CHICAGO — It started in August 2013, when Charlie Propsom, the founder and president of Friends of Chicago Animal Care & Control, was leaving a volunteer meeting at the facility. It was late, she recalls, 8:30 or 9 p.m., and she spotted three people walking in, carrying a doll-sized version of a baby carrier.
The three — a woman, her daughter and her granddaughter — were obviously troubled.
“They had such long faces. I knew something bad was happening,” she said.
In the carrier was a tiny 6-week-old Chihuahua. Her right eye was bulging out, red rimmed and ugly. The pup’s mother apparently bit her early that day.
The daughter of the group, Silvia, said she had called everywhere but couldn’t afford to have the injury taken care of. “She said, ‘We’re hoping someone here can take her,'” Propsom recalls.
The AC&C vet staff had gone home, so Propsom contacted the Chicago Veterinary Emergency and Specialty Center on Clybourn Avenue in the city. The staff there said to bring the puppy in. It was soon determined that the eye was not going to be saved and that surgery to remove it was the best course of action. As part of the paperwork, they needed the dog’s name.
“They said (they) haven’t named her yet. I said this surgery is very iffy because the dog weighed only a pound and a half. I threw out Blinky, and (the granddaughter) Kassandra’s eyes lit up. ‘Yeah, that’s it.’ “
“Kassandra was asking me what happens to dogs when they die,” Propsom says. “I looked at her mother and said all dogs go to heaven when they die. She said, ‘No, what do they do with them?’ I said we bury them, like people. It was a pretty heavy conversation.”
Propsom and the family left Blinky in the vets’ care. About 4 a.m., Propsom got a phone call: Blinky had survived.
New owner
Propsom fostered Blinky during her recovery, and Silvia and her family decided to relinquish ownership. The grandmother was having health problems, and the family already had four dogs, so Silvia let Friends find a new home for the pup.
“I said, ‘Part of how you can pay me back is to have those dogs spayed and neutered, then do some volunteer work for us,’ ” Propsom says.
Once Blinky was made available, “I had a ton of applications,” she says. “Photographs of a one-eyed Chihuahua stir people. A lot of people applied.”
Blinky found a home in Manhattan, Ill., with a woman who was an experienced rescuer and who had a one-eyed cat in her household. The pup is doing well.
Over the last year. Silvia and Kassandra have volunteered for Friends.
“We helped the Humane Society of the United States with a vaccine clinic in a largely Hispanic community,” Propsom says. “Silvia speaks both English and Spanish fluently, so she and Kassie came out for two big sessions. On one day, we had over 500 animals, the second one had over 700 animals. And she talked those owners into spay-neuter.”
Silvia’s family’s dogs were also spayed and neutered.
The lessons from Blinky’s story are several. Get your pets spayed and neutered, obviously. But also, Blinky’s case highlights the dearth of veterinary care on the South and Southwest sides of Chicago.
“It’s damned difficult for people to find care for their pets,” Propsom says. “And transportation isn’t there either. Even if people know where to go, they can’t get there.”
Daily fight
The story also throws a spotlight on the daily fight that goes on at AC&C.
“Three vets, 22,000 animals a year,” Propsom says. “The city budget doesn’t provide for extra care, like eye removal in this case. So they are working with rescues to take out animals in need.
“Our message is we’re helping save the lives of Chicago’s neediest animals. Every animal at Animal Care & Control is one of the neediest. People think the worst of people who bring their animals to Animal Care & Control, but for some people it’s the only resort they have,” she said.
So Blinky was lucky, and is now on her way to living happily ever after. Moreover, her situation indirectly led to more people being educated about spaying and neutering, and others being educated about the work that Friends does.
Lastly, Propsom reports, “The family ended up inviting me to Kassie’s First Communion, which was nice.”
