Star's World

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Star is my second tripawd. Maya, my canine soulmate found on the beach in the Central African country of Gabon lived a good life in Vermont until she died of cancer in 2007. She was a good friend, and for years I couldn’t even dream of finding a dog to take her place. Jump 3 years later and I had picked up the dangerous habit of trolling the Humane Society website. My husband found me in front of the computer one night, sobbing while staring  at a dog’s profile. He took one look at the picture of “Hop-along-Cassidy” and asked, “Do you need to get this dog?” I called the shelter the very next morning to put him on hold. I was terrified that there might be another tripawd lover out there that also had sights on this guy, but alas there wasn’t. I rushed over to the shelter to meet him, and the moment he looked up at us with his big, brown aussie eyes, I knew he was supposed to be a part of our family. We (the children) renamed him “Star”. A dog who can run at 35 mile per hour just shouldn’t be called “Hop-along.” I know he can run at this tremendous speed because as soon as we got him home we made the quick discovery that he is an obsessive car-chaser. The answer to the mystery of his missing leg seemed to quickly be solved. “Why, I can take him off the leash way off in the woods,” I thought to myself. No way. He found his way back to the road, and by the time I arrived, I was just in time to see him racing down the street, barking at the car’s back tires. I found him an hour later more than a 1/2 a mile down the road. We have taken him to countless trainers and veterinary behaviorists, but we don’t get any closer to solving this addiction. The boy has a thing about cars. We have completely rearranged our expectations and routines to keep this dog safe. He lives on a leash. He hardly leaves the house (except for his 2 hours of leash walking a day- he’s an aussie, of course!). He trains, trains, trains. Whew! If I had known what work this would be when I first glanced at his picture, would I have taken him in? Of course! We are meant for each other. And in his short 6 months with us, our lives have taken such twists and turns that I could have never imagined. That night that I found him on the internet, I thought that he needed us in a big way. What I didn’t foresee was that in the months to come, we would actually need him in the biggest way of all…