What’s Chelsea’s story?
A. We know very little of it. Only that when the family who gave her up brought her in, she was dying of heartworm and covered with mats. She was also blind in one eye, with half a tail. In short, a real hard-luck case. But Chelsea is in some definite way soulful. And she makes frequent use of one of the most common forms of dog communication. She offers her paw, which is essentially the same act as my friend Bob extending a hand to a dog. This gesture and her soulful aspect seem to have melted everyone at the Evansville humane society. There was no money to treat her, and in the normal course of events she would have been put down. Except a remarkable volunteer in Evansville, Marjorie Cox beat the bushes to come up with the money to treat her. Whether Chelsea would make it was still uncertain when we first contacted Vanderburgh. It remains a small miracle to me that a handshake is why Chelsea lived.
