AR-News: (IN - US)Unwanted dog on death row gives hope and sunshine to sick child

[Snugglezzz at aol.com]

Greene County's Largest Daily Newspaper Tuesday, February 17, 2004 

Dog, boy become best friends

By Lana Robertson, STAFF WRITER
A dog that was unwanted and slated to die in an animal shelter not only survived and found a home, but has given new hope and a ray of sunshine to a sick child.

Lisa Pouliot, a Jasonville woman whose love of animals prompted her to found a humane group called Friends of Animals, recently adopted a dog to a family with a very sick child. The dog and the little boy have since become inseparable.

The mixed-breed dog, CoCo, was adopted by Mike and Lesa Key of Hymera as a companion for their 10-year-old son, Erik Sheffler, who suffers from kidney failure. Erik undergoes dialysis at Riley Hospital in Indianapolis every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The Keys hope and pray a donor will be found soon to give Erik a new kidney.

"Erik is doing about as well as he can right now," said his mother. "He still has a lot of seizures, he's in a wheelchair because he had a stroke at 2 years old. He was born in total kidney failure and started on dialysis at four days old. Doctors didn't think he'd be born alive -- but I refused to have an abortion."

Lesa said the relationship with her son's new pet began about a week before his 10th birthday.

"I was thinking about how that even though it's been difficult, we are so lucky. Here we are 10 years later. No one ever thought this possible. I was reflecting on how special it is for him to have reached the age of 10 after the things he's went through. I wanted to give him something really special. I myself have always been an animal lover and I guess I decided how nice it would be to give him a new friend. And then I got to thinking about instead of purchasing a dog, why not check out local shelters. My husband and I decided we'd rather give a home to someone who needed one. Well, we looked around at different shelters on the web and when we saw CoCo we stopped, we knew he was the one."

It was New Year's Day.

"We were hoping that when we called the next day that he would still be there. I called and explained that we wanted to adopt CoCo for Erik. If it weren't for (Pouliot) he would have been gone. He was supposed to be put down but was put into a foster home. CoCo is the perfect addition to our family -- he is the most wonderful, loving, well-behaved pet. I cannot tell you how much every one of us love him. He will never be alone again."

Erik tells everyone at Riley Hospital about his dog.

"He says he loves him with all his heart," his mother said.

CoCo is providing companionship and unconditional love to Erik.

Pouliot believes the way the adoption came about was more than coincidence.

CoCo and his companion, Scotty, were dumped in Greene County a few months ago by an owner who was moving away. They were taken in by the Greene County Humane Society. When they weren't adopted, they were put on the list of animals to be humanely euthanized.

When Pouliot learned about the dogs, she picked them up -- with the intent of finding good homes for them. Pouliot hates to see any healthy animal euthanized.

"When (GCHS animal control officer) Rita (White) told me the dogs were next on the list to die, we had to do something," Pouliot said. "We got them, took them to be neutered and had a rescue group lined up to take them."

The dogs had been raised together and were obviously faithful to each other.

"They were very reliant on each other," Pouliot noted.

Unfortunately, the little black dog Scotty fell ill with Parvo -- a virus that often kills dogs.

"No one will take them sick and I had hoped to place them together," Pouliot said. She spent three days medicating and forcing liquids into the dog.

"CoCo was the most loyal dog ever," she said. "He stuck to his buddy's side like glue. You could see the worry on his face. It was the sweetest thing ever."

Pouliot had listed the dogs on the Friends of Animals Web site -- petfriendsgc at aol.com -- "and was getting calls from all over" for Scotty. "He's apparently a rare breed, a Tibetan Terrier," she noted. "I had wanted to place them together and had a home lined up in another state for them eventually. But by then I was so strongly attached to Scotty, it was killing me to think of letting him go, and I feared people were just agreeing to take CoCo to get to Scotty. We had no offers for poor CoCo."

After more than a month, "we were getting desperate," Pouliot said. "I'd had to rehouse poor CoCo at another foster home because my dog was getting aggressive with him. We resigned ourselves to having to keep CoCo in foster care immediately, maybe forever."

One day, something the woman giving CoCo a foster home said to Pouliot "inspired me to go by the (GCHS animal) shelter on the way home. While there I got involved in trying to help a poor, handicapped old Pomeranian and started listening to the answering machine to see if anyone was looking for the Pom. The machine wouldn't let me skip messages, so I had to listen to over 20 long messages. Buried in those messages was a bright, shining voice asking about a dog they'd seen online."

When Pouliot got home she called the woman who had left the message.

"She said they'd looked online at hundreds of dogs and were initially looking for a bulldog, but when they saw CoCo's face, they just knew that was the dog for them," she said. "Oddly, I didn't think I had CoCo still listed on the animal shelter's Web site," she noted.

Pouliot maintains the Web site for the Greene County Humane Society.

"He was on our Friends of Animals site but somehow, she saw him on the shelter's site and called there," she explained.

After doing a "home check" on the callers -- something Pouliot always does before adopting out a dog -- "I was very happy with them."

CoCo finally had a home.

Pouliot is appreciative of the foster families that provide temporary homes for animals until permanent homes can be found.

"They make it possible for these dogs to get a reprieve on their death sentence," she said.

"More volunteers are desperately needed and applications for foster families are being accepted," she said. "Call to find out about applying and discuss what things you might easily be able to do, to help save a life. It's a great feeling you'll get addicted to.

"If God didn't have a hand in CoCo and the Key family finding each other, it was the strangest coincidence of all times," she said.

"So the boy who wasn't supposed to be here now owns the dog who should have been gone," said Lesa Key. Pretty amazing I think."

Pouliot can be reached by e-mail at: friendsofanimals gc at yahoo.com, or by calling (812) 665-9010 or Julie at 665-3916.

You may write Pouliot at R.R. 2, Box 219, Jasonville, Ind., 47438.