Honor Guard

Tri-City Tales Issue No. 30

Last November, DeSoto animal control officer Michelle Romualdo answered a call about a stray dog hanging around a DeSoto church. She arrived to find a black doodle mix cowering behind the building. As she slowly approached, the dog disappeared into a ravine next to Ten Mile Creek.

Still, she thought the fellow would be easy to catch. They would use a live trap: put food inside, wait for the dog to go in, and presto! – door swings shut. But there was a glitch. When the moment came, his back foot kept the trap from closing. The contraption only frightened him.

Romualdo had a bigger trap, but it was in use. While she waited for it to become available, she went by the church every day to feed the dog to encourage him to stay put. “We didn’t want him to wander into the ravine,” she says, “We were afraid we’d lose him forever.”  Another month went by. They started calling him Honor, after Honor Drive, a nearby street. 

When Romualdo finally obtained the larger trap, she started feeding Honor around and beside it, so he wouldn’t be scared to go in. She set up game cameras so she could check on him. In late January, she got close enough to notice something alarming: Honor was wearing a collar that had been put on him when he was a puppy, but it was not a breakaway design. As he’d grown, the collar had embedded into his neck. It was infected and in danger of damaging his windpipe. Suddenly, catching him became an emergency. They were out of time.

“We bought some warm, gas station hot dogs,” she says. They put them inside the trap and returned later that day. It worked. “We were so elated to see him in there. We brought him to the shelter, and they immediately sedated him and took him back to the Lifesaving and Learning Center,” she says. (The LLC, funded by donors to the Friends of Tri-City Animal Shelter, contains operating rooms which include an X-Ray machine.) To everyone’s relief, the embedded collar had not yet damaged Honor’s trachea or blood vessels (his intake picture is below). 

By the next day, Honor began to slowly wag his tail. He had clearly known human interaction before his three months on the street. The staff added “Scruffy” to his name. Romualdo jokes that he’s “the Honorable Mr. Scruffy.” He’s now living in a foster home as he awaits a new owner. He’s put on weight, loves car rides and playing with other dogs, and oddly, going down slides at the playground. 

Although capturing him took time and patience, “I didn’t want him to suffer alone,” Romualdo says. “We saved his life. Eventually, the suffocation and infection from the collar would have gotten him. He’s one of my favorite catches of all time.”

Note: If you are interested in adopting Honor, please contact the Tri-City Animal Shelter at 972-291-5335.