Doggie Tales: General Stories: How A Dog Adoption Saved A Life

The health benefits of sharing your life with a dog have been extolled for years. No less important are the social benefits a dog affords.

It can happen when you’re out walking, or sitting at an outdoor café, or while serving as a volunteer. You offer a comment on someone’s dog or someone remarks about yours. Conversation and a connection between strangers occur. These introductions can be life saving. Just ask Cami Marks.

Cami, who has been fostering Greyhounds since 1994, helps various Greyhound groups with adoption requests. Cami refers to her post-World War II bungalow as “a sort of a Greyhound resort.” Visiting “guests” are those who come for vacations or need a temporary home.

The retired racers are like orphans waiting for the right adoption family. “Some dogs come from other states, and some are local pets that, for one reason or another, have to find a new place to live,” Cami explained. That’s how, in 2000, Cami met Angela Farley.

“Angela put in an application for Greyhound adoption through one of the retired racing Greyhound groups,” said Cami. “I processed her application, and later when needed, I watched her dogs for her.” Their friendship grew.

“Cami knew my dogs,” Angela said. “I’d call her when one was acting weird, or if this-or-that was going on with her adopted dog, to get her opinion.”

And Cami, as she stroked fur, scratched a dog’s tickle spot, and rubbed that place behind the ear that causes the hind leg to rise and scratch the underside of its slim barrel chest, willingly shared her experience-hewn expertise.

Eight years into their friendship, Angela willingly shared a kidney, and gave Cami the most precious gift of life.

In 2004, Cami learned her kidneys were failing. By 2005, her blood was regularly pumped out of her body and through a blood-filtering machine to remove toxic waste, chemicals and such, because her kidneys no longer did the job. She began looking for a donor kidney.

“First, family members were checked because it is more likely that a relative will be the best donor match,” she explained. “But no candidates were found.” The next step was to go to the “friendship pool.” That’s when her friends in the dog world stepped up. “I was really touched and overwhelmed by each person’s offer to be tested and willingness to help me,” Cami recalled. “Angela was the second friend to get tested, and she turned out to be a very good match.”

“I guess it’s rare that people who aren’t family are matches,” said Angela. “It was meant to be.” If it were seven years earlier, though, the outcome would have been different.

Angela explained that she had been morbidly obese for years. In 2001, she began to explore weight-loss options, and bariatric surgery was suggested. Instead of the surgery, however, she joined Taking Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS) Club, Inc. Over the next six years she shed, and kept off, 140 pounds. “If I hadn’t lost the weight, I would’ve been rejected as a donor,” she said.

“Everything was meant to be,” Angela said as she recalled how unrelated events came together. “What’s really ironic is that I joined TOPS because I was terrified of anesthesia. And then I agreed to go under the knife to donate a kidney!” she laughed. “It all still sometimes floors me,” she added. “I knew that losing weight would prolong my life, but I had no idea it would one day enable me to prolong the life of another.”

Dogs can play the role of detective or cupid or that of a personal assistant helping human companions with daily needs. Some protect and some search for victims in building debris or under an avalanche flow. And some dogs connect like-minded people with whom friendships develop just when they are most needed. A higher power at work.

Cami holds unspeakable gratitude for Angela’s unflinching personal sacrifice. Both women, in different words, expressed wonderment of the circumstances in their lives that led their paths to intersect. And that path started with a dog.