FINDING A HOME FOR BLUEBELL

By Anna Patrick
Charleston Gazette-Mail
July 1, 2016

Bluebell often got a homemade meal.
Chicken, rice and veggies, especially those long green beans. They'd cook for hours in a Crock-Pot while her owner was at work.
When it was time to eat, the dark-haired mutt of a dog would get the works. Her mom would pour the homemade meal over some dry food. She'd set the bowls down far enough apart so that Bluebell and her siblings, Katie and Old Blue, wouldn't try to pounce on each other's food.
She'd look after them, making sure her dogs, which were more like her kids, had enough to eat.
After the floodwaters receded around Bluebell's home in Big Chimney last weekend, after she'd been running for at least a day, she found some food. A neighbor sat it out for her. It wasn't homemade.
"She was so frantic and scared," Maddie Marr said. Marr found Bluebell running around the neighborhood along Westwood Drive in Elkview, Saturday. Bluebell let one of Marr's neighbors tie her up and feed her that night. They decided to let her go Sunday morning, hoping she'd find her way back home.
But that place doesn't exist anymore.
On Tuesday afternoon, when most people working at the makeshift flood resource site were looking for any shade to hide from the high sun, Bluebell was being led to a large, white van. At the bottom of the Interstate 79 ramp for Clendenin, the Kanawha-Charleston Humane Association set up an emergency location to receive pets separated from their owners in the flood. Two employees of the Kanawha County animal shelter used the running van to try to stay cool.
When Marr and Misti Sprouse approached, the employees moved into the sun. They greeted the two, took down their information and thanked them for bringing Bluebell in.
The narrow-framed dog with a little white under her chin was the last to be recovered. Her siblings, those food gobblers, were already in a foster home. To prevent Bluebell from spending any time in the heat, she was immediately loaded into the back of the van and the driver took off.
It wouldn't be the first time Bluebell spent a night in that shelter.
She is one of approximately 40 dogs the Kanawha County animal shelter has received due to the flood. Chelsea Staley, the shelter's executive director, estimates anywhere from 10 to 15 cats have come in. Some of the animals are still there. Others have already been returned to families, while some are just boarding for free until their owners can provide them a permanent home again.
The flood pets aren't up for adoption. And you can't foster them. It would be a liability issue, Staley said. What would happen if they ran away? What would their owner think?
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Last summer, Staley was trying to get some work done in her second-floor office when she heard a loud sound.
It was high pitched and motorized. It had to be a weed-eater, she thought.
She looked down to find the culprit. Joni Adams, Staley's eighth-grade South Charleston Middle School teacher, was chopping down weeds.
"No one asked her to do it. She saw a need. She brought her own weed eater. She came and weed-eated, Staley said.
Adams was a regular volunteer at the shelter. But she wasn't a praise seeker.
On the day that she brought her weed eater, "She never once stopped in the lobby and she never once said, 'I'm finished. I'm leaving,'" Staley said.
"We never thanked her because she wasn't seeking recognition. She just showed up, cut our grass and left."
Multiple times Joni drove up to that shelter and left with a dog, said Jody Adams, Joni's mom.
When Joni was adopting Katie from the shelter, she walked past Bluebell on her way out.
Bluebell was lying in the back of her cage. She had her head down, looking sad. Bluebell had lived in the shelter a long time, Staley said. Joni went home, but she thought about it.
"And she picked her up the next day," Jody said.
Bluebell made three. She had a big fenced-in backyard to play in, homemade meals and a mom that let her into the house.
Those dogs had everything they needed. But all they really wanted was to be next to Joni.
"If she wasn't out in the yard, they didn't want to be out in the yard," Jody said. "They wanted to be with her."
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Joni died in the flooding that killed 23 people across southern West Virginia late last week. She was in her basement trying to save some belongings. Sandy Boswell, who also died, was there trying to help her.
Sandy Engle, Joni's neighbor, said she watched the flood waters rip off Joni's back porch and carry it away. The damage caused water to pour into Joni's home, flooding down into her basement.
Facebook helped Marr and Sprouse determine that the small, frantic dog running around Westwood Drive belonged to Joni.
"You could tell she was looking for someone or something," Marr said.
After one night in the shelter, Joni's brother, Ben Adams, picked Bluebell up. He learned she was there via Facebook.
On Wednesday afternoon, Bluebell was lying in a big cage behind Jody's house.
At 82, Jody has a wobbly knee, she said. It's hard for her to walk up the hill behind her house to get to the cage where Bluebell is staying. It's hard for Jody to take her out and let her play.
Because she owns cats, Jody's worried about bringing Bluebell inside. And she's certain she can't keep her.
"She's a sweet little girl. And she needs love," Jody said. "She's very unhappy. She's crying and barking a lot. My son took some cushions up and made her a bed."
She misses her siblings and wants to be inside, Jody guessed.
There's no doubt she misses Joni.