Melanie Butera - Dillie the Deer: A True Story of Love, Healing, and Family

65 Bleecker Street

New York, NY 10012

Copyright 2015 by Melanie Butera

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Regan Arts Subsidiary Rights Department, 65 Bleecker Street, New York, NY 10012.

First Regan Arts hardcover edition, October 2015

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015946435

ISBN 978-1-94287210-8

eISBN 978-1-94287271-9

Interior design by Nancy Singer

Cover design by Catherine Casalino

Front cover and title page photograph Life on White / Alamy

Back cover photograph by Karen L. Clark

To my parents, Sal and Connie Butera

Thank you for your love and encouragement,

and for giving me the tools I needed

to live my dreams.

To my husband, Steve

Thank you for taking this journey with me with so much love, wonder, and humor.

This story is completely true, but events are related as I remember them.

I promised the wildlife department that I would make it clear that Dillies circumstances are unique. Dillie was born on a farm, and her disposition and partial blindness have allowed her to be a well-acclimated pet in our household. I would never, and I do mean never, recommend anyones having a deer as a house pet.

Please remember that in most states, including Ohio, it is illegal to take any animal out of the wild and make it a pet. It is illegal to allow domestic deer like Dillie and wild deer to have contact with each other. Although deer farming in Ohio is a fast-growing rural business, the federal and state regulations are very stringent and apply to our herd of one.

Dillie is fully permitted and registered with the state, and we comply with all the laws.

A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book is donated to Dillies charity for UNICEF and local animal rescue charities. You may donate directly to Dillie Dollars for Kids at:

www.razoo.com/story/Dillie-Dollars-For-Kids

M y name is Melanie Butera, and I am an animal person.

We animal people cherish our animals as our children. We care more about our pets than our sofas and carpets. We prepare meals for them, groom them, transform our homes for them, and shower them with affection. We treat them like royalty, serving them out of love. In return, our pets make us smile and laugh and give us companionship and protection.

When we look at an animal, whether a house cat, a goldfish, a Siberian tiger, or a parrot, we see beyond the fur, fins, and feathers to the beauty of creation. We experience the meaning of life, with all its wonder and mystery, hardship and joy. We recognize the presence of the Divine.

I connected with animals from the time I could toddle over and hug Napoleon, our black and gray standard poodle, a gentle giant who would allow five hyperactive children to tug on his ears and ride him like a pony. He watched over all of uswe were his children. He was my bud throughout my childhood and adolescence. When I was lonely and sad, as I often was in those teenage days, Napoleon was my source of solace and strength. He passed away when I was seventeen and had just started college. He, too, was seventeenwe had been together our entire lives. Four decades later, Napoleon remains as great an influence on my life as any teacher or mentor I ever had.

During my childhood, I was naturally drawn to animals. I was always bringing home orphaned bunnies, baby birds, squirrels, kittens, puppies, opossums, and any other animal that needed a hand, which annoyed my busy mother to no end.

When I was in third grade, I found a brochure in class entitled I Want to Be a Veterinarian. I knew immediately that this was my calling. I took the brochure home and read it aloud to Napoleon, stumbling over the names of the courses I would have to take: parasitology, immunology, endocrinology, and helminthology. I stayed awake all night looking up each word in the family encyclopedia. As I fell asleep, with Napoleon at my feet, I had an unusual clarity about what my life would be. Even though I had not yet taken a single class of veterinary medicine, nor survived any of the many, many all-night study sessions or grueling summer days in the equine rotation, nor diagnosed a single cat with lymphoma, or saved one dog with a ruptured bowel, I became a veterinarian that night.

When I was a teenager, Dean Le Beau, who was fresh out of school, was our family vet. After my mother told him of my aspirations, he ushered me back to a microscope and showed me a live heartworm larva squirming among a patients red blood cells. He soon became my mentor. I volunteered at the Stark County Veterinary Clinic, where Dean served on the board.

Though it would take me another sixteen years, a great deal of sacrifice, and unwavering dedication to achieve my goal, I finally earned the right to put DVM after my name. Not long after I graduated from veterinary school, Dean hired me to work at the emergency clinic I later owned. In the two and a half decades that have passed since that proud graduation day at Ohio State, I have never stopped celebrating my good fortune. Of course, there have been difficult times. There have been mornings when I was so exhausted after working seventy straight hours that I literally crawled up the stairs to bed. There has been heartbreak when I could not save my patient or when the client would not even allow me to try. Yet I know my life could not have gone in any other direction. Becoming a vet was not a choice. This profession is not what I do; it is who I am.

My husband, Steve, is a grizzly bear of a man with a heart as big as nature. When we first met, people said it would never last because we were in many waysokay, nearly all wayscomplete opposites. I am cerebral, he is kinetic; I use logic, hes all about muscle and brawn; I am a technology geek, he is a Luddite; I come from a huge, loud Sicilian clan and he from a small, reserved family; I am a teetotaler, his middle name should be Coors Light. What is important is that we are both animal people. Steve and I have a deep respect for all creatures and see in them the spark of God. Animals are not only our livelihood but also our passion and purpose.

We settled in Northeast Ohio, where I grew up. For most of our marriage, our family business has been the local veterinary emergency clinic. The great physical and personal demands of emergency work took their toll on me. As I aged, it wasnt as easy to go days and days without sleep as it had been when I was twenty-eight. By necessity, in 2005, I sold the emergency clinic and eventually started a smaller general practice right down the street from our home.

Though Steve has never had the joy of sitting through that class in helminthology, the study of worms, he is naturally gifted with animals. I have witnessed injured hummingbirds perch on his workmans hands as he fed them nectar drop by drop. Animals seem to bond with him almost immediately. It amazes me. Even the wildest animals we work on are soothed by his touch. I have seen an injured hawk, who would not let anyone near him, hop onto Steves extended forearm. A hissing, feral kitten could not resist him for long and soon snuggled against his big chest. He has that legendary Dr. Doolittle magic.

Throughout our years together, many, many animals have been in our lives. Some have been cherished children who will stay in our hearts forever. On the day we opened the clinic, we found Sally, our cat who lived to be twenty, left on the doorstep before we had even unlocked the door. Our first dog as a couple was a basset hound named Oh-Five. At the same time, we had a pet raccoon named Mary Margaret Beauregard Butler, who had been rescued from an abusive situation at five weeks. Miss Butts or Butts, as we called her, and Oh-Five were great pals, which surprised us, because hounds and racoons are natural enemies. She used to ride on Oh-Fives back when we walked in the park. She was a rascal who stole food from the microwave. On the day that Oh-Five died, she grieved for him, crying with the oddest, heartbreaking sound. And soon you will meet Dillie, Neffie, Lady, Spazz, Screamie, and Willie. We have had so many treasured pets, and I could write a book about each of them. Many have been temporary guests or patients who etched a smile on our hearts. Thousands have been wild animals who were with us only as they convalesced before returning to the wild. Whether these animal visitors had human caretakers or were creatures of God, each one brought us joy and love.