Saving Sadie Read online

  “To Sadie,” she said in her melodious Italian accent, raising her glass of wine in a toast. “Tomorrow, she will make us proud.”

  The next morning we were up early and Barbara drove us the forty-five minutes to the O2 Media studio complex in Pompano Beach, where The Balancing Act and several other Lifetime shows are filmed. My nerves were a little jangly as we entered the building, wheeling Sadie in her wagon, but everyone on the staff was fantastic and quickly put us all at ease. We were taken to the green room and briefed by one of the show’s production staff. The host of The Balancing Act, Olga Villaverde, a slim, glamorous woman with dark eyes and long black hair, popped her head in to introduce herself and say hi, which also helped calm our nerves.

  While Barbara was in hair and makeup, I got Sadie ready for the show, draping her in her big fluffy green-and-yellow feather boa and securing around her neck her special “bling” collar, black fabric studded with rows of glittering rhinestones. The yellow-and-green color scheme was intentional; her wagon was draped in her signature yellow-and-green fabric cover with SAVINGSADIE.COM on the sides, along with the most well-known photo of her, the close-up of her face from when the bullet hole in her forehead was still visible. I wore a white cowl-neck sweater and yellow blazer to complement the overall color scheme.

  Then it was time to go on set to start the taping. “Okay, Sadie,” I told her, bending down to whisper in her ear, “it’s show time.”

  The set itself was deceptively small, designed to look like a casual, contemporary living room with a hardwood floor, faux-brick wall, tall potted plants, and a false window, lit from behind, displaying The Balancing Act title and logo. The director positioned Barbara and me side by side on the beige sofa with large, overstuffed pillows propping up our backs, while Olga sat in a chair beside our sofa. Sadie stayed in her wagon, parked directly in front of us.

  The red light glowed above camera number one as the director cued Olga and called out, “Action.” With a deep breath and a dazzling smile, Olga looked straight into the camera and began. “This morning I would like to share with you an amazing story about an amazing dog, who was shot twice, left for dead, but was given a second chance and beat the odds. Let’s take a look.”

  The camera moved in close on Sadie in her wagon and I watched as she gazed straight into the camera, the green and yellow feathers of her boa fluttering around her face. Olga continued in a somber voiceover as the camera lingered on Sadie, After having her litter of puppies, she was found in the mountains, barely alive. Someone shot her between the eyes and in her back. Sadie was left there to die.

  A photo montage of Sadie’s key moments played out on the screen, a photo showing her with the stitches in her head after her surgery, scenes of her swimming, trying out her leg braces, and exercising on the trampoline. Sadie was taken to the hospital, her prognosis grim; her chances of survival, not good, Olga explained over the pictures.

  After Olga summarized the rest of Sadie’s story, the scene returned to the studio and Olga introduced Barbara and me. “Joal, let me start with you.” Olga pivoted toward me. “How is Sadie doing now?”

  “It’s been an incredible journey, Olga,” I replied. “It’s just been amazing. From the day I picked her up, she’s just taught me so very much. Sadie just absolutely absorbs life, and she teaches other people, too, about acceptance.”

  “You know what’s amazing, and we’ve talked about this on the phone before you came here; you told me that emotionally she’s been through so much, and yet she’s a happy dog,” Olga marveled.

  “She’s amazingly happy,” I emphasized. “She has no memory whatsoever of what happened to her.”

  Then Olga asked me about Sadie’s medications and I showed her the shoebox I had brought from home that had bottles of all Sadie’s pills and supplements. Olga looked astonished when I told her that Sadie took twenty-five pills twice every day, which gave us a nice segue into talking about GooFurr and the difference it had made in our lives.

  Barbara then explained what GooFurr is and demonstrated how it works by taking one of Sadie’s pills and crushing it with the back of a spoon until it was all powder, then squeezed out a length of GooFurr from the tube and mixed it well with a tiny spatula. “It camouflages the taste of the pill,” Barbara explained, “you know, some pills taste worse than others.”

  Once the powder had been fully mixed into the paste, Barbara handed me the spatula with the GooFurr, I held it out to Sadie, and she licked it clean with three quick, committed swipes of her tongue. Yes! Go Sadie! That’s my girl—perfectly on cue, just like an old pro! Having hit her mark, Sadie went back to relaxing in front of the camera, her chin resting contentedly on the edge of the wagon.

  “For you, I can only imagine this was a lifesaver, Joal,” Olga said.

  “An absolute lifesaver,” I replied. “Because you can only imagine, if Sadie takes this many pills per day, anybody out there, any viewer that has to give their dog or cat one or two pills a day, it’s going to be an absolute godsend to them.”

  Our segment lasted a little over six minutes, but the whole interview seemed to pass in the blink of an eye as suddenly the director was signaling Olga to wrap it up. “Thank you. God bless you for saving her,” Olga said to me, leaning closer and pressing her palms together as if in prayer. “When Sadie gets better, you come back and tell us how she’s doing.”

  Her offer touched me deeply. “We will,” I promised. “Thank you so much.”

  Barbara, Sadie, and I were all on cloud nine as we drove back to the hotel, giggling like schoolgirls about our exciting adventure. Since the show was taped and not live, they couldn’t tell us for certain when it would actually be broadcast, but it would likely be at least another month or so. I couldn’t wait for all of Sadie’s fans around the country to have the chance to witness her in action, lighting up the screen.

  * * *

  Our time in Florida was brief as later that day we headed home. Getting back to Wisconsin proved to be a bit more difficult than getting to Florida had been. Once we arrived at the airport and checked our luggage, Sadie needed a potty break before the flight, but there was nowhere close by for her to go, so I wheeled her back outside toward the parking structure and found a motorcycle cop directing traffic. “This is my dog Sadie, and she really needs to go potty,” I explained, “but she can’t walk, so we need some help.”

  The cop very kindly stopped traffic in both directions and waved us across the road, where there was a small grassy knoll between sections of the parking structure—an ideal spot for Sadie to relieve herself. The cop was even kind enough to stop traffic for us on the way back to the terminal.

  Once we were back inside the airport things were chaotic as no one from the airline had gotten the message that I was traveling with an Emotional Support Animal even though everything had supposedly been arranged beforehand. Fortunately, I had my ESA certificate in my purse, and as soon as I produced it, everything fell into place. Sadie, as usual, was a trouper, even as the TSA agents passed her wagon through the metal detector several times and then seemed to subject her to excessive wanding. What they thought she might be hiding, I cannot imagine.

  The only disappointment I felt about our trip to Florida was the fact that I couldn’t take Sadie to the beach. I had so hoped we could spend some time at the beach and she could dip her paws into the ocean, but the beach at Fort Lauderdale was so wide, and the sand so hot, soft, and deep, it was impossible to pull the wagon any distance. The wheels kept sinking into the pale yellow sand, and the shoreline was too far for me to carry Sadie there.

  Despite what the vets in Madison had said, I still dreamed of someday watching Sadie run, wild and free, across a wide-open beach, sand flying from her feet, if not the ocean then closer to home, Milwaukee’s Bradford Beach on Lake Michigan, with me throwing her a big stick or a Frisbee and she scrambling to grab it and bring it back to me clenched between her teeth.

  “Maybe someday, Sadie,” I told her as I buckled
myself in for the return flight home. “I still believe that can happen. And even if it doesn’t, you are free in so many other ways. Your spirit, your soul, they know no restriction.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Sadie Rides the Seadog

  I don’t believe in coincidences; I believe in kismet. I believe that things happen for a reason, that an invisible force, an unseen hand, is always working behind the scenes, guiding our lives, our paths, our destinies, from a place far beyond our limited comprehension. If not, then how else to explain the remarkable fact that our episode of The Balancing Act aired on Thursday, April 24, 2014, Sadie’s second re-birthday, the two-year anniversary of the day our paths first crossed at the no-kill shelter in Kenosha?

  We had filmed the segment in mid-March, so it could have aired any time after that. And yet, it aired on the morning of Sadie’s special day. I had to believe it was fate that caused those special Sadie stars to align, fate that placed the planets in that unique and proper order.

  I gathered all the animals into my bed early that cold spring morning and snuggled them close as the TV warmed up and The Balancing Act’s theme music kicked in at six thirty a.m. Normally I’d be up much earlier and already on my way to work at that hour, but I had taken the day off to help Sadie celebrate.

  Seeing and hearing oneself on TV is always a strange experience, giving us rare insight into how we must look and sound to others. Our six-minute segment seemed to fly by just as quickly on television as it had live in the studio, but I was thrilled with how beautiful and expressive Sadie looked and how excellently she played to the camera. (I thought Barbara and I did pretty well, too—no obvious signs of the nerves we were both feeling!)

  At the end of the segment our website URL was displayed prominently on the screen and Olga gave SavingSadie.com a nice mention as well. I was thrilled to think how many new people were now going to be coming to the website to find out more about Sadie.

  Sure enough, the program had barely ended when my cell phone starting buzzing with congratulatory calls and texts from friends and contacts who had seen the show, and when I turned on my computer and logged in I saw we had been inundated with website hits and emails from people wanting to know more about Sadie. We also learned from staff at The Balancing Act that our segment was scheduled to run again on May 1, so even more people would see Sadie on screen and hear her important message.

  We celebrated Sadie’s second re-birthday privately that day, at home with just the five of us—me, Sadie, Sparky, Miss Kitty, and Kit Kat. I was planning to throw a huge public re-birthday party for her, even bigger than the one we’d had the year before, only this time in August, at an outdoor venue where other animals could attend to help celebrate with Sadie, and we could have food and live music, and raise lots of money for Sadie and for other good causes.

  But that was down the road. For now, it was enough to spend quiet time alone with my fur babies, watching Sadie’s star performance light up the TV. Sadie lay beside me, curled up in the blankets atop my bed, her eyes closed and face relaxed as I gently stroked her from head to tail. Sadie, when I think back to that day two years ago, I barely recognize you as the dog I came across then. That dog was so thin, so filthy and terrified; that dead-eyed dog was just listless and vacant. To see you now, so big and bold and beautiful, so confident and outgoing, it’s nothing short of miraculous. But I realized, with a start, that I no longer recognized the person I was two years ago, either. That person who thought she had it all but in fact had no idea what she was truly missing until Sadie came along.

  * * *

  On April 17 the Wisconsin Gazette, one of the state’s largest LGBT publications, ran another long feature story about Sadie, beneath the headline, SHOT AND LEFT FOR DEAD, SADIE IS NOW A CHAMPION FOR ANIMAL WELFARE. The article summarized Sadie’s background for readers who were unfamiliar with her story, and also gave an update on where she was now while describing our desire to work toward changes in the laws governing animal abuse and the punishment for perpetrators. I was touched to think how we had received such a warm welcome and support from the gay and lesbian community, who really connected with Sadie and took her to their hearts.

  The Wisconsin Gazette article also yielded another unexpected benefit: it brought an incredible new member to Team Sadie, Kim Becker. Kim saw the article in the Gazette and immediately contacted me to offer us her services in helping Sadie’s rehab. Kim’s credentials were, frankly, mind-boggling.

  A professional fitness, sports, and wellness specialist, Kim was one of the first women in the United States to be certified as an athletic trainer in the late 1970s. She had over thirty years of experience in the field and had worked with superstars such as Martina Navratilova, Steffi Graf, and the Chicago White Sox baseball team, and had even been invited to be part of the medical team for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

  Kim had never worked with animals before, she was strictly a trainer for humans, but she had been so moved by Sadie’s story in the Gazette that she wanted to work with Sadie! What an incredible opportunity, not to mention yet another example of someone coming into my life and transforming it, and all because of Sadie.

  Kim came to the house a few days after calling me about the article and she immediately put together a plan to work with Sadie two to three times a week, whenever she had time and could fit it in, either here at home or when I was at work and Sadie was at Jeff’s. Her goal was to help Sadie improve her functioning both physically and mentally.

  As you might expect of someone with her background, Kim was a tough taskmaster, but she was also a genius when it came to kicking up Sadie’s exercises, adding push-ups and stretching, figuring out better ways to position her on the Power Plate, and thinking about how better to address the nerve and muscle damage in Sadie’s back and legs. Kim was always looking for new things that we hadn’t tried before. She firmly believed that stimulating Sadie’s mind was as important as stimulating her body, so she devised many so-called Brain Games and activities to get Sadie thinking about and perceiving the world around her in new ways.

  For example, Kim invented a shell game in which Sadie had to turn a wheel to figure out where a dog treat was hidden, and another game in which Sadie had to guess in which hand Kim held a treat. Kim also felt it was important for Sadie’s brain development and sensory perception to experience fast movement, that sensation of hurtling forward, to remind her of what it felt like to run.

  Kim would drag Sadie in her sled up to the top of a hill and then let her slide down, picking up speed until she was virtually airborne, ears back, tongue lolling, the wind in her face. Sadie loved these games and experiences, and I was touched to see the close bond she was developing with Kim, who was tough with Sadie when she needed to be, but who also understood the value in sometimes being tender.

  * * *

  By the summer of 2014, Sadie had been doing meet-and-greets and personal appearances for almost two years, speaking and presenting at stores, businesses, festivals, and so forth, in an informal way. We had also spoken at libraries and before various school groups, emphasizing Sadie’s core message about accepting those beings, human and nonhuman, with disabilities and other special needs.

  Even though we had been doing this work for a while, I wished to do a lot more, reaching more people with a more comprehensive and organized program and plan. Sadie had survived, she had been saved for a reason; she had an important message to send, while my own mission was to do everything I could to help her make that happen. We had waited long enough; it was time to get serious about this. I rearranged my work schedule so I could do more client work at nights and on weekends, freeing up more time during the workweek, especially so we might become more involved with talking to kids at local schools.

  Sadie and I put together a fifty-minute program that was appropriate for children of grade-school age and that could be presented in a school library or ordinary classroom. Our catchphrase became, “Think about what you can do, and not wha
t you can’t do, just like Sadie!”

  I wanted kids to be able to get up close and personal with Sadie, to touch her, pet her, talk to her, to be able to see for themselves how she was different from other dogs, but also see that she was friendly and gentle and happy, just like any other dog. I wanted to show them that they shouldn’t fear Sadie because she was different, just like they shouldn’t fear adults or other kids who were different, either. I wanted to emphasize to the kids the importance of being kind to every living creature, human or animal.

  Because this type of work was new to me, I had no idea where to begin in terms of contacting schools to see if they’d be interested in having Sadie and me come give our presentation. But Sadie had taught me that if you don’t know how to do something, just jump right in anyway, because even if you fail you will have learned something just by trying. So I put together my project materials, a pitch letter email and pdf flyer, along with a laminated information sheet to hand out in person that described my presentation. I also created some Sadie-themed bookmarks, postcards, flyers, and business cards. Then I made a list of all the elementary schools in the Milwaukee and Waukesha districts and began a blanket campaign of contacting those schools via email.

  As I expected, most of the schools didn’t respond, or if they did, it was with a polite decline, but eventually I got my first nibble, when Garden Homes Lutheran School, a private elementary school in Milwaukee’s inner city, invited us to come speak. The school was in one of the city’s most socio-economically challenged neighborhoods, and yet all the students were well-behaved, energetic, and curious, looking absolutely adorable in their matching school uniforms of white shirts and black pants for the boys and white blouses and black jumpers for the girls.

  The children’s eyes all lit up when the teacher introduced us and I wheeled Sadie into the classroom. I could feel their energy bubbling over, so I made a point of saying, “Now, if you’re really good, you’ll get to pet Sadie at the end.”