The Story of Ella

In the first installment, she was a street waif, scruffy and scared and bleeding from deep puncture wounds.  Cue music from any story of a hard-luck orphan who encounters a good Samaritan at the crucial moment.  

She ended up at Alachua County Animal Services (ACAS).   Since the shelter was very full, there was no room for her to stay there while she was recovering from her wounds.  She was placed on the euthanasia list the day her three-day stray hold was up.   Shelter staff sent out an email to rescue groups, which said  “Sweet, sweet pit mix on Friday’s euth list. Gives kisses!!! Needs TLC before and after wounds heal. Interested? Let us know before 8:30 a.m. Friday.”  Her ridiculously cute underbite sealed the deal.

Ella is the only dog we have pulled without a confirmed foster home.  Something about her was special enough to make us take the risk.  We took her to Sun Kiva, an amazing rescue-friendly boarding kennel (thank you, Louise Kuttler) and came up with a plan that was not much of a plan:  we’d get her a Facebook page, call her “Cinderella,” recruit a bunch of fairy godmothers, and hope that her lost slipper would show up one day in the form of a great permanent home.

Maybe we should have named her “Blanche,” because if anyone ever relied on the kindness of strangers, it was this little dog.  Every step of the way, someone came through to get her to the next stage.

After a week at Sun Kiva, we moved her from the kennel to a temporary foster home, where we learned that she is house-trained and that she is a very picky eater.  After a few weeks there, she moved to another temporary foster family, where we learned that she adores children. 

Fortunately for us, everyone who spent time with Ella fell in love and both her temporary fosters kept her long past their initial commitments.  Ella is typical of many of the pit bulls we have pulled from the shelter – affectionate, athletic, full of energy and enthusiasm for people and life in general, which she demonstrated with a constantly wagging back end and energetic kisses.  But Ella also had a certain je ne sais quois, manifested in her characteristic head tilt. 

The story of Ella is a tale of two rescues – the good and the bad.   The bad part was that we had no plan, and this is a crazy-making and expensive way of doing rescue.  The good part was, well, Ella.  Not once did anyone involved with her rescue regret going out on a limb for this little bundle of charm.

After about a month and a half of antibiotics and temporary foster care, Ella was ready to go to a longer-term foster home and to get ready for adoption.  Once again luck was with us, and Ella became Hillary’s very first foster dog.  Hillary fosters like she’s been doing it all her life.  She took Ella to obedience class, where she learned about being with other dogs, among other things. Because of the attack she had suffered, we were afraid she would be scared of other dogs, but it turned out her barking was friendly excitement.  With a lot of work on Hillary’s part, Ella learned to sit quietly (more or less) when she met new dogs. 

Thanks to generosity of Phoenix Animal Rescue, she spent every Saturday at Petsmart, and every time she was better and better behaved.  Still, no one seemed interested in adopting her.  Ella was black, she was a pit bull, and she tended to express her enthusiasm a bit too forcefully when she came out of her crate at adoption events.  She had some interest, but nothing came through.  Still, we held out hope that our little gremlin princess would have a fairy-tale ending.

Then one day we got a message.  Could it be THE message?  It came from someone who sounded like the adopter ever rescuer dreams of.  Nanci described her life with her pit bull, Bella, who was the love of her life and had recently been diagnosed with an aggressive form of bone cancer.  Nanci’s first response was “I can never go through this again with another dog,” but then she realized that the joy Bella had brought into her life made her never want to be without a pit bull.  Fearing that Bella did not have long, she was starting to look at Petfinder, and had been struck by the pictures and descriptions of two of our available dogs – Lilly and Ella.  As luck would have it, Lilly had just been adopted (through her foster in Ocala), but Ella was still waiting.  We talked, Nanci thought, and she decided to meet Ella even though Bella was still very much with her and loving life.  Could she possibly handle two dogs?  Could Bella, who was sometimes dog-selective, adjust to life with another dog?  Would Ella create stress for Bella or perhaps add to her quality of life?

Nanci met Bella at an adoption event, liked what she saw, and we moved to the next stage: a meeting between Ella and Bella on neutral ground, a park.  That worked out pretty well, so we tried a longer walk together.  So far, so good.  Nanci decided on a trial week at her house.

Nanci did everything right.  Because Bella was fragile due to her illness, and because Bella was sometimes selective about which dogs she liked, she and Ella did not meet face to face immediately but instead got to know each other through baby gates and crates.  The fact that they had already met on neutral ground helped a lot, as well.  Soon Ella and Bella were lying nose to nose on either side of the baby gate, and Nanci let them meet face to face, leashed to make sure that play did not get too rambunctious for Bella.  It was a brilliant success – the girls had a great time play-biting, chewing, and head-wrestling.  Both dogs were extremely gentle with each other and followed all the rules. 

This was a great lesson for everyone involved: two female pit bulls, one young and goofy (that would be Ella) and one older, sick, and dog-selective, showed us that they can live together just fine, thank you very much, as long as the humans don’t do anything stupid.

So it’s official.  Ella’s ship has come in and everyone is riding off into the sunset.  The story of Ella is now the story of Ella, Bella, and Nanci.  The end.