A Charitable Act Gives Them Paws

Everything was fine. That is, Rudi didn’t know. She was her happy self, bounding into the Chevy Suburban, skinny black tail swishing, then lying quietly on the floor. Rudi loves going out.

Connie, Tamara, Lisa, Julie and Kimberly Papple were going too. This time the handoff would happen at the Orange County Fair. Those nice people from San Rafael would be there. Rudi would like them; these are people who do good things.

Still, Jeff Papple couldn’t bring himself to go with his wife and daughters. He never can. He particularly hates these kinds of goodbys. You raise them as if they were your own. You just love them to death, feed them well, teach them right from wrong, take them everywhere you go. And then this. . . .

“We thought we were doing real well,” says Tamara, who is 15. “Then we put her in the cage and her shoulders dropped.”

Now a picture of Rudi is produced. It is a very, very sad picture. Rudi is staring into the camera lens, through the grating of her cage. Her big brown eyes are even bigger, stretched by disappointment. Even her whiskers droop.

All right, so everything was not fine. Fact is, it was awful. Connie needed her dark sunglasses. Her daughters just wanted to go home, skipping the carnival rides. Their father was darn lucky he wasn’t there.

“I couldn’t do this if it weren’t for a good cause,” Kimberly says. She is 17 years old.

Rudi was Kimberly’s dog, a black Lab. Well, she wasn’t really Kimberly’s dog, but you get attached.

Rudi was the latest puppy assigned to her under the 4-H Guide Dog Puppy Project, arriving at the Papples’ Yorba Linda household when she was 7 weeks old, an adorable lump of fur, a tiny little thing. She stayed for more than a year, a wonderful dog; she loved to swim in the back-yard pool.

(Although Kimberly hears that since she’s left the Papples’, she’s put on a lot of weight.)

Now Rudi is close to graduating, up in San Rafael at Guide Dogs for the Blind, a nonprofit outfit that breeds and trains the dogs, then gives them to blind people throughout the western United States free of charge.

In between is when the 4-H families get their chance. The foster puppies are socialized, given obedience training and taken out a lot--to restaurants, church, school, shopping, on the bus, anywhere and everywhere they can. This can amount to a lot of work.

Which helps keep things in perspective. If you’re a project member, you remind yourself that these puppies have an elevated station in life, perhaps destined for heroic deeds of many kinds.

Perhaps, however, is the operative word. Only half of the puppies ever become actual working dogs. The other half, for a variety of reasons (poor health, lousy eyesight, aggressive tendencies, excessive slobbering, to name a few) are forced to drop out.

Excuse me. “Making a career change” is what, officially within the program, it is called.

Not that this is likely to happen in Rudi’s case. It appears that she is doing quite well. The Papples make sure and check--purely for academic reasons, you understand. Even though, should Rudi not make the cut, the Papple family would have the right of first refusal as to whether to offer her a permanent home.

(Yes! They would take her back. After all, they only have one other dog, two cats, two horses--including a boarder--one bunny, one parakeet, two fish and some swimming frogs on a permanent basis).

“It’s kind of exciting to have somebody doing good,” Connie says of the Rudi-gal. Operative words here: kind of . Connie’s smile is a little wan.

But all of this, mostly, has been about Rudi. It wasn’t meant to be. Jangles, for example, is here now, tongue flopping out to the side, just tickled to death to be among her people in the Papples’ living room.

Alas, another wonderful dog; she is a golden retriever, 17 months old. She is (temporarily) Tamara’s. We are not going to talk about what will happen when it is Jangles’ time to leave . . . .

“If you’re sad, she’ll come and cuddle with you,” Tamara says of her dog.

“She does listen and will correct,” Connie adds. (The vacuum cleaner is her biggest fear).

“We taught her ‘Bang Bang’,” Kimberly says. “Bang! Bang!”

Kimberly cocks her hand like a pistol, but Jangles must be saving her stuff for “Late Night With David Letterman.” Only one hind leg briefly flails as Jangles lies on her back.

Chevy, too, is here. He is a yellow Lab, 12 weeks old. Wilma Cotting, the community project leader in Orange County, is raising him, for now. Chevy and Jangles are instant pals.

All of this started, in the Papple household, with Connie’s own experience when she was in high school in West Covina. More snapshots, tinged with the patina of age:

Here is Connie with Ernest, a German shepherd, who was the first. He went on to become a working dog, 24 years ago.

“My dad still hasn’t gotten over him,” Connie says. “My mother just mentioned Ernie last week.”

Then there was Major, a golden retriever, who went on to work for a blind Santa Ana man, and Kansas, another golden retriever, who became “a career change dog.”

And before Jangles and Rudi, there was Gwendy, Kimberly’s golden retriever. Then Tamara got Tangie, a German shepherd, and now, of course, Lisa Papple, who’s 13, is next in line and Julie, 8, wants to get with the program too. (You have to be at least 12 years old).

So there will be more guide dog puppies arriving around here, even if it is hard to let them go. They never really do leave that special place in their foster parents’ heart.

As for Rudi, the Papples plan to see her come February, on graduation day in San Rafael. Connie and the girls will prepare a photo album of the early years. This way, her new owner can show it to friends.

They also plan to take the requisite dark sunglasses. These ceremonies are pretty emotional scenes--the 4-H members formally relinquishing a loved pet, the blind people talking about what receiving such a wonderful gift means to them.

No word yet on whether Jeff Papple, maybe the biggest softy of them all, will attend.