Ben

Ten-year-old Ben’s story starts out like that of many others: for most of his life he was an “only child” until a human child came along and spoiled everything. His family decided that it would be better if he went to a home without young children.

Fortunately, Debbie Rosenzveig, who had adopted from us previously, had been wanting to adopt a senior Wheaten for quite some time. We arranged a WURL to bring Ben from his home in Virginia Beach to Debbie in Montreal, Quebec. Volunteer Ann McKee met Ben’s owners in Maryland and brought Ben to fellow WIN volunteer Mike Lowe, who drove Ben to upstate New York near the Canadian border.

This is where things got a little complicated. The US-Canada border had been closed for quite some time due to Covid-19. By September 2021, it had reopened – sort of. Americans were allowed to cross into Canada but Canadians were not yet allowed to cross in the US. That meant that Debbie was unable to cross over to get Ben. Mike didn’t have a passport, so he wasn’t able to cross the border either. We found another volunteer, Marc Grendon, a dual US-Canadian citizen living in upstate New York, who offered to bring Ben into Canada. Marc’s leg of the WURL was very brief, but it was the most crucial part of the journey.

Debbie took excellent care of Ben, but he wasn’t in the best of health and he died a few months later in May 2022. We were all disappointed that Debbie and Ben didn’t have more time together but took comfort in the knowledge that he had been loved during his final months. As it turned out, it wouldn’t be long before Debbie opened her heart and home to another senior Wheaten.