Milagro is the name that former public defender Elie Miller gave to the injured stray dog she was attempting to rescue. [PART 1 HERE] The dog is large-ish black and tan creature who is part German Shepherd, part Rottweiler, part who-knows-what?
When she first encountered Milagro at the end of December, 2009, he lived on a large vacant lot that is situated between the Homeboy Industries offices, where Elie now works, and Men’s Central Jail where she often goes to meet with clients. He caught Elie’s attention because he was so obviously sick and hurting. It turned out the source of the problem was the collar he was wearing that must have been strapped on him when he was puppy, before he was lost or abandoned. Now that he was an adult dog, the over-small collar remained on and had grown into his skin and was literally strangling him. It was also causing an open, infected wound that circled his neck.
Elie began coming to the lot twice a day— at first to feed the dog and then, once he began to trust her, to slip medication into his food.
Her unlikely partner in the rescue was BeeBee (BB), a dread-locked, 50-something homeless man who camped at the edge of the vacant lot and claimed he had long-ago served in the navy on a nuclear submarine.
Before Elie’s arrival, BeeBee never tried to touch Milagro. However, he shared his food with the dog, hoping at least to keep him alive.
Ideally, the animal needed to go to a vet, but Elie worried that any official agency would likely put the sick stray down.
As if to prove the point, shortly after Elie began visiting Milagro, a kindly woman postal inspector who worked nearby and often stopped to bring BeeBee food, had also taken an interest in the dog. Observing Milagro’s obvious distress she told BeeBee she thought the authorities should be called.
“He’s in such pain,” she said. “Maybe he should be euthanized.”
BeeBee shook his head when he told Elie about the exchange. “Don’t we all live our lives in some pain?” he said.
A few days later, Elie found at first one tiny metal cross, sans its chain, in the dirt where she fed Milagro. A couple of days after that, she found two more.
She chose to take the discoveries as a sign—or at the very least a friendly blessing.
“I decided that one was for me, one for BeeBee, one for Milagro.”
FEBRUARY 13
The afternoon before Valentines day, Elie decided the moment had come to attempt to snip off the embedded collar that was continuing to gouge an open sore into Milagro’s neck.
She had been told by well-meaning experts that the task was impossible without tranquilizing the dog. But she was determined to try. She’d given him a long a course of antibiotics and it seemed to bring the infection down at least a little, but the wound was still open and horribly raw.
Elie’s planned strategy was to put small bits of food down on a plate for Milagro, a little at a time, and then snip at the collar while he was eating. More food, more snipping.
It worked—at least for a while. The dog had come to trust Elie to the degree that he seemed unalarmed at her ministrations. After about a half hour of feeding and snipping, she decided she had pushed Milagro far enough for one day.
Back at the office, Elie wrote me:
I was able to snip 3/4 of Milagro’s collar. Besides being difficult to cut (there are metal grommets on [the leather] spaced about every 1/2 inch), Milagro kept turning his head to snap at flies that are eating away at him. But I did it without tranquilizing or sedating him. All the time, he was eating near me with his head down, allowing me to touch his collar!
After she finished her bout of snipping, Elie lingered for a while longer to talk to BeeBee, she said.
“I asked him how long he has been living on the streets. He said, ‘all my life.’
“He listens to a radio station on his headphones. He says it’s 1280, a gospel station which promotes end of world beginning May 2011 & lasting 5 months.
“I suspect BeeBee needs to be rescued too, but he’s been on the street so long….”
FEBRUARY 14
On Sunday, Valentines Day, Elie was ready to try again in the hope of getting the rest of the collar off—namely the part that was embedded in the dog’s skin.
She found the work was much slower going than the day before. “I nearly gave up,” she wrote me later. Plus the flies on the oozing wound were, if anything, worse, making the dog and Elie both crazy.
She worked as carefully as she could trying not to snip any flesh. Finally, amazingly, the collar came free. The leather strap dropped away.
Seeing his tormentor on the ground, Milagro at first sniffed the thing, then grabbed the offending collar in his jaws and trotted around with it for a while, a victory lap of sorts.
Finally, he allowed Elie to take the leather strip away and he skittered to a hole near the vacant lot’s edge where he often goes to hide when there’s a threat.
After Milagro hid out, Elie left to catch up on some work for a while, then came back to the vacant lot, around 4 p.m.
Seeing her approach, Milagro trotted out of his hole to greet her.
“He is like a different dog,” she wrote me, “much more confident. He walks with his tail up! He actually looks happy. BB is amazed.”
Most importantly, she said, Milagro could finally swallow water like a normal dog—without strangling.
At home that night, Elie measured the choking collar. It was 13 inches long. Elie has three dogs of her own. The most recent addition to the group is a Chihuahua she rescued whom she named Pee-Wee. Pee-Wee weighs 11 lbs and his collar measures 10 1/2 inches. How, she wondered, had Milagro survived strapped into a collar a bare 2 1/2 inches larger than that of a Chihuahua?
“My next goal is to see that neck wound heal,” she wrote. “I’ve given him 2 weeks of antibiotics and that is the limit. Someone gave me a saline solution to clean his neck, but that has to wait until I can get him to let me wash/clean it.” Still the wound was looking better, she thought. She hoped so, anyway.
FEB 16
Over the next week, the dog continued to slowly improve.
I went to feed Milagro this morning,” Elie wrote, “and he was standing out in the empty lot; when he saw me, he stared. I walked closer to him and he started jumping around, in a playful manner. He barked too. Then he started to make that funny howling noise my dog Amy makes. What a greeting I got!”
Two days later she had a more colorful report.
“Milagro is doing so well that now he is able to run after a cat in the lot & make it climb a utility pole. BB says he also started barking at people walking on the sidewalk. We agreed he’s tough only because a chainlink fence separates them.
“I feel like BB & I are Milagro’s parents.”
A day later still she wrote:
“Making progress in trying to get Milagro to come to me so I can pet him without enticing him with treats,” Elie wrote. “So far it’s working.”
As for what to do next, now that the collar was gone, her goal, Elie wrote to me, was to get Milagro well enough to move him out of the lot and into an adoptive home by the summer.
TO BE CONTINUED
Note: if you have an interest in adopting or foster parenting either Milagro and/or his girl friend Novia (more about Novia later), Elie may be reached at: sparkarooney@yahoo.com
what an absolute awesome story Celeste — I posted your story on Downtown Dog Rescue’s website. DDR’s founder Lori Weise is also following Milagro and Novia’s story — we hope you get fosters very soon……