebook/dp/B073T1BH16. The ebook is free for Kindle Unlimited users.