Girl meets dog. Dog captures girl’s heart. Girl starts veterinary school. Dog begins an eight-year battle with a rare genetic disease that teaches girl more about veterinary medicine than any textbook ever could.
From the Publisher: “For the Love of Dog chronicles the friendship between Katti Strahsmeier-Stoller and her best friend Cooper, an unforgettable English Foxhound. While Katti trains to become a veterinarian, Cooper’s triumphant spirit carries him through the tough hand life has dealt him.
A long struggle with his health, a tendency to follow his nose until he finds himself lost in the next zip code, an incident where an airline misplaces him in their supply closet for sixteen hours, a mischievous streak that sees him wolf down an entire Mother’s Day brunch in one sitting-Cooper outlasts every setback with an inspiring amount of joy. Through it all, Katti does everything in her power to ensure a high quality of life for Cooper, culminating in those final moments when she performs CPR in an effort to save his life.
In times like these, who wouldn’t love to curl up with a story about a dog who met every crisis with his head held high?”
More Info About the Author: “From the time she was seven years old, Katti Stoller wanted to be a veterinarian. Some of her earliest memories are of helping her dad take care of the beagles he bred and raised. The dream became a reality by way of bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Virginia Tech University and her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Ross University on the island of St. Kitts.
She spent the first years of her career at Sandwich Animal Hospital on Cape Cod before moving on to work in emergency veterinary medicine in her hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Later, while contributing her time to the Humane Society, she began building a private practice with her husband Sam.
BelaCoop Animal Hospital of North Park opened in July 2013. The name honors Sam’s dog Bela and Katti’s dog Cooper. The practice opened with only three employees but has grown to twenty employees and two other doctors. A grooming facility, BelaCoop Beauty Bar, opened in March 2019, with plans for a boarding facility called BelaCoop Bed and Biscuit to open in 2021.
Katti and Sam have two children, Siena and Rainer; two rescue dogs, Pepper and Zenny; and two rescue cats, Lia and Kittniss. When she’s not at BelaCoop, you can find Katti out walking her dogs and/or spending time with her family in Pittsburgh, PA.”
Chapter One
Love and Puppies
The first time I fell in love was in the back of a trailer park double-wide. From a living room where the floral print sofa clashed magnificently with the forest green carpeting, Julie and her doting husband greeted me in their flannels, jeans, and late-80s hairstyles. I felt welcome here, and as excited as I’d always imagined I would be when I finally met someone who would change my life forever.
“We keep ’em in the back,” Julie said, flashing a quick but serious smile. She was a kind woman in her late forties, but I picked up the sense of a saleswoman’s flair. “Wait’ll you see ’em. They’re the finest we ever had, I’d say.” She paused to look back at her husband. “Wouldn’t you say?”
“Oh, definitely.”
“It’s like I told you over the phone.” She motioned for me to follow. “There’s eight of ’em in all, but only two still free to claim.”
She led me to an oversized pen dominating a small room off the back of the hallway. An avalanche of newspaper buried the floor, and there, churning through yesterday’s news, were eight newborn English Foxhound puppies, their eyes so enormous I had a hard time keeping my balance.
When I first met Cooper, he was just a few days old, and already he stood out from his seven siblings as exactly the puppy for me. I’d been pining for a dog of my own for as long as I could remember, and here I’d found one with a sweet disposition, a playful streak, and an almost total absence of physical coordination. I’d never seen a more adorably clumsy dog. His paws were outsized and meaty, and he could never seem to get them to agree with each other about anything. I’d never been so in love.
“When can I take him home?”
Four weeks. After meeting my first great love, I would have to wait four more weeks for him to be weaned to solid food and grow strong enough for me to take him home. I passed much of that long stretch in excited anticipation. Every time his cute mug would flash into my mind, it would take all my will power to prevent myself from hopping in the car and starting the drive to the state line.
When the day came, my friend Kym joined me for the ride out to Bullock, North Carolina, with the intention of helping keep my excited energy at a manageable level. She managed the job well, and after a long, scenic, sunny drive, we finally arrived.
When I saw Cooper, I could hardly believe my eyes. “What happened to my puppy?” I asked to knowing laughter from Julie the breeder.
The last time I had stood on that property, Cooper weighed five pounds and was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. Since then, his weight had quintupled. He planted every ounce of those twenty-five pounds straight on my chest when, tongue wagging and slobber trailing, he plowed into me, puppy-style.
“He’s beautiful, Katti,” Kym said.
I couldn’t have agreed more.
Julie and Kym helped me guide my new best friend into the way-back of my red Jeep Cherokee, Cooper’s big old paws hammering into the dirt in every direction except the one he meant to go. Then we were off, bound for our new life together.
Eager to get started, I wanted to make good time on the three-hour jaunt from Bullock back to my apartment in Blacksburg, VA. I took the first turn off the country road a little sharper than I should have. The “skitter-skitter-skitter-slam” from the way-back of the Jeep let me know I should ease up, because my puppy didn’t yet have his driving legs.
Kym laughed. “He sounds like he’s roller skating back there.”
“Sorry, Cooper. I’ll slow down, I promise.”
Kym and I had formed a bond over our sore-thumb nature in the animal science major we were getting ready to complete at the end of the semester. From the very first day of freshman year, it was clear that we would be the only city girls in a program dominated by aspiring farmers. I was so urban-naïve back then that I’d never even seen a pair of cowboy boots in person before. Now, I would spend every class day as one of only two people not wearing them. Kym was the other. Our fellow students wanted to learn as much as they could about raising and caring for cows and chickens, but all Kym and I wanted to do was hang out with the dogs. Eventually we each decided to get ourselves a big-breed dog at roughly the same time. Kym’s was a Mastiff that later would become fast friends with Cooper.
“I asked Julie all the right questions, didn’t I?” As an aspiring veterinarian, I had wanted to make sure it was clear to Cooper’s breeder that I knew what I was talking about when it came to a dog’s wellbeing.
“You asked about hip dysplasia, right?”
“Yep.” When I slid onto the interstate onramp, I did it slowly, and Cooper only skittered a little this time. It seemed to me his hips were fine.
“And you checked for a heart murmur.”
I nodded.
“That was impressive, by the way,” Kym said. “I think Julie was a little surprised when you did that.”
“I kind of do know what I’m talking about, don’t I?”
Kym furrowed her brow. “You met Cooper’s parents and asked about any health issues in their line.” She passed a long look into the backseat. As I watched the road ahead, I could feel her expression warming with admiration. “And I mean, he really is perfect.”
I broke into a wide, satisfied smile. “He is, isn’t he?”
This was the first time I’d had a puppy since I was six years old, and Cooper couldn’t have been more handsome. Whether it was a general caregiving instinct or a boundless love for animals, I knew right then that I would do whatever it took to make him happy and keep him healthy and safe for the rest of his life, even if he never did master the fine art of keeping his balance in a moving vehicle.
“So, have you heard anything yet?”
I caught a quick glimpse of my reflection in her Ray-Bans, confirming that I looked as disappointed as I felt. “No. Nothing.”
“I can’t believe how long it takes.”
Even though Kym hadn’t joined me in the decision to apply to veterinary school, our sighs were simultaneous.
“I guess they just have a ton of applications to review,” I said. “I mean, you know how many people want to get into vet school.”
“Yeah,” Kym said, trailing off as she turned to stare out the passenger window. “Thousands.”
The truth was probably closer to tens of thousands. At the same time, there were only twenty-seven vet schools in the country, and each one of them accepted approximately sixty entrants every year. This meant that the vast, vast majority of aspiring veterinarians like me would be left searching for a different career path. There was also geography to consider. Admissions boards nationwide played favorites to in-state candidates, and since I’d grown up in Pennsylvania, my in-state options at places like Penn required 4.0 GPAs and perfect scores on the GRE.
I didn’t have those things. So my strategy had been to fill out as many hundred-dollar applications to out-of-state schools as my college-kid income and middle-class family could afford. Now, all I could do was wait.
“Well, you’ll hear something soon,” Kym said.
“Yeah.”
Kym must have sensed my resignation, because she switched on the radio and led me into a jam-out to one of those catchy early-2000s party-pop numbers. Cooper seemed into it too.
The drive from Bullock to Blacksburg was interesting in that you could choose from any of three equally efficient routes, all of them rural. They all involved winding highways through backwoods terrain and the scenic thick of the Appalachians. Normally I might have favored one of the more rugged of the three, but with a dog in the backseat, I’d elected for the one that took us through Roanoke and featured at least some measure of smooth interstate highway.
Three hours into the drive, when Blacksburg appeared on the horizon, I started to get all fluttery in the stomach. I had been looking forward to bringing my own puppy home for years, but now that the moment was finally in sight, I felt strangely nervous.
“What if he doesn’t get along with Cody?” Cody was my roommate Sara’s Jack Russell Terrier.
“Are you kidding?” Kym said. “Cody’s a puppy too. They’ll love each other.”
“But what about Corkie?”
Corkie was a Yorkie who belonged to Amy, another roommate. He was a total sweetheart, but also older and rather set in his ways, leaving his potential affection for Cooper a little more in doubt. Bringing a puppy into a new home is difficult enough at the best of times, but the thought of trying to acclimate Cooper to a house full of three other women and two other dogs was suddenly panging me with flashes of doubt. If he didn’t mesh perfectly with the environment, it might lead to friction on both the dog-to-dog and roommate-to-roommate level. I figured my close friendships with Sara, Amy, and Shelbie could weather any storm, but really, who wants to deal with storms in the first place?
When we turned onto the traffic-heavy road to which my address was attached, I spotted the 7-Eleven, and then our townhouse just behind. My heart raced as we pulled into my parking lot.
Kym took off her sunglasses and gave me that wide-eyed look that says, “You ready?”
“Okay. Let’s do this.”
I popped the tailgate, went around to open Cooper’s crate, and flailed to hook the leash to his collar. The rush of fresh air had turned him into a tornado of pent-up energy, so it was tough to get a good hold. Finally I had him, and he bounded onto the pavement. He didn’t get three steps before he stopped and puppy-squatted right there in the driveway. We had stopped every forty minutes or so during the drive to let him do his business, but now he was letting loose with more urine than I’d ever seen a dog produce.
I laughed. “Thattaboy, Coop. Get it all out.”
When he was done, he bounded toward my door as if he’d always known just exactly where to go. I took one last deep breath, smiled at Kym, and turned the key.
I was kind of hoping that I’d have the opportunity to acclimate Cooper to an empty house before introducing him to everyone else, but instead, we were greeted by that symphonic cacophony of giddy squeals that only a room full of young women can pull off. All three of my roommates and Cody awaited us just inside the door. I didn’t see Corkie, but it didn’t matter, because one playmate was plenty for Cooper. It was all I could do to get his leash unhooked before he took off in a game of chase-me with his new friend the Jack Russell.
“Oh my God,” one of my roommates said.
“He’s so adorable,” said another.
“Just look at that face.”
“And those paws!”
This excerpt from For the Love of Dog is published here courtesy of the publisher and should not be reproduced without permission.
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