by Katerina Lorenzatos Makris ~

Having sustained my share of “love bites” in the past—to the tune of 50 stitches—I am no longer a very brave dog rescuer.  Nowadays I believe that discretion is the better part of valor, as the saying goes. You can’t help anybody if you get yourself hurt.

In the case of the sick and bloody dog that friend Melissa Beamish and I found in the middle of the road one moonlit night last year, he barked at us from the moment we parked the car. Every time we dared to approach he’d dash off a few meters with his tail between his legs, then resume a defensive warning posture with head and tail high and stiff. He really was not interested in having us near him.

Also I wasn’t crazy about the thought of catching sarcoptic mange, in case that was what the dog had. Many sources say the sarcoptic mange parasite does not pass from dogs to humans, but a couple of fellow rescuers swear that they have caught it from dogs they’ve taken in, so I’m a little cautious on that score too.

Rescuing the four ‘Alphabet Puppies’ abandoned at the island’s Alpha Beta supermarket spring was very much an emergency. They wandered the busy parking lot where cars tried to dodge them. The Troianata dog’s situation was severe, but not as urgent.
(Only three of the four Alphabet Puppies are shown in this pic because the fourth, Alpha, a highly inquisitive young lady and the leader of the merry little band, was busy investigating a box of rubbish nearby.)

The wimp-out

The Troianata dog did not seem to be in an emergency situation. He had been on the streets for at least two years and had endured the bloody lesions for several months, according to Petros (not his real name), the village resident who had been feeding and worrying about him.

So I wimped out. I settled for leaving the dog in situ for the time being, until we could make a better plan for how to rescue him.

“May we exchange phone numbers?” I asked Petros. “I don’t know exactly how we’re going to help, but I promise we will.”

Melissa added, “Don’t worry, Petros. You’re no longer in this alone. We will help.”

Impulse control

Melissa Beamish comes from the United Kingdom to volunteer at Animal Rescue Kefalonia (ARK) for several weeks at a time. While other folks are off enjoying the beaches and sightseeing, she works 12 or more hours a day cheerfully and unflinchingly. She performs poop scooping and every other chore in the book to help keep the overflowing shelter’s 400 or so animals clean and healthy.

Armed with Petros’s mobile number, Melissa and I drove away. We had dinner. We talked about other things.

At one point I said, “Whew, am I glad we didn’t pick up that dog! What a ginormous hassle it would’ve been to deal with a fresh rescue so late at night.”

Melissa made no comment. I got the feeling that if it had been up to her, she would have found a way to get that dog into the car and take him straight to Animal Rescue Kefalonia (ARK), the shelter where she had been volunteering some 12 hours a day for almost a month solid.

What she did say was that whatever I decided to do, she would stand by me and help in every way she could. Coming from a person like Melissa, that’s no empty promise. I knew she meant it.

But even while dropping off Melissa at the downtown apartment where she stayed courtesy of ARK co-founder Marina Machado Kappatou, I was congratulating myself on my wise decision.

And even while taking a shower and getting ready for bed, I smiled about how great it was to be able to do that—to come home and just take a shower and go to bed—instead of having the bother of an ailing, possibly aggressive dog on my hands.

Melissa Beamish cuddles a friend
at Animal Rescue Kefalonia (ARK)

Savvy and sensible?

What a savvy, sensible, pragmatic rescuer I had become, instead of the anything-goes, no plan in sight, kamikaze-style rescuer I used to be.

Nope, no more of that impulsive nonsense. Tomorrow, in the clear light of day, I’d construct a clever plan for just what needed to be done and how to do it.

With a few more smug pats to my own back, I climbed into bed, rested my head on the pillow, and pulled up the sheets.

Then, there I lay. For hours. Eyes wide open.

Because all I could see in my head were his eyes—bloody, wary, and weary.

I am sick, those eyes had pleaded, even while he barked at us. I am tired. I need help.

Perhaps it is because we hear such voices in our heads that some people believe we animal rescuers are nuts. And, alas, maybe we are.

Buckaroula Banzai

“When you see an animal in trouble,” my hubsy asked me one day a couple of decades ago, “you know what you tend to do?”

Sunrise over one of the hundreds of
magnificent beaches in Kefalonia
Ionian Sea, Greece

This was right after we had tried (and miserably failed) to help a group of sick and starving dogs at the ruins of ancient Pompei in southern Italy.

Bracing myself, I considered the vast array of possible answers.

He shook his head like an exasperated father with a precocious child. “You go crazy. You go all Buckaroula Banzai.”

It was hard to argue with that. And I had to grin.  In Greek, adding the suffix “oula” turns female names into diminutives. “Buckaroula” didn’t sound so bad, considering the alternatives.

Carefully planned chaos

Friend and veteran rescuer Paley Frances once told me that if you’re looking for a dog, the best time to search is at dawn and at dusk, when they tend to be most active, foraging for food and water.

In the morning, soon after the hardworking full moon had ended her shift and left the skies to allow her colleague the sun to begin his chores, I was in the car headed for the village of Troianata.

Winding road through the scenic foothills
below Kefalonia’s Kastro of Agios Giorgos
(Castle of St. George),
on the way to Troianata

Yes, me. At dawn. I, who am so not a morning person that halfway over there I realized I was wearing the left shoe from one pair of shoes and the right shoe from another, and that I had forgotten the dog food, my drivers’ license, and the camera.

Those were things that would have been carefully planned and packed by Ms. Savvy and Sensible rescuer. But the bloody dog in Troianata didn’t really need those things. What he needed right now was Buckaroula Banzai. And she was on her way.

Soon we’ll post the next article about the rescue of Agapi.

Meanwhile here’s the previous article about him:

Previous:   Safety vs. guilt: the animal rescuer’s dilemma

And here’s the first article in the series about Agapi:

First:  A bloody dog standing in the road: what do you do?

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Katerina Lorenzatos Makris, a career news reporter and fiction author, is RescueDiva.com’s founder and editor. Her fiction includes 17 novels for Simon and Schuster, E.P. Dutton, Avon, and other major publishers (under the name Kathryn Makris), as well as a teleplay for CBS-TV, and a short story for The Bark magazine. She has written hundreds of articles for regional wire services and for outlets such as National Geographic Traveler, The San Francisco Chronicle, Travelers’ Tales, NBC’s Petside.com, RescueDiva.com, AnimalIssuesReporter.com, and Examiner.com (Animal Policy Examiner).

Together with coauthor Shelley Frost, Katerina wrote a step-by-step guide for hands-on, in-the-trenches dog rescue, Your Adopted Dog: Everything You Need to Know About Rescuing and Caring for a Best Friend in Need (The Lyons Press).