When you find that one dog with the spark in its eye, it’s almost impossible not to adopt. Betsy Covington experienced this for herself when she first saw Norman, her now 6-year-old Cocker Spaniel. “I saw him in that cage, our eyes met, and it
was history,” Covington said. “I literally couldn’t breathe. I was like, ‘Look, he’s so cute!” And he’s looking at me, and I’m looking at him. I sat down on the floor, and they brought him out, and he’s climbing all over me.” Before Norman found a home with Covington, however, he was one of many homeless dogs in Georgia. “He was found sometime in 2008 wandering beside a road in Chattahoochee County,” Covington said. “They said his hair was long and matted, but somebody picked
percent and we’ve gone down 10 to 15 percent every year since then,” Short said. “Just last month we were down to 25 percent.” One contribution to the lower rate is the shelters’ ability to net-
work foster homes for the young and sick or animals that need socialization training. Without these homes, animal control was forced to euthanize
many of these animals, which they didn’t have the resources to care for, Short said.
him up.”
Norman then stayed at the Columbus Ani- mal Care and Control Center before he was selected to live in a shelter. “A lot of hands touched him before he found his home,” Covington said. “Those people are just great in my eyes because he would have been put down. He’s just a great little dog, and I guess that’s the point of the story that these kinds of dogs exist at shelters all over the country.”
Though Norman was once a stray, he is now a valued member of the Covington family. “As far as we can tell, he’s full-blooded
Cocker Spaniel, but mostly he’s just cute,” Covington said. “I take him to all these festi- vals in town and little kids just maul him. He thinks it’s fabulous. His little stumpy tail goes back and forth as fast as it can go.”
A large portion of the animals in need of foster care are neo-
nates, Smith-Stull said. “A neonate is a puppy or kitten that’s too young to live on its
own, so it has to be bottle-fed every two hours, 24 hours a day,” Smith-Stull said. “We take as many neonatal kittens as we can and place them in foster home for bottle-feeding because they were being euthanized by the hundreds.” Other homes care for animals when their owners are no longer
12
Columbus and the Valley
AUGUST 2013
MEET OUR COVER DOG
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