Our foster home had just moved to
New Jersey in the fall of 2003 when they
signed up to volunteer with us.
They'd lost their senior
rescue Golden the previous summer, and
believed they would never find another
dog that they could love that much.
Still, they missed having a furry friend
and wanted to help other
Goldens find
their forever homes. At the time they
lived in a very small apartment without
a backyard, so they could only likely
foster a special kind of dog – one who wouldn’t find their small
quarters confining. It was several
months before a dog came into rescue
who fit that
description -- it was Finnegan , who was
worth the wait.
All we knew about Finnegan was that
someone had brought him into a shelter
in
Newark as a stray. They estimated his
age to be about 12 years old, and he was
not doing well in the shelter. Although
he warmed up to soft words from the
staff, he refused to eat and didn’t want
to relieve himself when he was taken
outside. (And who could blame him?
There wasn’t a blade of grass anywhere
near the shelter where the animals were
walked). He had a pronounced limp, and
we weren’t sure whether it was caused by
having been confined in the shelter or
his overgrown nails.
Shortly after he got settled into his
foster home, the poor guy came down with
kennel cough, and a few days later we
found out he had a tooth abscess that
was keeping him from eating. In
addition to being treated for his cough,
we made sure that tooth came out
promptly. Finnegan’s mood and appetite
improved quickly afterwards!
It turned out that a small apartment suited Finnegan just
fine – he was content to snooze on his
bed for most of the day, and enjoyed
short walks around the neighborhood.
With time and regular
glucosamine
supplements his limp
disappeared, and his arthritis
improved, although he still suffered
from restricted joint mobility. He was
a sweet, quiet old guy who loved to curl
up on his bed and doze all afternoon.
He always saved some energy for play in
the evenings, which mostly involved
recruiting his foster parents for a game of tug-of-war
with his toys.
Finnegan had been in foster care for
about two months when we realized that
he wasn’t waiting for an adoptive
family, he was waiting for his foster
parents to realize he was already in his
forever home!
They already knew that being loved by a
senior Golden was a very special thing,
but Finnegan reminded them that
lightning does strike twice – before
they knew what had happened, they
realized they’d fallen in love with
another dog.
They
called him
Finnegan sometimes, but most of the time
they called him by the nickname they'd
given him with all their hearts --
“Friend.”
With sadness, we note
that Finnegan has passed away.
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