Arlo's Story

The following is a guest post written by Katie Borman who works with my wife Joellyn at United Animal Friends. It is mostly about one dog and what Joellyn did to try to help him. Having a purpose in life is vital for many reasons and this appears to be Joellyn's purpose. To the extent we can each figure out our purpose I believe it improves the psychology of investing. Thank you for reading it...

At first, no one thought Arlo had a chance. Sure, he had a wonderful face with a smile that beamed out across the room. And sure, his goofy, affectionate manners won over just about everybody who crossed his path. But the one-year-old Aussie mix had come into Yavapai Humane Society in Northern Arizona with one very big strike against him. Arlo had severe, debilitating mange.

His skin was a complete mess, with tufts of hair falling off his body in some places and altogether missing in others. A layer of red, swollen skin was visible underneath the worst patches. Arlo's mange was so bad, in fact, that the shelter keepers at Yavapai Humane Society knew they wouldn't be able to cover the cost of the medical treatment he needed.

For the time being, they put Arlo on the euthanasia list, resigned to the fact that despite his friendliness and youth, his condition was simply too dire. But the alternative placement coordinator at Yavapai Humane Society had one last resort.

The Rescue Partnering Begins

The coordinator made a phone call to a friend, a full-time rescue volunteer named Joellyn. Joellyn – who volunteers for the Yavapai County rescue group United Animal Friends – wasn't surprised when she got the phone call. "I had actually heard about Arlo the previous day from another one of our volunteers," says Joellyn. "She had seen Arlo at the shelter and warned me about him. She said she didn't think he was going to make it. She said he look liked he had given up."

Still, Joellyn went down to the shelter to meet Arlo. Her worst fears about his condition were confirmed when she met him at the gate. And yet, the second Joellyn came face-to-face with Arlo, she was shocked by his energy and friendliness. "He was in terrible condition, but he came right up to the gate, wagged his tail and put his face in my hands. He just seemed so happy to see me, and we had never even met before," she recalls. "Right then, I knew I had to get him out of the shelter and at least try to save him."

Joellyn pulled Arlo out of the shelter, picked up another volunteer to help her and drove straight to a veterinary office in Prescott to get Arlo's condition thoroughly determined. On the way, she thought anxiously about the costs for just getting the mange assessed.

"I knew it was going to be expensive," she recalls. And she was right. After the first consultation, Arlo's results came back. His mange wasn't contagious, but it was severe and would require an initial round of quarantined treatment, followed by months of continued medication. In the parking lot after that first vet visit, Joellyn broke down in tears. "We were standing there, basically trying to figure out if we could save him," she remembers. "We didn't have the funds but I couldn't bring him back to the shelter to be put down. I just couldn't."

Dismayed but not yet willing to give up, Joellyn drove Arlo to another vet's office, where he could spend the night in isolated care while the members of United Animal Friends tried to come up with a solution.

Serendipity at Work

Unbeknownst to the UAF volunteers scrambling to do something about Arlo, something else – something seemingly unrelated – was slowly developing. A few days before Joellyn had taken Arlo out of the shelter and off that euthanasia list, another UAF volunteer was putting the finishing touches on the new United Animal Friends page for the Best Friends Network Charities program.

The volunteer was trying to meet a deadline in order to qualify UAF for the Network Charities' St. Patrick's Day Pot O' Gold Giveaway, and at the last moment, she finished. This particular volunteer didn't know anything about Arlo and she didn't know whether UAF had much of a shot to win the contest, but she knew funds were always needed and she figured, if anything, it was at least worth a try.

The morning after she had left Arlo in isolated care, Joellyn returned to her efforts. She sent out mass emails, called other rescue groups and tried to think of feasible options. She received a promising lead when her friend from the shelter called to tell her that Aussie Rescue of southern Arizona wanted to help. The group's volunteers could take in Arlo and foster him, as they had experience with both Arlo's breed and his specific medical condition. Though encouraged that he now had a place to stay, Joellyn and the other UAF volunteers were still at a loss about the money required for Arlo's initial care. They just needed something, just a start to get Arlo out immediate danger. And that something had to come soon.

UAF Wins the Network Charities Giveaway

When Joellyn answered a phone call later that day, she could hardly believe what she heard. United Animal Friends had won the Best Friends Network Charities St. Patrick's Day Pot O' Gold Giveaway and would soon receive a $500 donation from the sanctuary. It was all she needed to get Arlo's care started and get him supplied with the medication he would need in the coming months. Aussie Rescue was overjoyed at the news and thrilled they could be a part of the rescue effort. Another UAF volunteer stepped up to transport Arlo down to Phoenix, and exactly forty-eight hours after Arlo had been taken out of the shelter, he was finished with his first round of treatment, and riding happily in a car to a new life, a fresh start and a much-deserved second chance at happiness.

Sometimes, when things come together the way they did for Arlo, people chalk it up to coincidence. Others are certain that a 'higher power' was involved – a sense of kismet or fate, or just plain old good karma. For Joellyn, it's not completely clear. But one thing she does know is that it all happened for a reason. Oddly enough, the one who might have known all along how things would turn out was Arlo himself. When Joellyn got the chance to discuss the rescue with the volunteer who first told her about Arlo, she noted how his spirited, happy greeting at the shelter that day had taken her by surprise. But that original volunteer told Joellyn she wasn't surprised at all, confiding to her what she believed to be true: "Arlo knew you were going to save him."

A Lesson From Arlo

Thanks to the incredibly well-timed winnings from the Best Friends' St. Paddy's Pot O Gold Giveaway and the inter-rescue networking that allowed UAF volunteers to broaden their search efforts, everything came together for Arlo right when he needed it most. But what Arlo gave volunteers in return may ultimately be just as meaningful.

What Arlo did for the rescue community of Northern Arizona was to remind us that it's not really about us after all. It's about animals who have absolutely no other recourse beyond our willingness to take the time, effort and money to reach out and try to save them. In some instances, it means getting doors slammed in our faces. Almost always, it means getting way too familiar with the word 'no.' But at great moments like this one, the stars seem to align ever-so-perfectly and everything just comes together, falling into place in a way that makes it suddenly easy to believe we're all connected together by some good, positive energy.

This time, it was a young Aussie mix named Arlo, with mange so terrible it was nearly impossible to look at him without cringing. Next time, who will it be? If we've learned anything from this lesson, we know now that it doesn't matter who it will be next time. Whoever it is, whatever the circumstance, we'll brush ourselves off, pick ourselves up, and set out again, armed only with the name of one animal who needs us.