Ron Danta - Forever Home: How We Turned Our House into a Haven for Abandoned, Abused, and Misunderstood Dogs—and Each Other

In memory of our mothers, Norma Robertshaw and Eileen Danta, who shaped our love for animals and who no doubt are right now soothing bewildered dogs newly arrived to their realm.

Also, in memory of Dannys sisters, Kitts McQueen, Cheryl Roberts, and Lynne Nelson, and to Rons sister, Diane Danta of Frankfort, Illinois. All of them have been kind to countless pups, including their younger brothers, whom they always accepted unconditionally.

Finally, to the millions of people around the globe involved in dog rescuethose working at shelters and related organizations as well as every single person who has ever adopted a dog that otherwise would have remained homeless. When you take in a dog, you are giving it not only love but also a voice. You are saying, I hear you. You are safe now. You are not alone.

T he first sounds of toenails hitting the floor make their way to us through a light sleep. Its usually Lhasa apso mix Speckles who jumps down first. It took him forever just to get on the bed. Six months had to go by before he would even come into the bedroom at night. When wed try to coax him to the mattress, hed run out the door. During the day, when he wasnt darting away from us, he was snarling. Then the better part of a year passed before he made his way to the pillows, where he now wraps himself around Rons head for his nightly repose.

We dont open our eyes but can sense the first weak rays of dawn straining to make their way through the shades. Wiggling follows, and we can feel some of the dogs begin to emerge from under the covers. We try to pretend that we can get a little more shut-eye before the day begins in earnest.

Isabelle, a liver-colored terrier with an adorable underbite, and Sweet Pea, a white Chihuahua-looking thing, are still perched at the very edge of the bed, as far from our feet as possible. Its going to take a while more for them. Beanieshe spends the night poking her head into the room, thinking through the risks as someone might before deciding whether to get on an intriguing but scary amusement park ride, until she finally loses her nerve and steals away. Thats okay. Here, times on her side.

Its too late to be able to tell the dogs to go back to sleep. Theyre more than stirring now and need to get outside before being fed. Still, we make an effort to fool ourselves into thinking we can doze just a few moments more.

And then Danny feels a weight on his chest. He opens his eyes to find himself looking directly at Busy Bee standing on top of himall seventeen pounds of her, with all four of her legs. Shes staring right back, with one blue eye and one brown one.

Before this, the poodle/miniature Australian shepherd mix, a puppy mill discard, has never even so much as come near the bedroom. Having lived in a cage her entire life until we took her in, never knowing either kindness or love, she is deathly afraid of people, and other dogs. She spends most of her time cowering in a corner of the kitchen.

But something has shifted for her. After months and months of keeping to herself and shaking when we tried just to lightly stroke her muzzle, she has courageouslyboldlydecided to take a closer look, to consider that a better life awaits.

We look at each other and smile. It is going to be a good day.

Men at some time are masters of their fates.

Shakespeare

But not always.

Danny and Ron

Camden, South Carolina, 1979

M oonpie ran right past the live oak saplings lining both sides of the long driveway the moment I set her down. Short and stout to the point that she was shaped like a tiny coffee table, she normally didnt have it in her to move so quickly. But watching her scamper with joy around the fields leading to the house, I could see that the little Jack Russell terrierchestnut-colored with splotches of whiteknew instinctively she had arrived at her new home and loved the freedom the farm was going to afford her. Johnny Cake, also a Jack Russell but far more slender, scrambled to catch up once I lifted him out of the pickup too, the pair of them romping and rolling and the white markings against Johnnys deeper-colored chocolatey brown fur clear even from a distance.

I brought up the rear with Number 7, my donkey that I named after the burro in the Grizzly Adams TV show. Wild Thing, a pony I rescued after he was found tied to the bumper of a rusted car in a trailer park, would join us a little later.

I was only twenty-five but had been doing well riding and training horses in hunter/jumper competitions and thought it was time to invest in a place of my own rather than continue renting. It was a heady feeling seeing my name on the deed: Daniel James Robertshaw.

The parcel, twenty-two acres, was situated on the outskirts of Camden. I named it Beaver River Farm, after the name of my mothers family farm in Rhode Island. I lived up north until I was three, before my parents came to North Carolina for my fathers job as a manager at a textile plant.

The saplingsseven scraggly Charlie Brown Christmas trees on either side of the drivewere barely five feet tall. I could easily see over them as I approached the clearing with the farmhouse. It was a white bungalow with a wraparound porch built almost sixty years earlier, in 1920too young to be an antique but definitely old enough to invoke the word ramshackle.

The place was pretty much a mess. You could see even before you came right upon the house that it was badly weather-beaten. The two-horse barn out back was rickety, too, and the land was going to need tending. Scrub brush and old cars and barbed wire littered the fields. Cacti grew in the depleted soil, and broken-down fencing everywhere meant not a single field or paddock was truly suitable for animals.

That was okay. I knew I could tend to things gradually. My idea was to make it a place to kick back and provide a haven for animals requiring helpdogs, old horses, anything that needed saving. It wasnt a mission. It wasnt even really a plan. It was just the way I lived, the way I felt. If an animal was starving, I would be able to take it in and fatten it up. If I saw a dog on the road I wanted to be able to take care of it. I was going to be able to carve out my niche just as I wanted it.

While Danny settled in, only about an hour away...

I was living in a trailer park with my wife, Paige, and our three dogs, crammed in and making ends meet. I worked forty hours a week at a 7-Eleven and another forty taking inventory at supermarkets and pharmacies. I had turned twenty-five earlier that year and had just moved to South Carolina to try to make a go of it in the show horse world. My work was in training horses and riders for hunter/jumper competitions, the spectacles where people on horseback sail gracefully over fences and other obstacles.

I had been training in my native Illinois, near Chicago, at a farm my parents had bought me, and was doing reasonably well. But the previous winter, the roof of the barn caved in as the result of a blizzard during which three and a half feet of snow had fallen in the space of twenty-four hours. I was teaching a lesson in the indoor arena when I started to hear a crackling sound. I looked up and saw the giant trusses near the ceiling kind of bowing down. I ran and opened the big door and told the two people to whom I was giving a lesson to run. Then I hurried and got the horses out, but almost immediately the entire indoors started going down in a domino effect and continued over to the stalls, where I was boarding thirty-five horses.

I managed to move them to another stable, but it, too, collapsed. Then I arranged for them to stay in a third stable, but the barn there had caved in by the time the horses arrived. Barns were falling apart all around because of the snows weight, and I had to put the horses in my own outdoor ring until I finally was able to move them to a barn that was quite far away and where the snow wasnt falling as hard.