The events of this story are almost 10 years old now. Every morning I walked my dog, Rusty, at about 6:00 AM regardless of the day of the week. Rusty was a mix of Rhodesian Ridgeback and an unspecifed terrier, making him look like an overgrown rust-colored beagle hound. Anyhow, one October morining in 1999, I had to go to work early for a meeting at 7:30 on the then popular Y2K projects. My wife was delegated to walk Rusty that morning. While walking through the small park near our home, Rusty began smelling a jacket thrown on the ground near a tree. The coat “moved” as Rusty was sniffing and pawing at the jacket. There was a newborn baby girl wrapped in the jacket. The local police were summoned and the baby taken to a hospital in Newark. Coincidently, one of the nurses in the maternity/critical care area was an acquaintance of our family and we were able to track the progress of the baby girl, who ended up being ok and ultimately adopted. According to this nurse, the baby would have died if left out in the damp weather for another one to two hours. Due to my wife’s modesty and not wanting attention, Rusty became an unknown, barely mentioned hero in a small article printed in the Newark Star Ledger a day or two later. My wife said that possibly the reason for us having Rusty, at all, was to find that girl. We adopted him only two months before this from the Hillside Friends of Animals, and since we were hardly ever at home, I did not want to have a dog there without our attention, loving or otherwise. The mother of the baby was discovered, but was never prosecuted to the best of my knowledge. She was mentioned as being the daughter of a close friend of a Democratic elected official. Also the baby was racially mixed, mother white, father black. The mother’s family didn’t want the embarrasment, and the daughter wouldn’t get an abortion. So she left it in the park hoping someone would find it. Sad for the mother, good for the baby and Rusty was put to sleep this March with cancer. God bless him and the baby he found.

I am at work and do not have access to a jpg of the dog, as a matter of fact, I only have hard-copy pictures anyway. He was a beautiful animal and I loved him dearly, at least most days.
John from NJ