Humphrey

This story has a lot of pieces that seem to be unrelated, but I promise that every paragraph has significance to Humphrey’s story!

In 2005, I fostered a Hurricane Katrina rescue. At that time, the dogs in shelters were being euthanized to make room for people’s pets during the evacuations. The group I was fostering for sent me from Florida a Vizsla/Lab Mix by the name of Tinkerbelle. It was not love at first sight. She was a 2 ½ year old naughty dog, and we were her 6th foster home… the last 5 had given up on her. It was no wonder. She had a bristly personality, would not make eye contact, wouldn’t listen, and basically did everything within her power to make sure she was as much trouble for us as possible. Little did I know that this naughty, defensive, angry dog would become my best friend in the entire world. It took about 2 months of perseverance and every trick we could think of, but suddenly Tink bonded to us hard and fast. We knew that to adopt her out at that point would break her, so we adopted her ourselves. And thus began a friendship and a love that would last for 12 more years.

Losing Tink this past December completely shattered me. Her death was unexpected and abrupt, and traumatic for our whole family. We were left reeling. The winter passed in a blur; my grief was deep and sharp. One of my coping mechanisms was to go on PetFinder and search for Vizslas and Vizsla Mixes. I spent hours looking at faces, looking for glimpses of my girl.

My husband and I own and operate a horse farm. We do the normal horse things there, but we also do quite a bit of rescuing. In March, we were contacted by the local humane society to see if we could foster 10 horses from a local neglect case. At that point, I was looking for any diversion to help me through my grief, and I agreed to take all ten emaciated horses.

We rehabbed them and began helping the humane society to rehome them. In May, the director of the humane society called me to see if I would be willing to do a quick television segment with Steve Caporizzo at the humane society. He asked me to bring one of the gentle horses with me. In the middle of May, my husband, my two daughters, and I brought a lovely mare over for her television appearance. The event at the humane society lasted for four hours, so aside from about 15 minutes of being needed, we had a lot of time to kill.

My youngest daughter was loving going into the free range cat rooms, so we spent a lot of time hanging out with the cats. On one of our many trips in to see the cats, I happened to look out the window, and froze. Walking by at that very moment was a woman with two Vizslas. I am usually a very quiet, introverted person, but seeing those dogs was enough to spur me into action. I grabbed my daughter’s hand and all but dragged her out the door.

We approached the woman with the Vizslas and asked if it would be okay if we petted them. She was so gracious, and introduced herself as Gerry. As I petted the dogs, we chatted a bit. I told Gerry that I had recently lost Tink, and that this was very meaningful for me to get the chance to get a little Vizsla time. She told me that she had literally only gotten the puppy I was petting the day before. I was struck by how calm and relaxed the dog was. We chatted for a few minutes, and then I reluctantly left the dogs to go back to the horse. By the time the television segment had ended, Gerry and the Vizslas were gone, and that was the last I thought of them.

Fast forward a few weeks to early June. I came home on a Monday to find a message on my answering machine. It was Gerry! She had gone to great lengths to contact the humane society to find out who I was and to find my phone number. She said that she had just gotten word of a Vizsla puppy who was likely her puppy’s brother and needed a home. He was in a bad situation and was available. I immediately called my husband in tears and asked him to talk me out of it. I was afraid that I would make a rash decision and I didn’t think I was ready for another dog when Tinkerbelle’s loss still hurt so much. But my husband said that I should call, and that clearly this wasn’t just a random happenstance. He suggested that Tink had helped to make all of this happen.

So I got myself together and called Gerry back. She said that the dog was in the custody of The Vizsla Club of Long Island and that I should call Stephanie Fischer to discuss. And so I did, and the rest is history. I applied for the dog, who I found out was named Humphrey, and he was mine only 3 days later. I drove 3 hours on a Thursday to pick him up on the Mass Pike, where I was met by a lovely lady named Nancy Tarbox who had been caring for Humphrey for a few days. Humphrey was a little 35 pound beautiful boy who I immediately fell for. He stood quietly in the parking lot while we talked, and then I loaded him into the car and drove home another 3 hours. He didn’t make a peep on the drive home except for the occasional whine. Mostly, he slept.

I came to understand that he was pretty overwhelmed and a bit traumatized by his past adoption, and by all of the transitions he had undergone in a short space of time. He was delighted to see our two girls and the other dogs, but he didn’t interact much. He was sweet as he could be, but he had a strong stress response that made him freeze in place and mentally check out. That lasted about a week, and then suddenly… Humphrey came alive!

All of a sudden there was no stopping him. He wanted to play, explore, run, and jump. There was no keeping his feet on the ground! His enthusiasm knew no bounds, and his energy was boundless. We spent many hours letting him burn off steam in our back fields. Soon enough he was clever enough to be able to come with us to do morning and evening chores for the horses off leash. Now, three months later, we are working on obedience and training so that hopefully Humphrey can start spending his full days with us outside while we work. We are getting closer and closer. The ‘sit’ is still a challenge sometimes, and the ‘come’ happens only when he is not distracted, but it gets better every day! We are working with a trainer in our area and that is helping a lot.

We love Humphrey. He is the sweetest, gentlest creature. I feel like he came into our lives by design, not by accident, and we are so grateful to have him.

Kristy Moloney ❤️