The Lessons of Hogan 113

PREFACE

Have you ever failed to achieve a personal goal that:

• Impacted someone else.?

• Didn’t change the world but did change one entity’s world?

• Didn’t affect anyone financially but left a hole in your heart?

• Other people tried to help you with but which was owned by only you?

• Mattered most to you and the friend you shared it with?

How did this failure make you feel? What did it make you want to do?

I know, it depends. You would have to know the goal, right?

Here’s mine.

THE STORY

It wasn’t that I missed my weight loss weekly goal. Or a client deadline. I may have canceled my Pilates session to fit in another zoom call. I am behind on my financial savings target but I have invested and funded others generously, so it isn’t that. I didn’t give up swearing for Lent and haven’t finished cleaning the basement. Sorry if this is starting to sound like my confessional.

If you know me or read my blogs regularly, you know I am a very goal-oriented person. But this goal is more aspirational. And yet, today, very concrete.

It has become my goal to support the rescue efforts for animals. To promote fostering, rehabilitation, and rehoming of animals who need homes. Especially dogs.

At the onset of COVID, it became popular to adopt a dog because people felt a need for company as they sheltered in place. Our city animal control agencies and rescue organizations were able to clear out their kennels. But as the pandemic wore on, slowly, many of the adopted animals were returned and the kennels again became overloaded and overcrowded.

I saw this firsthand when in early February I rescued a dog off the streets of Cleveland where he was running in traffic and couldn’t safely get over the snow drifts. Fellow commuters stopped to help me as this handsome, bully-breed dog asked to get in my car, let me lift him into the backseat, and rewarded me with a tail wag and lick to my face as I drove him to the nearest rescue organization.

We needed to go to a place closest to where I found him so that if he had a family they could call and find him. He did have a collar but not dog tags and he was not microchipped. I called everyday to follow his progress. They named him Hogan 113. His picture was shared on a site called Petango.com that I looked at every day. I shared his picture and story on my social media. I even dedicated a blog to finding Hogan a forever home.

No one called the kennel to find a home for this 2-year-old, 54 pound, tail-wagging fella who passed all of his assessments and was ready to be adopted. A friend and I were scheduled to see Hogan in two days because she wanted to bring him into her household. But Hogan’s picture was no longer on Petango.

I called the City Kennel to find out about this dog I was working to save. The staffer who answered the phone told me that Hogan had been euthanized a few days earlier — after biting a staff person. It is their policy not to rehome a dog who has a bite history. My head understands this news — but my heart aches hearing it.

I wanted to know more about the situation and how serious a bite it was, but I knew my questions and their answers would not change the outcome. I had failed to keep him safe, alive, and transferred into a forever home. And I cried.

As I did, the staffer shared that even good dogs don’t do well in the stressful environment of a city kennel and slowly lose their ability to cope. She told me it is the kennel’s goal to strive to rehome dogs as quickly as possible, foster them, or place them with a kill-free shelter to avoid what I can only imagine to be a situation wherein kennel dogs revert to primal survival behavior. And they defend their space as they have throughout history. They bite.

Hearing this makes me want to work harder at finding good homes for abandoned animals. I have failed Hogan. It is a loss that will make me double down on my commitment. When sharing how hard it is to say good-bye to a sick animal or support the decline of a senior dog —as currently I am with my dearest Brindle Boxer, Buddha Bear — this friend replied by saying, “We outlive our animals for the time they are with us. But for the time they have, we are their whole world.”

He encouraged me to hold on to the moment, the memories, and my commitment.

• Now that you know the goal. What advice would you have to share?

As I age, I am not becoming the crazy dog and cat woman. But rather, I have found that my love for humanity extends to seniors, and animals, and all those who cannot care for themselves. My work as a consultant in the field of organizational behavior is so reflective of my values that there is little separation between my work and my personal life. I strive to promote kindness, peace, and love. And to make a meaningful contribution in all the domains of my life, not just in my work. It is the richness of relationship that makes me be my best.

THE EPILOGUE

So, I ask you to:

• Say a prayer for Hogan who is probably wrestling with Big Boy right now.

• Count on me to stop for the next animal in need that I see.

• Believe that I will continue to find a way to support other people in this same pursuit.

• And be aware. I may enlist you in my mission.

Leslie

“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.”

— Napoleon Hill