As published in the West End Chronicle - January 2006

My whole life I have been a lover of animals. As a child I used to bring home stray cats and dogs and beg my parents to let me keep them, sometimes I would bring home the neighbors pets thinking they were stray asking to keep them too. My mom and dad would gently tell me that we couldn’t keep every animal I found and return the pets to their owners or bring them to the shelter to be adopted as I sat in the car and cried over having to lose my precious new friends.

It should have come as no surprise back in the summer of 2002 when a friend of mine asked me if I would be interested in being a foster mom to an abandoned dog and I agreed that once I convinced Mike, I would be happy to take care of the little fur bunny.  After much pleading, crying, stomping of my feet and flat out begging, Mike finally asked me what kind of dog it was and how long we’d have to keep it.

“Well” I replied sheepishly. “It’s a Saint Bernard”.

You could hear the explosion a mile away.

“NO WAY! This house isn’t big enough for a Saint Bernard!!” He yelled. Two days later we brought our bundle of joy home…all 225 pounds of him.

Unfortunately, our first Saint was sick and died a short time after we adopted him. The rescue lady felt so bad that she found us another (much to Mike’s delight) and we became the proud parents of another 200+ pound fur bunny. Of course the first one to get the most attached to her was Mike.  At dinner time, our three Yorkshire Terriers would line up next to the table and stare pathetically up at Mike who fed them scraps. It wasn’t long before “Reeny” was eye to eye with him waiting for hers too.

Upon moving to Tennessee and finally having enough land to keep a Saint Bernard as well as other animals I managed to find a few stay cats someone had dumped in the road and even convinced Mike to let me have chickens. I was in my glory.

Anyone who owns animals knows that eventually they get sick and sometimes they even die. I couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to any of my babies so when one of our chickens got sick I made Mike take her to the vet.

“You wanna bring a what in?” The receptionist at the veterinary office asked.

“A chicken” I replied.  “She has the runs and won’t eat”.

“You’re not from around here are you?” she asked.

Needless to say we brought “Coolie” to the vet. The other folks in the waiting room looked at us kind of funny as I sat there holding my little chicken in a blanket. At least two dogs had to be taken out of the waiting room as they saw the perfect opportunity for a mid-afternoon snack; but the doctor understood my concern for my chicken and after a thorough examination he placed her on antibiotics and sent us home with instructions to give her the medicine three times a day and wash her fanny at least once. Mike really loved this job.

Two weeks later my heart broke as Coolie died in my arms. Mike came home, held the funeral service with the family gathered around the little grave site and laid her to rest. I was determined not to bring home anymore pets as I couldn’t handle the heartbreak when something happened to them…until Charlene called me in March and explained that Steve worked with a fellow that needed to find a home for a male Saint Bernard.

Of course when I called Mike at work the explosion could be felt from Jefferson City but needless to say, I managed to persuade him and Steve and Charlene brought Dooley over that evening. Once again Mike bonded with this huge dog and he became a member of the family. (We know Mike is easy when it comes to dogs so we just let them meet and the dog did the rest!)

So, what started out as a nice country home in Tennessee became “Washam’s Wild Kingdom”.  With six dogs (we found a little border collie about a year ago), four cats, nine chickens, and three love-birds we gave up the notion of ever going on vacation without taking out a second mortgage for kennel expenses. However, over New Year weekend we managed to get away for two days to go to a wedding in Ohio.

We brought our two Saint Bernards and our Border Collie to a local vet for kenneling and then went on the first mini-vacation either of has had in over five-years. When we returned home and went to pick up our dogs the woman at the front desk informed us that Dooley had escaped and although they were looking for him they hadn’t located him yet. My heart sank as Louie and Cassie started crying and we all feared the worst.

Mike and Louie joined the search for Dooley and after taking our other dogs home we went back out to look for him some more. By 4:00 PM we were emotionally and physically exhausted and felt the only thing we could do at that point was pray. We believed God knew where he was, we knew He could see him from heaven and we prayed He would help him find his way home or guide us to him before something happened.

At about 4:30 Charlene called and asked if the dogs were alright and I told her the story. She said “Shell, I just saw him on I-40 near Dandridge”.  What were the chances that Charlene, one of our church family, the same person who gave him to us would actually see him on the interstate?  God was in motion and answering the prayer. We just didn’t know it yet.

I told Mike I couldn’t bear to go and face what I was certain we would find. Dogs just don’t survive I-40. I’ve seen them before and I couldn’t handle that. Mike set out with Cassie and Louie and kept in touch by telephone.

By now it was getting dark and was about to storm. Dooley hates thunder and lightning and my heart ached thinking he would be outside in the storm, scared and lost and so far from home.  I had called the animal shelters and even the state police and although there had been sightings, Dooley was nowhere to be found.

Mike drove clear down to the Dandridge/Jefferson City exit with no signs of Dooley. The sky was lighting up with streaks of lightning and he was running out of gas but at the last minute he decided to do one more pass from the exit Charlene had seen the dog back to the river.  Knowing it was pitch black out by now and getting ready to rain I just prayed God would keep Dooley safe until someone could find him.

About five minutes later Mike radioed me and said what I dreaded and feared most.

“Michele, we found him but he’s down; he got hit”

While Mike was making his final pass Cassie saw Dooley lift his head up in the center median. How she saw this in the pitch black I’ll never know.  Mike slowed down and stopped the van and they all got out to cross the busy interstate but the Lord was already one step ahead.

“Mom, the traffic just stopped. There were no cars coming at all it was completely dead so we just crossed” Louie explained later on.

Upon hearing he was hit Ashley and I started crying and I felt so awful. Mike radioed again and said he was lifting his head up but breathing hard and we needed to get him to a vet right away. He was bleeding from his mouth and had a cut above his eye but he couldn’t see or feel any broken bones. The only problem we had was that the car was parked way down the road (running out of gas) and the dog was too heavy to lift alone. The kids sat down on the grass with the flashlight and Mike went back to get the car.

I immediately called the state police and requested help. The dispatcher whom I had talked to throughout the night immediately dispatched a car to stay with the kids in the median. The state policeman helped Mike lift Dooley into the van and told him to go take care of the dog. He was going to go and check on a car that was stopped up the road who he thought might have been the one to hit him.

I had the vet waiting on Dooley and Mike radioed to tell me to meet him at the animal hospital with a gas can. He was on fumes. He never stopped to check his gas guage but little did we know, the Lord was right there. Mike made it to the gas station before he ran out and then to the animal hospital in record time.

I truly thought Dooley was going to have to be put to sleep. No dog could get hit by a car at the speed they travel on I-40 and survive it.  Louie was crying his eyes out but had to call Charlene to thank her.

“We never would have found him if it hadn’t been for Charlene” He cried as he dialed her number. With Charney on the other end crying with us she promised to pray for a good outcome and I began preparing the kids for what I thought was the inevitable.

How wrong I was to doubt the Lord could manage something even this horrific. He was about to show me just how magnificent He really is.

The vet came out and told us that Dooley had NO internal injuries and only a little blood on his lungs which was normal and would absorb back into his system, aside from being in shock and having a broken leg, he was going to survive.  The vet referred Dooley to UT and at press time he had just come out of surgery and was doing great. 

It wasn’t until I spoke to the state policeman again that I realized God truly sent an angel to step in.

“Mrs. Washam, I don’t know how your dog is alive right now, it has to be a miracle because the car that hit him has over $2500 damage” the officer told me. “How he was hit at that speed and has only a broken leg is truly a miracle”

It surely was a miracle. It was the power of prayer sent straight from heaven in the form of an angel named Charlene who happened to be in the path of the very dog she gave us, it was the power of prayer sent from heaven when we prayed for angels to surround and protect him.  It was the power of prayer sent down from heaven in the form of the angel that stepped between him and the car that should have killed him but didn’t.

You just never know when an angel is going to step in.