Terrified terrier helped home

(Editor’s note: Italicized portions of this article were penned by Donna Valentine and were written from the perspective of her beloved pet, Mego)

BY ANNE KAZMIERCZAK
Register Reporter
On New Year’s night Donna and Marvin Valentine lost their little dog from North Elm Street, a 12-pound rat terrier cross named Mego. The 20-year-old pooch went out to potty and disappeared into the night. For the next three days, the Valentines and their neighbors searched.
Unknown to them, Mego was safe and warm across town with a family that found her nearly frozen in the street.

It is New Year’s night and I am so cold it’s almost over for me. I am old. I am deaf and almost blind.
I went out to relieve myself and disappeared into dark night. I never wandered off before but this time. I lost my way in nothing but white. White yards, white streets — nothing looks familiar.
I’ll go — I don’t know where — I’ll just go. Maybe they will find me.

MARVIN Valentine let Mego out near 8:30 p.m., his wife Donna said. Knowing the dog needed a few moments, he went back inside for his own rest stop.
When he returned, Mego, who had never ventured further than a neighbor’s front steps, was gone.
“From the day we got her, she was trained. She never went across the street. She’d go next door because Dorothy Eccles lived there and we’d go there, but that’s the only place she’d go,” Donna Valentine said.
On Jan. 1, though, the little dog got disoriented.
“She wanders around the house,” Valentine said of the recent behavior. “If dogs have Alzheimer’s, I think she’s got it.”

MEGO is smaller than a dust mop.
For an hour and a half, Marvin Valentine cruised up and down the alleys in his north side neighborhood. Then “the kids across the street heard him calling,” Donna said. “They came out and they started searching,” too, she said. “They called my granddaughter and she and her husband joined in.”
All told, Donna said, six or eight people were seeking Mego in the bitter cold.
Around midnight, Marvin was forced to give up.
About that same time, Dr. Frank Porter was leaving Allen County Hospital, where he had gone to see some patients.
As he drove down First Street, he noticed the tiny ragamuffin dog at the side of the road, his wife Robyn said.
“My husband found her on his way back from the hospital,” she noted.
“She was almost frozen in the road. She had a rough time in the little time she was out,” Robyn Porter said. “She had blood on her snout and back.”

Here I am lying in the middle of the street, I’m so cold I cannot move. Where is my family?
What’s this? A car stopped. Someone is picking me up. I feel the warmth of the car and a gentleman speaking to me.  
I’m somewhere warm; I don’t know where.
I hear water running.
A bath, a nice warm bath, it feels so good on my frozen body. These people are so nice.  

DR. PORTER took the dog home. He called his wife from their garage so she could sequester their own three dogs. Indoors, the family bathed Mego and trimmed her fur, and determined she had no major wounds.
“My son had decided she was a dignified older lady and he named her Eleanor,” Porter said. Dylan, 24, was home for the holidays from student teaching at the University of Kansas, Porter said.
Because the dog had no collar, all the Porters could do was wait for Monday, when the Register reopened, to run a found ad. Robyn also sent in a Trading Post ad to run Monday morning.
Nobody called, but Monday night, Frank Porter stopped in to see his friends Max and Janet Nichols. When he told them about the lost terrier, Janet, who works in advertising sales at the Register, told him “someone had come into the Register with an ad about a little dog they lost,” Robyn relayed.
The next day, “before the ad could even run,” Porter said, “I heard on Trading Post” the Valentines’ plea. She immediately called the couple.

“Hello, I’m Mrs. Porter. Doctor Porter found a dog we think is yours. I was listening to the Trading Post and I’m sure we have your little lady. Doctor Porter was leaving the hospital about midnight the first of January and found her lying in the street. He picked her up and brought her home. She had spots of blood on her and was almost frozen but seems to be recuperating. I’ll bring her to you.”

“IT WAS a terrible ordeal for them,” Porter said of the Valentines.
“She was found on First Street, which is only one block from our street, but six blocks from us,” Valentine said, still fretting over what her dog must have endured in the cold.
But although she still has sore paws, Mego seems otherwise unscathed.
“She came home just like she had a little vacation,” Valentine said of Mego’s time with the Porters. While there, the Porters bought her a new red sweatshirt.
“I asked ‘Can I at least pay you for the new coat you got her,’” Valentine said. “And they said ‘No, but you can send a check to the new (Allen County) animal rescue facility.’” Valentine said she would.
“Thank you neighbors, family, Iola Police Department, Trading Post and my heroes, Dr. Porter and family,” Valentine said.
And, she urged, “Please: the next time you see an animal, remember, he or she may be lost and fighting for its last breath. At least stop, call the police or lend a helping hand.”
Porter knows there are other dogs out there missing. She’s looking forward to ACARF’s opening.
“Thank God now we’ll have a place” to coordinate messages about lost and found animals, she said.
As for Mego, “I’m carrying her in and out,” Valentine said. “She’s not leaving my side.”