Kind Strangers Give Best Gift Of All

The holidays can be very hollow when you’ve just lost a loved one.

Suddenly, that friendly, loving face is gone. No more smiles. Or kisses.

Or licks.

Marcella Baxter knows how it feels. The 61-year-old Valley woman lost her beloved Boston terrier just three days before Christmas.

The partially blind and partially deaf dog ran away from home. Wearing no collar or ID, he ventured out during that frigid week when temperatures dipped below zero and wind chills blew colder than minus 20.

And he didn’t come back.

He became one of those lost pets you see in the classified ads, a cause of worry and guilt and tears. But for Baxter, a residential trainer for the disabled, losing B.J. gave her the gift of a new perspective. She never expected it to turn out that way. And from now on, she’ll view the world a bit differently.

B.J. was more than a dog to Baxter. He was family - along with two parrots, a poodle and a cat. The Valley woman buys 50-pound bags of sunflower seeds for the squirrels in her yard. She once owned a pot-bellied pig. And a monkey.

B.J. was her “four-legged son,” an outgoing, hyperactive dog who had been hit by a car four years ago. His injuries left him partially blind and deaf. But they didn’t stop him from racing to the door each Christmas to greet holiday guests. He entertained them. Played with them.

And licked them.

He licked chairs, too. And windows. It was one of those frustrating and endearing quirks that made Baxter cry on Christmas Eve day, as she sat in her living room wondering if her pet was just around the corner - or miles away.

On his first night away, the thermometer dipped to just 1 degree above zero. Baxter could only imagine the sweet little dog shivering and slowly freezing to death in the darkness under some stranger’s porch. Maybe he’d been hit by a car, his body pushed into a snowy ditch. Maybe they’d never find him. When he ran off, B.J. wasn’t wearing his collar. Baxter had removed it because it caused his neck to break out in a rash.

Losing hope, she concluded he was gone forever.

“Every time I went to bed, I would cry,” the woman said. “It was so quiet in the house. It just wasn’t the same without him.”

She and her husband, John, put an ad in the paper. They searched the neighborhood. They waited. They watched the snow begin to fall.

Then, on Christmas Eve, the phone rang.

It was a stranger, a woman who’d been reading the classified ads. She’d seen a notice for a lost Boston terrier. She’d also seen a notice for a found Boston terrier. The gender and coloring matched. The area of town matched.

She wanted to make sure they hadn’t missed the connection. She told them she knew how they felt. Her own cat was missing.

Within minutes, Marcella’s husband had located B.J.

As it turns out, the outgoing terrier hadn’t suffered at all. He’d traveled just five blocks before making a friend at the Big R Supply store on East Trent Avenue.

“He showed up at the front door,” said store manager Tony Wilson. When no customer claimed him, employees brought him inside. They fed him and took turns playing with him throughout the day. That night, Wilson took the terrier home. T.J. - Wilson’s 11-year-old son - let B.J. sleep in his bed for two nights. The family put an announcement in the paper, and hoped the owner would call. When no call came, they took him to the Spokane County Animal Shelter, where he would be listed on the found animal registry. “T.J. wanted to keep him very badly,” Wilson admitted.

But it was obvious the dog had a family, and the shelter was the likely place for them to look.

It cost the Baxters $52 to bail B.J. out of the shelter - a small price, they say, for a lost loved one and a new outlook on human nature. “I always thought most people don’t bother to help,” said Baxter, as she watched B.J. race happily around the living room. “It’s nice to know people really do care.

“That really made my Christmas.”