Abandoned dogs find good homes, thanks to Callan

Abandoned
dogs find good homes, thanks to Callan
…………………………………………………………………

JENNIFER EVANS
Rice News Staff

Jana Callan proudly
admits that she’s going to the dogs — and saving
them from a life on the streets.

“I’ve
always been a dog lover, and I felt so frustrated when I’d
see them homeless or abandoned on the side of the road,”
said Callan, change manager in the Buy/Pay Department and
co-chair of the Staff Advisory Committee. “I always
wanted to help them out but didn’t know what to do.”

Then she discovered
the Homeless Pet Placement League (HPPL), an organization
that saves stray and abandoned dogs and cats and finds loving,
permanent homes for them. Callan knew immediately that this
was the perfect organization for her. While she didn’t
think she could do the challenging rescue work, she knew
she could help by doing paperwork, typing up mailing lists
or attending to the countless other administrative tasks
that keep such a group running.

But before she
knew it, she was one of those people doing the actual rescuing.

Driving home
from Rice one evening she saw a haggard-looking, underweight
German shepherd standing in the middle of the road. Despite
having some doubts about her ability to catch the dog and
concerns about whether the dog was friendly, Callan stopped
her car and rolled down the window.

“She jumped
up on the side of the car, put her head in the window and
started licking my hand,” Callan said. “She was
like ‘Pet me! Pet me!’”

Callan hoisted
the ailing dog into the back of her car and took her home.
When Callan took the dog, later named Liddy, to the vet,
she learned that in addition to having heartworms and being
40 pounds underweight, Liddy had sarcoptic mange, a contagious
condition also known as scabies, which Callan and her husband
contracted.

Fortunately,
they all were treated and are now healthy. “Now Liddy’s
gorgeous, and that success gave us the confidence that we
knew we could do this,” she said.

And rescue more
dogs is exactly what she did.

On the same
road where she rescued Liddy, Callan saw another German
shepherd puppy that had been abandoned. For six months,
Callan worked at rescuing the dog, trying everything from
traps to luring her with food. Ultimately, Callan and some
other rescuers wrangled the dog into a kennel.

“She had
been hit by a car, she had no hair and her eyes were all
puffy with infection. The dog was terrified, and it made
me wonder if I was doing the right thing, although I knew
she was going to die if I didn’t do this,” Callan
said.

Callan got the
dog, later named Ginger, home and found that in addition
to her physical problems, she had no social skills whatsoever.
“She cowered, wouldn’t make eye contact and wouldn’t
even take food from my hand,” Callan said.

“But after
about five months of treatment, Ginger’s hair started
coming in, she had surgery on her eyes, and her back leg,
which had been severely injured when she was hit by a car,
was amputated,” Callan said. “Now she’s this
confident, beautiful dog.”

Callan noted
that their keeping both Liddy and Ginger is a bit unusual
for HPPL members. Typically, rescuers provide a foster home
for the animal as it is nursed back to health and then put
it up for adoption through HPPL.

“The separation
part is the most difficult,” Callan said. “But
I realized that regardless of how difficult it might be
to give them up, if I didn’t start to, I wouldn’t
be able to help any others.”

With these additions
to the family and temporary additions anticipated, Callan
and her husband determined that they would need more roaming
room. They moved from their small Clear Lake home to Alvin,
where they have three acres on which the dogs can frolic.

It wasn’t
long after moving into their new digs that Callan got the
opportunity to put the new acreage to use and her resolve
to say “goodbye” to the test.

Barbi Huggins,
purchasing card assistant in the Buy/Pay Department, called
Callan requesting help from her colleague. She had discovered
a mother dog that had been abandoned. Callan scouted the
situation out and returned to the scene the next day, trap
in tow. Within 10 minutes, she captured the dog and found
six puppies so tiny their eyes hadn’t even opened yet.

Callan took
all seven to her home, and several months later all are
growing and healthy and beginning to go through the adoption
process.

Callan’s
tendencies toward nurturing began with a career as an elementary
school teacher. She left that position to work in a veterinary
clinic, where she spent three years as office manager.

“It was
a very small clinic, so I had a lot of opportunities to
learn, got a lot of hands-on experience,” Callan said.
“If I were to do everything over again, I would go
to vet school in a heartbeat.”

But the path
she has taken has proven to be an equally rewarding one.
“It’s amazing. What started as ‘I’m
feeling really helpless, I don’t know what to do, but
I can help support the people who do know what they’re
doing’ has gone to now where we’ve gone through
nine rescues,” she said. “And then we meet people
who have rescued 30, 40, 50 of these dogs. It’s very
inspiring. It gives you a tremendous amount of optimism
about anything.”