From the Road - Ode's Story

Ode’s story begins a couple years before she was born.

Daisy

Our little girl was Daisy. A big, beautiful Belgian Tervuren, we had rescued her four years earlier. She was a helper dog for an elderly woman, and apparently wasn’t performing the way the woman needed her to, so the woman got a puppy and started to train the puppy, locking Daisy in a crate.

As you might imagine Daisy started acting out, and the woman was going to put her down. A rescue organization called Animal Crusaders stepped in and we found Daisy at an adoption fair.

Daisy was the first dog my wife and I took in together, and she was a great dog. She was smart, and seemed to know what she had in us. She gave as good as she got. We loved her very much.

While my wife was on her internship out of state, Daisy became ill. A number of vets couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong, until one determined that she had cancer.

My wife had been gone for five months. On the day my wife came home for summer break, we had to let Daisy go.

I picked my wife up at the airport in Phoenix, we drove home to Tucson and went straight to the vet hospital where we said goodbye. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and we were completely devastated.

Almost two years went by, and we still felt Daisy’s loss. Life moves forward. Always forward.

We just didn’t feel ready for a new dog. We talked about it a time or two, but it just didn’t feel right.

On a January day in 2007, my wife was working just outside of Phoenix, inspecting a truck stop (she’s a food safety and quality assurance auditor.)  As she walked through the parking lot looking for trip hazards, she felt like someone was watching her. She turned, and there stood a little desert dog. My wife checked around, no one had seen the dog before. My wife went to her car and opened the back door. The little desert dog jumped in and immediately laid down.

Ode

When I met her later that day she was skin and bone and she had a pretty serious wound on the inside of her rear leg. She drank a lot of water, ate some food, and slept for the next 24 hours. Frankly, I wasn’t sure she would survive the night.

When she woke up, she was a completely different dog, playful, energetic, chasing the cats around the house. My wife and I had talked about if we could keep her. I insisted I still wasn’t ready, but when she woke up and I saw those eyes and that smile, I knew there was no way this dog would live anywhere but with us.

We weren’t ready for another dog after the heartbreak of losing Daisy, even after two years, but this little girl knew different. When we tell the story, we tell people that she found us- she decided we were ready.

Now we had to find a name, it had to fit. We talked about it, did some research, nothing seemed right.

Then I looked in an Egyptian to English dictionary (we were exhausting every possibility) and we discovered the word “Ode’.” It’s pronounced “Oh-day” and it means “from the road.” It seemed appropriate, and our little desert dog finally had a name.

I don’t know what Ode’s life was like before she found us. I can guess by the condition she was in that it was a hard-scrabble existence. She was thin, dehydrated, wounded. The truck stop where she found us was right next to the biggest highway in Arizona.

Now as I watch her napping on our California King-sized bed, nestled in the covers and snoring softly, I’m thinking that her life is much different than it was before she found us. Much better.

Just like ours.

Brian and Terra Baltosiewich relocated to Charlotte, NC in March, 2010. While they have settled into their new home, Ode' has enjoyed familiarizing herself squirrels. 

Brian Baltosiewich owns Radio Exiles and Terra is a successful food industry health inspector