Angel

Angel was a 3-year-old female Wheaten who was given up because her owner’s new fiancé did not like Angel. The owner was planning to euthanize Angel, when a co-worker stepped in and offered to take Angel off her hands. Angel was afraid of this Good Samaritan’s other dog, so the new owner began looking for another home for Angel after only a few days. A friend of hers contacted WIN, but by the time we got in touch with the owner, she had already given Angel away to another family. This family had just lost an elderly Basset Hound to cancer and decided to adopt Angel to fill that void. I had some misgivings about an on-the-rebound adoption like this, so I asked that my name and phone number be given to the new family in case they ran into some problems and needed some support.

Less than two weeks later, I received another call about Angel. The new family had an invisible fence that had failed to contain Angel on quite a few occasions. They were also beginning to realize that there was a huge difference between an elderly Basset Hound and a three-year-old terrier. A Wheaten simply was not a good match for them, and they wanted to give Angel up.

Angel arrived at my house on December 23rd, having been through three homes in three weeks. She was understandably confused, but seemed to be a very sweet dog. She was not crate trained, so I immediately began to work on helping her to develop a positive association with the crate. I was amazed at how quickly she took to it; within a week she was entering the crate freely as if she had been doing so all of her life. She was a bit overweight, so I put her on a reduced calorie dog food and carefully monitored her food intake. The original owner had not provided her veterinary records, and everyone who had attempted to obtain them had failed. The owners who had surrendered her had taken her to their vet, and they had started her over again on the core vaccines, since her vaccination history was unknown. I took her to my vet for one booster shot and to be microchipped, and shortly after that started working on finding a new home for her.

I found a local candidate who looked very promising, but the adoption fell through at the last minute when the woman decided that she could not take on another dog at that time. I started looking for another candidate, but was having trouble finding anyone suitable. I didn’t want to place her in another home with an invisible fence, and I wanted to be especially careful about where I placed her because she had been bounced around so many times already.

It was about this time that an application came in from a young lady in Dallas, Texas. Her parents had adopted a dog from WIN a few years earlier. She had just moved into her own duplex and wanted a dog of her own. Gwen knew the family and wanted to place a female with Gillean, to minimize the possibility of conflicts with the parents’ male Wheaten, because the dogs would be visiting each other fairly often. I had not thought about dong a long-distance adoption, but after speaking with Gillean, I knew that she would provide Angel with just the kind of home that she needed.

I took Angel to a groomer for a makeover, and then on Monday, January 17th, I took her to Philadelphia International Airport and got her on a nonstop flight to Dallas. Goodbyes are always tough, but it is even harder to hand a dog over to the airline personnel, rather than directly to a new owner. But I knew that this was what was best for Angel, and that in a few hours’ time she would begin a new life that would be far better than the old life she was leaving behind.

Angel arrived in Dallas on schedule, and is adapting very well to her new surroundings. She has been introduced to Gillean’s parents’ Wheaten Houdini, and has also met two other Wheatens in her neighborhood. Angel has been through a lot of upheaval in a short amount of time, but I am confident that she has found the ideal home that she so richly deserves.

Special thanks to my dad who looked after Angel when I was working and helped me to get her to the airport.

Rob H.
Cherry Hill, NJ