Elmo Adjusting to Life With New Owners

By Florence Gilkeson - Friday, January 22, 2010

Elmo is happily wagging his tail these days.

The friendly stray dog now makes his home on a 75-acre spread in Derby, a rural community at the border of Richmond and Moore counties.

"He's a real sweetie," says Cheryl Halten, one of his new owners. "He seems content and happy. We love him a lot."

Halton and her husband, Wade Conlin, adopted the dog.

Elmo also has a new canine companion - Brandy, a golden retriever mix the couple adopted from the Moore County Humane Society about five years ago.

Halton says Elmo is still becoming acquainted with his new home, which she describes as "out in the sticks." It is a woodsy setting, and the deer in the neighborhood provide plenty of inviting new scents to explore.

He does not hunt deer, but it's just the dog's nature to check out strange new smells.

"He's having a heckuva time sniffing out all the new smells out here," Halten says. "He's adapting very well."

Elmo was the subject of a story in The Pilot's Christmas edition. The article told of Elmo's rescue by Sharon and James Granito in Southern Pines, his escapades chasing their pet cats and the difficulty of finding a suitable permanent home.

Sharon Granito was beginning to despair. She and her husband loved Elmo but also loved their cats, and Elmo has an unfortunate habit of aggressively chasing every cat in sight. He's fine with people and other dogs but - cats are another story.

Elmo showed up on the Granitos' doorstep on Connecticut Avenue a couple of days before Christmas 2008. Painfully thin and covered with sores, he was almost hairless and had cauliflower ears. Sharon says he could barely lift his head.

His history is unknown, but surely Elmo has experienced adventures in his past. He appears to be 5 or 6 years old and of mixed heritage, part Lab, part shepherd, part hound.

Granito took him to a veterinarian, and he was gradually nursed back to health and high spirits.

Figuring that there must surely be someone out there who loves dogs and doesn't have cats and is willing to adopt Elmo, they began a search for a new home.

But they met failure at every turn. They tried newspaper ads, a pet adoption event at PetSmart and personal appeals, but nothing worked.

At one time, Elmo narrowly escaped euthanasia at the Animal Shelter but was rescued almost at the last minute by his future fosterer, Tony Lennon.

With Elmo in Lennon's care, Granito finally made an appeal through a letter to the editor of The Pilot. The feature story that followed in the Christmas edition paid off with several inquiries from concerned dog lovers.

The Granitos narrowed the list to three, including the couple in Derby.

Halten says their interest in Elmo actually dates back to one of the early ads placed in The Pilot. When she first spotted the ad, Halten says she and Conlin were not in a position to take on another pup but they were concerned about his plight.

Granito says Halten admitted that they had been having "feelings" that Elmo should become their dog for almost a year. Then they simply gave in to those "feelings."

"It seems a perfect home for Elmo," says Granito, who is delighted with his new situation.

Elmo underwent yet another crisis after the Christmas response. He was required to have surgery to remove cysts of unknown cause, something that necessitated a wait of more than a week to determine if the cysts were cancerous. They were benign, and he was found fit for adoption.

Granito says a number of people helped with financial donations, and she credits Lennon for his exceptional care of Elmo throughout the adoption process.

Halten says rescued dogs often seem to understand that their new human companions saved them from death or abuse. She recommends animal shelters and other rescue facilities as the best places to find a pet.

"They can't tell you what's happened to them, but they seem to know that they've been rescued," Halten says.

Brandy, their retriever mix, likewise cannot reveal her background and what led her previous owner to abandon her in a cemetery at Pinebluff.

"Rescued dogs have a lot of heart," Halten says. "They just want someone to love them and take care of them."

After all, she adds, "They can't go out and get a job like humans can."

In their first weeks together, Halten and Conlin are using a leash on Elmo but expect to free him from the leash as soon as he appears to have settled in comfortably. That should come soon.

Their acreage in Derby, across the road from the Pines of Carolina Girl Scout complex, is secure and spacious with plenty of room to run and play but still close to the humans.

Halten adds, "He's a wonderful pet companion."

Contact Florence Gilkeson at (910) 693-2479 or by e-mail at florence@thepilot.com.