How’d That High-Dollar Dog End Up Here?

Poodle Rescue Stories

We purchased only one poodle puppy in our long career of being “Poodle People.” That was Kenya, our female black. The rest were rescues, and we’re currently on the list for more. How we managed to end up with these beautiful, dearly beloved dogs makes for some fantastic stories.

It was 1986 when Uncle Bob came into our life. A good friend was driving her contractor husband’s pickup truck toward town from Jacksonville Beach in a driving rainstorm one non-descript north Florida afternoon. In those days Beach Boulevard had entire stretches of undeveloped woodland in between intensive gated community housing and apartment complexes, strip malls and such. Just across the bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway the vehicles ahead were slamming on their brakes and sliding in the water, so she slowed way down while trying to catch a glimpse of what was causing the panic.

You never know. It could have been deer in the road, maybe injured, already dead, or too frightened to get out of the way. Might have been a big ‘gator trying to get from one apartment complex’s bermed pond to one across the highway. There were 4 lanes of wet pavement with a grassy median between them. That’s where she focused, hoping whatever critters were stranded had at least made it safely there.

Then she saw them. Immediately put on her flashers and pulled off the road to the median shoulder. Two of the biggest, most beautiful black dogs she’d ever laid eyes on, romping and wrestling in the middle of the median as if they didn’t care one bit about the storm, the traffic, or the dangerous panic they were causing among drivers on both sides. Traffic was heavy and getting heavier on this 55 mph highway, they had little chance of getting wherever they belonged in one piece.

Heart pounding, hoping to get safely back in traffic before someone rear-ended the truck (two of her kids were in there), she jumped out, opened the tailgate and sternly ordered those dogs into the truck bed. They dutifully obeyed, smiling broadly and happy to go for a ride. She made a U-turn at the next intersection light and drove straight to our house, which was then suddenly very full of very large, very wet, very black, very male standard poodles.

We’d met some toy and miniature poodles in our lives, but never met anything like these guys. Our friend joked that these were what poodles look like before they get put in the dryer to shrink. We were plainly amazed. Our Jack Russell, Gnarly Ted, had died just the week before. We had a dog-shaped hole in our lives for sure, but these were obviously someone’s high-dollar purebreds. We agreed to keep one of them while our friend took the other, until we could track the owner down from the vaccination tags. We figured the vet clinic that had given the shots would know very well whose dogs these were.

We had Bob for a week before the owner came forward to claim them. He was about 6 or 7 months old, full of fun and energy, smarter than any animal we’d ever spent time with. He was well trained to the leash, but loved to romp on the sand and in the surf at the beach. Where our teenage son took him twice a day morning and evening. At first we thought maybe he volunteered so readily because the beautiful dog was a positive babe-magnet, but it quickly became clear he and Bob had fallen hopelessly in love with each other.

When we took him home to his ‘mother’ our son cried. He’d tried every argument he could think of for us NOT giving Bob back to that ‘other’ family. They didn’t look after him well. They didn’t care if he got run over. They didn’t deserve him… but of course, we had to take him back.

His ‘mother’ was a rich single mother who lived in a big house with her 10-year old daughter in one of the gated housing communities along Beach Boulevard, near where our friend had found the dogs. Bob was “the pup” she’d been given by her brother who owned the older poodle. He’d been set to stud, she got pick of the litter. She was trying to keep both dogs while her brother was overseas, but complained that they were completely unmanageable escape artists. While we were there we observed the young daughter’s treatment of Bob, which was disturbingly abusive. No wonder they kept running away, we thought. But we did our duty, and drove home without him.

A week later the lady called us. Said she would trade Bob (who she’d decided she just couldn’t keep) for a birthday party clown show for her daughter. Our son SkyPup immediately volunteered, even cancelled taping of his weekly children’s show on a local television station so he could do the gig. He’d made up his mind that it was his job to save Bob from an uncaring and abusive owner because he and Bob belonged together forever…

And so they did.

That’s how we got our first poodle, and there have been more. I’ve written about the rescue of Beau in another post. And I hope I’ll have another poodle rescue or two to report by the time I’m done reporting the ones that came before. Below are links to Poodle Rescue groups, and to Sandra’s rescue page over at Standard Poodles USA. Do check out some of the great poodle rescue stories linked there, and consider fostering or adopting a poodle or two yourself. They truly are the most amazing, most devoted, most intelligent dogs in existence!

Links:

Poodle Rescue @ Standard Poodles USA

Florida Poodle Rescue

Poodle Rescue of New England

Coastal Rescue

Carolina Poodle Rescue

Norcal Rescue [Northern California]

Nebraska Rescue

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