Grover could be the poster child for the no-tethering-dogs movement.

Grover could be the poster child for the no-tethering-dogs movement.

The stray dog — best guess, a lab-shepherd mix — was found in a starving condition on a New Bern porch on Feb. 3.

Trinity Smith, director of the Craven-Pamilco Animal Shelter, said she took a call from a woman in the city who reported a dog “in horrible condition.” She referred the caller to the city’s animal control officer, who picked the dog up and brought him to the shelter.

When Grover arrived, Smith quickly discovered what the caller meant.

An adult dog of around two years of age, he was skin and bones, his ribs and spine showing, and his belly swollen and distended. Most noticeable was an ugly, putrefying inch-wide, deep wound encircling his neck where a too-tight collar or possibly chain had held him.

“I thought the collar might still be imbedded,” Smith said.

She quickly caged the dog and transported him to the Austin Veterinary Outreach and Rescue in Beaufort to see what could be done for him.

The rescue is located at the Austin Veterinary Clinic. Both are run by Dr. Sara Austin, a Greenville native who set up practice in Carteret County because it was, she said, where her husband grew up.

Austin said that, for Grover’s first three days, she and her staff were not certain he would pull through.

“He’d obviously been on a chain,” she said. “He must have broken off that chain. He had a huge gash. When he walked in the room you could smell the rotting flesh.”

Austin said the dog was severely underweight for his breed. “He was so weak he could only stand for a few seconds then had to sit down.”

She said that Grover’s belly was badly swollen, so much so that it pushed other organs aside to make room.

“It was hugely distended,” Austin said. “You shouldn’t be able to palpate the stomach, but it was way past his ribs.” She said she was surprised when she felt his stomach. “There was something hard and crunchy” inside, she said. “I said, ‘Has he been eating rocks?’”

“What I think appears really sad,” she said, “is, once he got off the chain, he went looking for food and must have eaten dead carcasses.”

At that moment, the thought of a name for the stray — “Stoner” — began to occur to her and her assistants.

But an X-ray showed his belly was full of something else. “Bones,” she said. “I could see them.”

So they changed their mind on his name and he became Grover.

In his weakened condition he couldn’t digest them, Austin said — and surgery to remove them was definitely out of the question. He also tested heartworm positive.

At that point, his chances at survival were iffy, but she was determined to give him a chance.

“He was so weak he would barely pick up his head,” Austin remembered, “But his tail would always wag. Sweetest dog you would ever meet. Through the whole thing his tail would wag.”

“We got him on pain meds and IV fluids,” she said. “We gave him a week because he was too weak for vaccines, and then we got the rabies (vaccine) in him.”

Grover was listed officially as being with Craven-Pamlico Animal Shelter for 72 hours, because state laws require the animal be held that long to give owners a chance to show up and claim it (“(Smith) said she’d have him arrested if he showed up,” Austin said), but as soon as the 72 hours passed Austin officially claimed the dog for Austin Veterinary.

Grover — who currently has a sock taped over his tail because he wags it so much and has developed a sore on its tip from thumping it against walls — is regaining his strength and currently eating eight small meals a day.

When he is strong enough he will be neutered and will probably be entered into Pamlico Correctional Institutions’ New Leash on Life, a program in which prisoners train dogs for eight weeks to turn them into well-trained family pets.

A New Bern couple has already turned in adoption forms for Grover when he is better.

Grover’s past is unknown, whether he’d been abandoned and left on a chain or was being ill-treated and managed to escape, but if his owners are found they could easily find themselves facing animal abuse charges.

A proposal is before the Craven County Board of Commissioners for a no-tethering law which would make it against the law to have a dog on a chain for more than two hours at a time. That drive is being led by Tyker Gonzales, who has gathered several thousand signatures for the bill on petitions.



Contact Bill Hand at bill.hand@newbernsj.com, 252-635-5677, and follow him @BillHandNBSJ.



