February is all about love and hearts. Granted, that usually assumes we’re talking about people, but animal owners know that love also extends to their pets. Most, if not all, would say that there was that special one, who was their heart animal.
Here are tributes to four pets who were especially beloved. Sadly, all were lost over the past year.
Bailey, a Beagle
Bailey started his life with Carl and Laurie Quinn as a heart dog; his adoption from Columbia-Greene Humane Society in Hudson finalized on February 14, 2013. “He picked Laurie,” Quinn reported, “I was holding a female pup with a tornado-shaped marking when Bailey went up to Laurie. She had not been an animal person, but he was her dog from the start.”
In his first couple of days home, “He was at his dish and tipped over into it with his head shaking, almost as though he was having a seizure.” Carl picked him up, became the comfort person, and Bailey became his heart dog too.
The Humane Society said they had heard of similar problems with other dogs from that litter. Seeking answers, Laurie reached out to Andrea Beth, who had adopted the pup Quinn had first picked. They then found Wendy Weeden and Rose Porter, in Loudonville, who adopted the mother dog, and compared notes. As the pups grew older the attacks stopped; no explanation was ever found.
Quinn said Bailey would sleep on the couch with him, but “Laurie stole him! She put him in bed and he’d sleep in between us.”
“He was just so up for everything you’d want to do. He loved the patio, checking all the parts of it.” He also loved green beans; this past summer he ate most of the ones they grew, “I don’t think I cooked more than a few.” Every time he came back in the house, he’d bark for treats, “And if he didn’t get them quick enough, he would start to howl.”
Bailey was the couple’s only dog for several years. When they went to Laurie’s family in Syracuse for Christmas, “She packed all his stuff. I think she’d spend as long packing his things as ours. It was crazy,” Quinn observed.
At Andrea’s ‘Bark-B-Q’ reunion with Bailey’s mother and littermates in Pennsylvania, “It was like they all remembered, just happy to see each other, running like they’d been together forever. Makes you wonder if a scent stays with them?”
Bailey adjusted well to everything, Quinn said, even losing Laurie when she suffered a brain aneurysm several years ago. “He knew things shifted that day, after she was gone.”
Benjamin, the Hero Dog
“He was the only one who didn’t bark,” Sara Martell said about meeting Benjamin at the Eleanor Sonsoni Animal Shelter in Pittsfield, MA. “He sat in my lap and licked my face.”
Her husband David revealed, “Unbeknownst to her, I had followed Benjamin on social media for two months, saving photos of ‘The dog I want to have someday.’”
On December 27, 2018, he was theirs and Sara’s heart dog as of “he first day he came home.” He became her constant companion at physical therapy, “I think he transferred all my mobility issues to himself. I never loved an animal immediately like that, and I think it was mutual.”
It took him longer to warm up to David, who “got so excited the first time he jumped into his lap.” Sara remembers reassuring David, “He’ll be great,” about taking Benjamin to work for the first time at their Hilltop Orchards store and tasting room. Instead, she says, Benjamin got loose and “jumped into a Subaru with a stranger.”
“We just laughed,” when he knocked their first Christmas tree over. Citing his cleverness, David related, “He discovered blankets in the ottoman, so he opened it and jumped in.” However, a dog trainer holding classes at their space said he was disruptive, didn’t play well with others, and, they laughed, “He got kicked out!”
Then, on Christmas Eve, 2021, in the middle of the night, Benjamin’s barking woke them up to discover the building housing their livelihood was on fire. His early detection brought mutual aid fire departments from two states, saving the structure and earning Benjamin the title ‘Hero Dog’ across much press coverage.
“Benjamin taught us lessons,” David said. “He taught me to slow down. I had to plan steps around his disabilities and appointments. Work can wait.”
Sara echoed her husband’s sentiments: “He ended up 80 pounds of cripple who had to be carried everywhere.” That did not deter them from taking him along with them: “The last year he went everywhere with us. He’d stay in the truck with the heat or AC going while we got out and did things.”
Towards the end, Benjamin started, “Just staring at David,” Sara recalled, “He never gave that kind of attention. I think he knew the end was near, and was saying, ‘I love you. I need you to know I’ve always loved you.’”
Sara wiped a tear, “It was an absolute honor to be fortunate to be his parents in his lifetime. No one ever loved me like Benjamin did.”
Shorty, a therapy horse
Laura Corsun, owner of High and Mighty Therapeutic Riding & Driving Center, Inc., was looking for a bigger horse for their bigger riders. After a “go, look, and see” visit to an advertised draft horse, she was trying to decide whether she could afford him. His owners looked at the High and Mighty website and decided, “We’d like to donate him to you,” and Rockek Rexio, aka Shorty, became hers.
“We weren’t sure it would work. He’d never been in an indoor arena or around so many other horses, but he seemed to be adjusting,” Corsun remembered. What he wasn’t adjusting to was the heavier riders: “From about 200 pounds and up, he couldn’t handle the weight, he’d just get grouchy.”
Research and talking with a veterinarian revealed that many draft horses are built to pull, not carry weight. “He was fine with the kids, though.”
Meanwhile, “I was falling in love with him,” Corsun admitted. “He lived in a stall that I could see through the kitchen window, and he could see me at the sink. He knew when I was making coffee. I’d say, ‘Good morning, Shorty,’ and have coffee with him.”
“He could tell when I was away. Do you think they understand?” she asked.
They used him for small and middle-sized riders, and he “really liked some of the young people in the program. He loved the little ones; he would come to the gate to see them, drop his head, smell, and say hello to them. He was very trustworthy with children,” she remembered. Corsun’s daughter also rode him, gaining prizes in some dressage and hunter pace events.
Saying she thought he really wanted to pull, Corsun said, “That was his calling, and we didn’t get to do it.” Finding a harness to fit him and a carriage was not practical for the nonprofit.
“Even when he got sick, he was so stoic,” she recalled wistfully. “He left me knowing something so big at the end. Even when I was under that stress, I learned to take that moment to really listen to him.” She vowed, “I will be prepared if this happens again, and I will be a much better person to the next one in this situation.”
Corsun mused, “He loved to be groomed,” looking out the window and remembering their eleven years together.
Streetcar, a kitten on Desire Street
He meowed until the rescuers stopped the van where he was on the curb in New Orleans. He’d been on his own for a month after Hurricane Katrina flooded the city. They opened a door and he jumped in.
He became my [Barbara’s] heart cat when I went to put him into a cage at Camp Katrina, the Humane Society of Louisiana animal shelter in Tylertown, MS, and he crawled up my chest, put his little paws on either side of my neck and nuzzled my chin with his little nose. All I could do was say, “Well, hello. How do you feel about a long ride north in a few days?” Seeing ‘Ktn-fnd –2400 blk Desire’ scrawled on an envelope, I told him his name was, “Streetcar”, and that he was named after a famous play.
We estimated he was about five months old then. He was 20 when his health issues became too much.
On his last day, he stared out the window, from the table where he’d chirped at the birds outside. I sat by him on the couch and when I went to my desk, he came to tell me I needed to come back with him.
Barbara shared, “For just a few months shy of 20 years, you were my Little Mister. Meowing, insisting, loving. How many times did I move you from lying between my eyes and the book I was reading in bed? Tell you ‘Get out from under foot!’ and ‘I do not put my nose in your food dish; therefore you should not put yours in mine,’ and ask ‘Why don’t you drink from your water dish, but you do from around the tub drain?’”
Reaching to anyone walking past your cage at Camp Katrina as if to say, “Stop! Pet me!” Your astonished look when I stepped out of the shower the first night of our trip home, “That was water! You got in that on purpose?” Playing catch with Nerf balls and meowing around the house with one in your mouth. You and Prettypurr playing mouse hockey in the bathtub.
Your raucous “Maieos”, pushing under the covers on chilly nights, curled up in the chair by my desk, causing computer havoc walking across the keyboard … and so much more. “You proved 20 years ago you were a survivor. But you told me this time you could not be. You will be my heart cat forever.”
There is more about Streetcar and Bailey in the books A Kitten On Desire Street and The Adventures of Bailey the Beagle. These are just four of many, many, many heart animals. Is there one in your house? •
