28/07/2025
Molly died yesterday.
We never knew her age. We never knew ger breed. We guessed that she was a Havanese. We never did a DNA test. We never cared.
She was, simply, our Molly. Whatever her age, whatever her breed.
We knew some facts. Molly was a breeder’s dog . Her life until three years ago was spent in a cage breeding, And breeding. The breeder bred her through stage 3 cancer. Then dumped her at a shelter, where she lived on the floor of the public bathroom.
John and I received a call in the summer of 2022 , asking if we could help a sick dog. The shelter had no funds and would have to euthanize her. They sent a picture of a beautiful face with big hopeful black eyes, maybe the biggest black eyes we had ever seen.
It was Molly. She had tumors scraping the floor. She had mammary gland cancer and adrenal cancer. Without hesitation John and I said we would free her. I told Molly’s sad story on social media . We never asked for anything. But money started pouring into FOACAS Rescue, which John and I founded in 2020, and we were able to get Molly massive surgery, spaying and nine rounds of chemotherapy.
Molly rebounded, but on the ninth round collapsed and was taken to the emergency room. Three days later she ate some food and tentatively wagged her tail.
When she returned to us, we made two decisions. Molly deserved quality, not quantity, of life. We would take her off the pills that made her sleep all day and lose all her hair. And we would adopt her. If Molly only had six months, as the oncologists predicted, we would give her the only six months of life she ever had.
Molly’s six months stretched into another two and a half years. She blossomed with us, her first and only family. Every morning she awoke, walked to my side of the bed and put her paws up to say hello. She would stay there until we said “Good morning, Molly, good morning, Nicky, good morning Lola” and then she would noisily race downstairs to go outside. She never missed her good morning greeting. She marked our days.
Molly did not know what to do with toys, she had never seen toys before, but she loved drive in windows to get pup in a cup whipped cream, diving her head all the way in. She loved car rides and children and rolling in leaves in the parks.
She loved John. She was John’s little girl, and he took her to all his male destinations of building supply stores and hardware stores and pharmacies, where Molly always was the center of attention.
She gamely went out on our boat and watched the waves. She preferred long walks off the leash, wandering to her own proverbial drummer.
She never saw a crate or a cage or a pen or any enclosure ever again. Despite her wretched life, Molly made everyone her best friend. We would have adoption events in our back yard, and everyone asked if they could adopt Molly, rather than the dog they had come to see. Molly welcomed every homeless dog who came through our house, mothering them through the hurt and pain they, too, had endured.
A month ago Molly started coughing. The cancer had finally monstrously returned, this time to her lungs. The cough became an inability to walk. John carried her up and down stairs and into the car. She never missed a ride. We wheeled her in a buggy through the parks, where she could see other dogs and children. She still dragged herself to my side of the bed each morning, but she could no longer lift her paws. She just stared with her big eyes, while we said “Good morning, Molly.”
On Saturday our family all said goodbye to Molly. She could not lift her head. Everyone crouched and whispered to her. They promised her she would always be free.
Yesterday John and I sat on the floor with her, waiting for the vet to release Molly from her painful breathing.We clung to the hours we had left with her. We cursed cruel breeders and people who choose to turn away from this heartless industry, making living souls breeding machines. But mostly we told Molly how much we loved her, that the three years of life she had with us in freedom was her only lifetime and she would never remember anything else.
This morning there was no Molly at our bedside. We said “Good morning, Nicky, good morning Lola,” but the words were a long sad silence. So instead, we added “Good morning, Molly” because we like to think that somewhere she has her paws still ready to greet us, her big eyes excitedly waiting for another day of boundless and inexorable freedom.
www.foacas.org
