EVERY CREATURE COUNTS ALUMNI - PROBY

THIS IS A SPECIAL STORY ABOUT ONE OF OUR ALUMNI THAT TOUCHED US ALL AND WE WISH TO SHARE IT WITH YOU.

 

In January 1996, I adopted a 10 week old black puppy of indeterminate breeding at an Every Creature Counts adoption event at the Westminster Petsmart.  The volunteer told me she had been rescued from Adams County Animal Shelter a few hours before being euthanized.  I had never owned a dog before.  I named her Proby.

Proby was a horrible puppy.  She ate two couches, chewed walls down to the sheetrock, and destroyed all the carpeting in my new house.  She took 7 months to house train and beat up every puppy in her PetsMart obedience class.

Proby grew into a 50 lb lab mix with spotted socks on her front paws.  She loved to run, to defend her house with deceptively deep barks, and to play with her neighborhood friends in one of our backyards.  She traveled regularly to see her grandparents in Nebraska, buckled in the front seat as my co-pilot.  Together we covered a thousand walking miles a year around the paths and trails of the Denver suburbs.  No matter what Colorado brought – snow, rain, 100' heat – we walked every day.

As she grew older, Proby even gave back to her community.  She donated blood at the canine blood bank, accompanied me to the horse rescue on weekends, and patiently hosted wandering dogs until I tracked down their owners.

The year Proby turned 9, I joined the Foreign Service and moved to central Africa to serve as a diplomat at the US Embassy in Kinshasa.  Proby took the 20 hour plane ride in stride and immediately adapted to her new equatorial home.  She chased lizards and jogged next to the mighty Congo river and charmed my African friends.  She survived two wars and a bite from a giant bug.  At age 11, she welcomed a new family member  – a rescued Congolese street dog named Labi.

From Africa, we moved to Canada, where Proby loved every moment of the short summers, the long walks, and her visits to the park.  Just after her 14^th birthday and a particularly energetic play date with a neighbor’s puppy, she started limping.  Pain medications and bed rest didn’t help, and a few short weeks later, we discovered she had aggressive bone cancer in her shoulder.  Before I took her to the vet to end her suffering, I read to her emails from more than 100 friends all over the world who had known and loved her.  She died in my arms on November 2, 2009, still the beloved puppy I’d adopted so many years earlier in Denver.