Dog Left Abandoned at Local Town Shelter Spends His Final Days at Hounds Town Charities
It was a beautiful sunny day a few months ago when President of Hounds Town Charities Mike Gould was dropping his son off at the Town of Brookhaven Animal Shelter for his shift as a kennel worker. As Mike was pulling out of the parking lot, he noticed an older dog hobbling around the property, on his morning walk. Mike rolled his window down and asked the worker about the dog. She relayed that the dog’s name was Wilbur, and that he had terminal cancer. He had been brought in a few months prior as a stray, but it’s likely he was once someone’s beloved family pet.
A few weeks later, Mike was back at the shelter to pick his son up from work. Wilbur happened to be on his afternoon walk this time. “There was something about Wilbur I was drawn to,” explains Mike. “I felt that Hounds Town Charities could do something for him beyond the wonderful care that the shelter was giving him, including the opportunity to have more space in a quieter place and possibly to interact with other dogs in doggie daycare,” says Mike.
At the same time, local rescue Road to Home Rescue Support was posting pleas on Facebook about Wilbur, and it caught the charity’s attention. The next day, Hounds Town Charities agreed to foster Wilbur for the rest of his life at the doggie daycare’s corporate location in Ronkonkoma, where the charity also fosters other dogs from local shelters when they have the space. “If it weren’t for my son, for the staff, volunteers, and director at the shelter, and for the local rescues all pushing to get Wilbur out of the shelter, we wouldn’t have been aware of his needs,” says Mike.
Today, Wilbur enjoys a private luxury suite with “butler” service and spends his time lounging in the grass with the staff at Hounds Town Ronkonkoma. “Our staff takes excellent care of Wilbur, and each one of them go out of their way to spend extra time with him every day,” says Mike. Wilbur is even learning to like other dogs, and has made a new friend in fellow senior Joe–another Hounds Town Charities dog rescued in 2015 from 7 years in a shelter. “Sometimes it takes a village to save a dog,” says Mike. “And Wilbur had a village. We all came together to coordinate the best possible care for Wilbur’s last days, and that is what rescue is all about.”
With the help of Wilbur’s village, the folks at Hounds Town Charities are creating a bucket list for Wilbur. They are documenting his list in a video which will be shared with everyone. Stay tuned!
For more information on Hounds Town Charities or Wilbur, visit www.houndstownusa.com/givingback.