Seventy-four-year-old Melani Andrews had had a difficult year. The grandmother from Galt, California, had lost both her husband and her Staffordshire terrier, Lola, and found her sudden solitude almost too much to bear.
Prompted by her grandkids’ concern for her welfare, Andrews decided she was about ready to adopt another dog. Front Street Animal Shelter in Sacramento beckoned, though Andrews would not be their typical customer.
Shelter staff were overwhelmed by Andrews’s request and her generosity. “I don’t care if he’s sick,” Andrews told the shelter staff. “I don’t have a lot of money, but I’m sure I have enough to take care of a little dog!”
The staff knew immediately which kennel they were headed for. A 12-year-old terrier named Jake, who had been picked up as a stray a few months previously, sat up as Andrews approached.
“Jake’s two friends ignored me,” Andrews recalled, “but Jake perked up and started howling. So I said, ‘It looks like he wants to go.’” The pair spent a little time together at the shelter, but Andrews didn’t take long to make her decision. “He’s going to come home with me,” she said.
Before she could sign the adoption papers, however, the shelter staff had a long list of medical issues to run by the generous grandmother. The senior dog had terminal skin cancer, was deaf, and also partially blind.
“They informed me that he had a limited amount of time,” Andrews said. But instead of responding with reservation, the kindly woman responded with love. “We’re going to make his time as good as we can make it,” she declared.
“It was amazing,” the shelter’s public relations coordinator Bobby Mann exclaimed. “She was one of the few people who actually gave this dog an opportunity. He was one of our longest-standing residents.”
“We were hoping that someone like her would come along,” Mann continued, “and give him the life that he deserved.”
Once in the car, Jake laid his head in Andrews’s hand and relaxed. Likewise, stepping inside his forever home for the very first time, the little dog settled in quickly.
“You could tell by the way he came into the house that he’d been living in a home,” Andrews explained. “He knew to crawl up on the chair, turn himself around, lay down and go to sleep, just like you see a cat on a chair.”
Andrews mixed his kibble with chicken broth to make it easier on his sensitive senior teeth. She even started a routine of coconut-infused baths for her new companion to soothe his raw, painful skin.
After a warm bath, the little pup habitually curled up under a fleece blanket on Andrews’s bed.
“When he goes,” Andrews shared, “I’ll know he went happy.”
After months of being overlooked, the sweet, senior terrier turned out to be this kindly California grandmother’s perfect companion.
