I met my best friend when he became the victim of a hit and run, on a frigid night in November 2019. I was sitting in my South Richmond home when I heard the crash of metal on flesh and the cry of a wounded, terrified dog. My husband, dressed for the weather, rushed outside and found the dog cowering in the ditch across our busy street. He called to him gently, but the animal took off in an adrenaline-fueled sprint away from the street — his right hind leg dangling uselessly behind him — and was soon out of sight.
More assistance came when a Richmond Animal Care & Control (RACC) volunteer, who had seen the accident, pulled over in her car and said she would help get the canine to safety. The pursuit ended when the dog, now a member of our family named Ferdinand, collapsed in a neighboring front yard. The volunteer transported Ferdinand to Virginia Veterinary Centers, where he received emergency care paid for by RACC. Miraculously, the crash may have indirectly saved Ferdinand’s life; a surgeon also removed an unsightly growth to make him attractive for adoption, and a biopsy confirmed the growth was cancerous. We adopted Ferdinand after failed attempts to locate a previous owner, during a lengthy rehabilitation process. Nearly two years later, he is healthy and happy.
Ferdinand
Ferdinand’s tale is featured in “Rescues in Richmond,” a book photographed and written by Ashley Dobbin Calkins, president of the Richmond Animal Care & Control Foundation board. The work features the stories of nearly 170 animal rescues — dogs, cats, a trio of cows and a friendly snake — in the Richmond area, most of them accomplished by RACC. All sales will benefit the RACC Foundation, a nonprofit that raises about $200,000 annually to cover emergency care for Richmond animals. City funding for RACC is limited to nonemergent veterinary care and other operating expenses.
“I created the book I wanted to read, one that focused on uplifting and quirky stories and filled with images of animals and spots around the city,” Dobbin Calkins says. “I love promoting rescue, but I have a really hard time with heartbreaking stories.”
The accounts in the book “promote a different narrative than the … ‘sad municipal shelter’ story that scares people away from considering a rescue pet,” she adds.
“Rescues in Richmond” sheds light on the new lives of many rescue animals that made local headlines. Flash, temporarily named Blue Skies during his time at RACC, is one of these Richmond-famous pups. RACC received a call in January about a dog who had been left in a dumpster at the Residences of Westover Hills. Flash was emaciated and covered in feces. His hips were curved downward and his feet were splayed, suggesting constant confinement.
Jamie Frye was one of hundreds of people who reached out to RACC on social media offering a home to the pup. Her family had suffered the unexpected loss of their dog earlier in January on her 6-year-old son’s birthday and was moved by the stray’s story.
“I did not expect to be picked … when they had hundreds of people [interested in the dog],” Frye says, “but I like to say it was a match made in heaven.”
Flash
Christie Chipps Peters, RACC director, asked Frye and her family to come and meet Flash after a meeting with another family didn’t yield a connection. He immediately kissed Frye’s son, then greeted the rest of the family, and the next steps were clear. He showed an endearingly wild side on just his second day with the family, when he began to quickly dart around the yard.
“[My son] was like, ‘He’s so fast, we should call him Flash!’ so it stuck,” Frye says.
Flash now has the run of the Fryes’ large yard in Chesterfield County, and the pup, estimated to be 1 1/2 years old, has gained a healthy 50 pounds since January. The muscle he has put on from regular activity has corrected Flash’s hunched posture.
“We witness terrible abuse and neglect cases that could easily harden your heart against humanity,” Chipps Peters says, but “there are thousands of people out there on our side, helping to restore our faith in humanity and save the lives we can.”
Buttercup will be “signing” copies of “Rescues in Richmond” during the Sept. 25 book-release event at Blue Bee Cider.
Buttercup, the rescue calf brought into the shelter by an RACC officer following reports of her roaming North Side Richmond in May 2020, will attend the launch event for “Rescues in Richmond” with her adoptive family at Blue Bee Cider on Saturday, Sept. 25, from 5 to 7 p.m. Copies of the book are also available online.
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