Say what you will about diamonds or roses. This Valentine's Day, hearts have melted for Chocolate.
While the poor pooch recovers from two broken legs at Washington State University's College of Veterinary Medicine, his sad-to-glad tale is as befitting the holiday as his name.
After two surgeries Friday and Monday, he'll get his first dose of rehabilitation today when he takes a dip in the college's physical therapy pool to try out the underwater treadmill. Rehab could last a month or so, and when he finishes, it'll be time to find him a new home.
Meadow Hills Veterinary Center in Kennewick will help select a home for him, as it has managed his care. Already the clinic has a list of about 50 people hoping to provide Chocolate a new home.
The chance of any of them being selected may be 50-to-1, but the odds haven't kept them from falling in love with the dog who was found abandoned north of Pasco with two legs broken, probably from being hit by a car.
"It just breaks my heart to think he was out there by himself for six months in pain. I tear up when I think about that," said John Holbrook, 60, of Richland. "I want me or somebody else to make up for that, so he's in a loving home and he just feels like he's a part of something. A permanent part of something."
Holbrook and his wife, Donna, can envision taking walks with Chocolate and their Labrador mix, Sammi. When they let her off her leash, she goes "off-roading," as they call it, veering off the path to see what she can sniff out. They imagine Chocolate would enjoy doing the same.
Or, if he ends up in Karin and Jack Hudgins' home off Reata Road in Kennewick, for instance, he could enjoy watching basketball on the big-screen TV with their other dog Hoops.
"I think he can only see two-dimensionally, but he likes the talking," Karin Hudgins, 51, said of their dog.
She already has bought kitty toys for her cats and carrots for her horses for Valentine's Day. She said she would be heartbroken for a little while if she doesn't get to take Chocolate home, but she would understand.
Chocolate himself has demonstrated a large capacity for love and loyalty. Even when he was a lonely-hearted dog with broken legs, he found a companion in a grungy yellow ball, much like Tom Hanks' Cast Away character, who befriended a volleyball named Wilson during his four years stranded on a desert island.
Chocolate kept the ball in his mouth even when he was rescued from the fields north of Pasco, where he spent about six months abandoned, hobbling on his broken legs.
But he hasn't been as inseparable from the yellow ball during his treatment at WSU. The doctors and veterinary students there have used the yellow ball strategically to entice his cooperation, giving it to him as a reward when he does something they want to encourage.
He also lost his good nature a bit when he had to wear an Elizabethan collar to keep him from picking at his stitches. But he loves people, and his enthusiastic nature leads the doctors to believe he'll do well with rehab.
Still, perhaps a solemn irony for Chocolate this Valentine's Day is that his prospects for one kind of lovin' may soon be diminished. At some point after his legs are repaired, Chocolate probably will be fixed in the other sense. He could be neutered while at WSU, or he could get the procedure after he returns to the vet clinic.
"Meadow Hills feels strongly that a male dog that is not going to be a breeding male should be neutered," said
Dr. Janine Swailes, the veterinarian handling his case. "Obviously there's too many unwanted pets in the world."
Neutering him may or may not further help him by settling him down and making him less likely to run away, she said.
"It's definitely not a guarantee, but it does reduce testosterone levels," she said. "They're not quite so anxious to go out looking for a girlfriend."
Not that Chocolate should mind once he's pampered in a new home. Besides, who needs a sweetheart when you're man's best friend?
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