The Elder Statesman

By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here

I’m from the old school of journalism, one that was filled with maxims about the profession. One of the maxims that I recall is that a story about a dog is a sure winner with readers.

This column is about a woebegone puppy named "Kat."

There is a human interest story behind the dog named Kat that is also a sure winner with readers, if I still believe those old journalistic maxims. That story involves a 1990 Roseburg, Oregon High School graduate who belies the often made claim that today’s generation is self-centered.

He is the adult grandson of a friend, Bill Kopfler of Roseburg, Oregon The grandson, Jeff Allen, is now a computer engineer who works, when he is not off volunteering somewhere, in the Silicon Valley of California.

It is no secret that computer engineers make big bucks. That is what makes this human interest story so interesting. Jeff has given all that up for the depravation of  working with less fortunate human beings. He spent a summer in Romania with a Swedish church group building a village of homes for orphans. In three weeks, the group built the homes from the foundation up.

Church members in Palo Alto, Calif. furnished the homes, including a doll on every girl’s bed and a toy truck on every body’s bed.

After taking disaster training from the Red Cross, including the International Red Cross in Switzerland, Jeff became a humanitarian volunteer, that brought him in contact with "Kat" in a round about way. While training in Guatemala with the Doctors Without Borders organization, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast of the United States. He was sent to Mississippi for two months to set up radio relay connections and other communications stations in that ravaged region.

In Mobile, Ala. Jeff first laid eyes on "Kat," a cocoa brown, part Labrador Retriever puppy, only a few months old, that had been abandoned during the hurricane. "Kat," was on her way to be euthanized when Jeff intervened and saved her by agreeing to take her back to California with him.

He chose the name Katrina, shortened to "Kat," because of the circumstances of their meeting and  He admits he gets some strange looks when he calls out for a dog, saying "here Kat, here Kat."

He recently got reassigned to set up communications for a Doctors Without Borders hospital in war-torn Liberia. He will be working in a remote area about 200 miles east of Monrovia, near the border of the Ivory Coast, which is involved in an insurrection.

A Doctors Without Borders hospital there is dealing not only with the wounded from the insurrection, but also starving refugees fleeing the violence.

Because of travel restrictions, Jeff was unable to take "Kat" with him and has now left the puppy, about six months old, with his mother, Dulcie Bagley, a retired Roseburg school teacher, who lives in Winston. Dulcie cannot keep the dog as she spends winters in a facility away from Winston that restricts residents from having pets.

My friend Bill turned to an old journalist, full of old school maxims, in hopes that readers of his column will generate interesting in finding a home for a dog named "Kat," which has had some hard luck in finding a permanent home.

Bill said the Bailey veterinary clinic in Roseburg has given the puppy a full examination and all its shots and will provide the new owner with those records. After the examination, the vet said "Kat," is a mixed breed that appears to be mostly Lab and will be a medium sized dog when fully grown.
 

This entry was posted on Friday, June 30th, 2006 at 9:02 am and is filed under Column. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.