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| The Beginning | The Rescue | The Healing | Ariel's Thoughts |
Ariel first entered the Irish Setter Club of America Rescue program in late 1997.
I received a call from Marilee Larson, Rescue Co-ordinator for the Irish Setter Club of America, telling me that her owner wanted to place her (as he was "over his limit" for dogs, and he wanted to keep one of her puppies). During the same call, Marilee mentioned a family in Kentucky that was looking for an irish. Phone calls were made, arrangements set up - it appeared that Ariel had found a new home! Unfortunately, Ariel got lost in all the hustle and bustle and confusion that comes with the Christmas season, and a "far away rescue". Ariel never made it to Kentucky.
She popped up again in March, when her owner called me and said he wanted her gone "that day". I asked Garland Kimmer if he could evaluate her to see if she would be a good candidate for rescue (her owner had described her as having a "shy temperament").
Ariel is a name that conjures all kinds of associations for those of us who teach English for a living. It literally means an elemental spirit or denizen of the air. It's also the name of Prospero's fairy messenger in Shakespeare's The Tempest and the name of one of the moons of Uranus. In all of these instances, the name implies a creature who possesses both great beauty and delicacy. All in all, it's a name uniquely suited to an Irish Setter. Ariel is a dog who lives up to her name, though like her Shakespearean namesake she needed a little help to come into her own.
I don't know that I'd really sat down and thought about what it meant to help out with a rescue when I volunteered to drive over to Greensboro, NC to examine a possible Irish Setter who needed to be taken into the rescue program. I do know that I was uneasy about the part of town that I was driving through and that there was a fenced yard around the house containing three Irish Setters who were barking out a greeting.
The owner of these Irish Setters had originally called Irish Setter rescue around Christmas about placing an intact bitch, who'd been bred at least once. Everyone thought that she was going to a new home in Kentucky, but as is often the case around the holidays it seems that something happened, or didn't happen, and she stayed in Greensboro. Ariel was still in Greensboro when Easter rolled around. Claudia Aaron-Sneed, one of the North Carolina rescue co-ordinators, got another call from the owner who said that he had to place her THAT DAY before going out of town. That phone call prompted a flurry of e-mail, a couple of phone calls, and an offer to ride over to see if I thought we could place this girl. Her owner had described her as "shy, not like a normal Irish," so I went in wondering just what I was about to see.
Nothing prepared me for Ariel. Not the three dogs I have at home, two of whom are rescues but maybe from more benign circumstances. As we drove up, a man emerged from the house and wanted to know if I was the person who'd called him earlier in the day about his Irish Setter. I was. I had spoken with him for the first time on Monday night, asking if I could come over to see her as I drove home for Easter on Saturday. Acting on an impulse, I called Thursday afternoon to confirm the time and found out that he and his family would be leaving on Friday. He was adamant that to see the dog, we had to come over right then. Not quite sure what to expect, I called a friend to ride with me (and act as a witness since something didn't feel quite right, maybe my imagination) and headed to Greensboro. I also called to make sure that the foster home we had lined up could take her that night, since I'd told her that we wouldn't have the dog before Monday.
Back to Ariel, since this is her story. After ascertaining that I was the person he'd spoken with, the man brought one of his Irish out of the yard. I'd already petted the three dogs at the fence and noticed that they all looked thin and had poor, brittle coats. When he brought Ariel out of the fence, I knew instantly that she was coming home with me that afternoon. I couldn't leave her there for another instant. I'd been told that she was shy, yet she came right over, gave me her paw and waited to be petted. You could tell by looking in her face that she was a wonderful dog who'd probably never been outside the fenced yard at the back of the house. Her coat was thin and brittle, as well as being completely gone on her stomach. She had mats under each ear, on her tail feathers, in her feathering, and under her arms. The end of her tail was a bloody pulp, bald, swollen and cracked three inches from the tip. When I ran my hand down her back, I could feel every nuance of the vertebrae and ribs. It wasn't like the muscular thinness of a lean field dog, but the thinness you see on the verge of starvation when the body starts to consume its own tissues. And then there were her ears. Growing up with cockers and owning three setters as an adult, I felt like I'd seen a few ear infections. But I'd never seen anything like this. Both ears were bleeding, full of waxy build-up, and SMELLED. You could smell the ear infection when you got within ten feet of her.
After seeing her, petting her, and being hugged by this "shy" Irish setter, there was no way that Ariel was going back in that fenced yard. She deserved better than this. The owner did have her vet records, so I called the clinic and chatted with the vet for just a few minutes. Turns out that she had weighed only 55.5 lbs. in August when she was in last (her frame will hold 65-70 lbs), and that her ear infection had been longstanding even then. I asked to see her kennel in the back yard, but the owner didn't want to show me that part of the yard. Part of me is glad about this, since I have this vision of the puppy mills shown on the ABC News a few months ago still in my head. Part of me is worried, because he still owns those two intact males and would not surrender Ariel's AKC registration papers when he gave us the dog. This part of my mind hasn't been eased by two stray Irish having been found in Greensboro in the last three weeks. I looked at one of them, and it was the spitting image of Ariel.
We brought her back to Chapel Hill that evening, after a good stop at the local Animal Protection Society's leash-free play area. Ariel got along with other dogs famously but was much more interested in exploring the new scents around her. She is definitely a bird dog, finding each scent and carefully checking it out (even going on point at a cardinal). When she finally came back to my place, I introduced her to my dogs. She loved the males, but didn't waste any time in letting Deirdre know who was the boss. Ariel was very hungry for human attention, wanting to sit and be petted without interruption. Well, relatively without interruption, since I did take half an hour or so to completely de-mat her. Judging by her reactions, I'm not sure that this lovely girl had ever seen a brush before.
A little later, Barbara Long, Ariel's new foster-mom, called to say that she'd be by after she finished teaching her class that evening. Barbara is an Animal Behaviorist who sits on the boards of the Orange Co. and Chatham Co. Animal Protection Societies. She'd recently lost one of her Brittanies and had a temporary opening in her house. Ariel took to her quickly, and we agreed to meet at the vet's office the next morning to get Ariel a full exam.
We all showed up at 10:30 on Good Friday at Hill Creek Veterinary Hospital in Pittsboro. Barbara knew Dr. Bonnie Terll from her work with the Chatham Co. APS, and she didn't disappoint, being excellent at working with a very tentative setter who'd already had a kind of culture shock in just under 24 hours. Ariel had had a restless first night with Barbara, getting up several times to go out with diarrhea. Barbara slept on the sofa to be near her. After a 10 minute wait, we got Ariel into the examining room, and her physical was underway. She weighed only 50 pounds that morning, so the first concern was going to be to put some weight on her and start using a good dog food. The bald spot on her stomach turned out to contain several subcutaneous pustules and was diagnosed as a severe skin infection (something else that had to be taken care of before she could be spayed). They cleaned up the tail without finding any bacterial or fungal infections, tested for heartworms (she was negative), and did the rest of the full exam. Her ear infections received the most attention. Ariel's severe ear infection turned out to be plural, with a bacterial infection on top of a yeast infection. The vet decided to treat the bacterial infection and then look at the yeast infection. She also turned out to have whip worms and some cysts that looked suspiciously like giardia in her stool. What really scared me that morning was not that we found so much that needed to be taken care of, but that her previous owner thought he was taking good care of her and that he still had at least two more dogs.
Ariel's story will continue as told by Barbara Long in the near future.
| The Beginning | The Rescue | The Healing | Ariel's Thoughts |
Still being written - - - watch for more
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| Ariel and her Rescuers, Garland Kimmer and Barbara Long | Ariel meets her new Family |
Ariel met her new family at the Furniture City Kennel Club show in High Point, NC on Sunday, May 10th. Cyndi and Dennis drove up from Atlanta to "meet her" - Cyndi later told us that she saw Ariel sitting there beside Barbara, and she just knew that this was her girl - it just had to be, she looked so much like their first irish setter (who also happened to be a "rescue").
| The Beginning | The Rescue | The Healing | Ariel's Thoughts |
Date: Mon, 11 May 1998 22:52:51 -0400
From: Cyndi Masters
To: Garland Kimmer,
Claudia Aaron-Sneed
Subject: Ariel Masters
Greetings To You Both,
Our first night and full day with our new family member went pretty well! Ariel is very affectionate with all of us, but she's crazy about my son, Daniel. The feeling is mutual. She is adjusting quite nicely to our home, with the exception of one of our bathrooms. We can't quite figure out why she is afraid to enter that particular room. Daniel thinks it's the wallpaper. Even though it isn't the prettiest of wallpapers, I don't think that's the problem.
She traveled beautifully all the way home. She even let us know when she needed a bathroom break while we were in route from Charlotte to home. During the night, she was a little restless, but all I had to do was tell her it was ok and go back to bed. Come 6 AM, she let me know it was time to go out. Her eating has been a little off, but we found that changing the type feed/water bowls made a difference. She seems apprehensive around the stainless steel ones.
A few tid-bits about our day - She sits beautifully for us when asked, and even waits patiently when we are having our meals. However, she nudges my book to the side and places her head on my lap whenever I am reading. Outings are great; she's so gorgeous when running! The kitchen floor is a favorite resting place when she is not on her bed. Surprisingly, the dishwasher being on
does not scare her from laying there. We finally got a chance to hear her "voice" when she barked at a neighbors cat. Fortunately, she refrained from chasing the cat when she was told to come along.
Barbara has done a wonderful job in preparing her for her new life. I'm so tickled it's with us. More soon. Cyndi
Date: Sun, 17 May 1998 23:59:27 -0400
From: Cyndi Masters
To: Garland Kimmer
Subject: Re: First Week
This has been an amazing week! The adjustment to having a new member of the family is going very well, and Ariel is becoming attached to us. Since our second day together, she has eaten just as Barbara described. Sleeping through the night is not a problem, even though we haven't purchased her a crate yet.
Her apprehension with new objects is still apparent, but she investigates and reaches acceptance readily. Her manners are improving every day. "Sit", "come", and "load" are consistent. "Down" and "off " are getting there. The pawing still needs work, but I can tell it will improve as we establish other ways for her to signal what she wants (click training works so well for this.)
She's quite a creature of habit; you can almost set a clock by her requests for going out. Fortunately, she's very patient with me if I can't take her out immediately following her first signal. She's still more than my daughter can handle outside the confines of our home, but inside is fine. She's great company on walks even though she still pulls hard when we don't use the head collar Barbara loaned us. Several neighbors have stopped to admire her. When this happens, I can't help but think about what a long way she has come in a relatively short time.
Now, something we've really got to work on is getting Ariel to refrain from pushing items out of my hands whenever I am reading. So far, she only does this to me. She still follows me around the house most of the time, but it's evolving into a "check up" versus "taking every step I take."
Thursday was an extra special day - Ariel played ball with my son for the first time! We've since caught her in the act of playing with the ball by herself. Her interest in the ball doesn't last very long, but it's a start. During our walks at the edge of the woods, she is beginning to notice birds. She's even held a stance a few times.
You had mentioned possibly faxing some vet info to us. Our fax capabilities are limited right now, so I'll send you the fax number when things are running smoother. Thanks for the directions for subscribing to setters-l. I submitted my name tonight.
Cyndi
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