Buddy the Magician -- page 2

. . . After everybody at the shelter has already agreed that they can really only give him one more week before the "you-know-what," suddenly the story appears in the local newspaper and on the wire services, and then on TV. Except that, instead of being this very badly behaved dog, Buddy has been magically transformed into a "hero" who, according to the crew from the fire department, "may have saved Kimberly's life through his warmth and companionship."

(My investigative assistant, Tammy the Greyhound, is suspicious of this. Her investigation reveals that it was actually about 50 degrees that evening and that it usually takes more than a couple of hours for a person to die of loneliness!)

Anyway, then comes the sentence that sets the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons here. According to the newspapers, "shelter workers checked with Best Friends ... but it was full."

Well, this is true. Dogtown is always full. As fast as one dog goes out to a new home, the next one comes in. And a dog like Buddy would need an entire fenced area to himself. I mean, who knows what kind of dog he really is? According to the people at the shelter, he's like Lassie one minute, and the Hound of the Baskervilles the next!

But the phones are soon ringing off the hook here and the PTB are in danger of falling into Buddy's public relations disaster zone - which is even worse than falling down a 25-foot well.

Kimberly, meanwhile, is telling everyone in the press that Buddy is the sweetest dog ever. "He licked my wounds when we were down the well together," she tells Estelle, our assistant editor here. "And the wounds he licked healed up quicker than the ones he didn't lick."

"This dog should be running for political office," I'm telling Tammy.

But within 24 hours yet another magical transformation has occurred: The P.T.B. and the people at the shelter have figured out how to put all the pieces together so that Buddy can come to Best Friends after all.

It's still going to be an expensive project, so they call the newspapers and TV in North Carolina to say that Buddy is indeed coming to Dogtown but that he's going to need his own special accommodations here and that we could really use some help at this end.

Which leads to the next magical event in the story. By the end of the next day, and before Buddy is even on the plane to Best Friends, his new "Buddy Fund" has collected more than $5,000 from his fans all over North Carolina and the PTB are starting work on his new home.

Next Page: And so the hero comes to Best Friends.