A Serendipitous Connection

During a recent mid-week afternoon, Jeanie Ogden set off for Springfield with her 5-year-old adopted black Lab, Jay-Jay. It was the pair’s first overnight trip together — the first time she’d ever had to consider the pet-friendliness of hotels, Ogden joked — and yet the evening before was one wrought with anxiety.

Jay-Jay has a large granular cell tumor on her tongue, and this particular trip was scheduled around a veterinary consultation Ogden hoped would set her companion on a path toward treatment and recovery.

“With Jay, I worry about how much of her tongue she’s going to lose and how she’ll be able to eat and drink,” Ogden said. “I’m eager to see how this all plays out for her.”

This trip is the latest stretch in a journey that’s short on time but long on two-way compassion — a companionship that began while Ogden was overcoming her own bout with cancer, and one that continues today as the pair venture toward a medical consultation that may prove critical to Jay-Jay’s long-term quality of life.

The story began in August of 2014, not quite three months after Ogden was diagnosed with breast cancer. Both of her parents had died of cancer — her mom from esophageal cancer and her father from lung cancer — so she expected to experience the disease first-hand one day … sort of.

“I thought if anything, I might get esophageal cancer,” she said. “Or I did smoke off and on in my 20s and 30s, and I’ve certainly been around a lot of second-hand smoke growing up. Anyway, breast cancer was a surprise.”

Surprise or not, the prognosis was overwhelmingly positive. Surgery plus five weeks of radiation treatment left Ogden cancer-free and, she said, feeling unmistakably good. So good, in fact, that she felt determined to begin a walking regimen upon completion of her treatments — a plan she admits sputtered out of the gate.

“I’m a pretty active person, and part of minimizing your chance of recurrence [of cancer] is being active,” Ogden said. “But that’s when I realized it wasn’t much fun to walk out on Peterson Ridge Trail by myself.”

But she had her eye on a potential walking partner: the large black Labrador retriever that resided (with its owners, of course) on property adjacent to her own. That dog was Jay-Jay.

“When I finally asked if I could walk her, [the neighbors] were glad to let me do it,” Ogden said. “The really important thing was that I needed to get out there on the trail every day, and I wouldn’t have done it without her.”

Ogden recalled their first walk together, one that took them to Sisters’ Creekside Park where Jay-Jay made a bee-line to the water to play with another dog. And the time she realized that simply watching Jay-Jay run around, hunting, sniffing and playing near the trail left her with a permanent smile, one that re-appeared each day the two teamed up for their morning routine.

“She just enhanced everything about my life, really,” Ogden said. “Meeting people, talking to people out on the trail, motivating me to go in the first place … everything.”

Yet it was during one of these walks that a local veterinarian, Dana Bailey, expressed concern over a lump on Jay-Jay’s chest, suggesting Jeanie urge the dog’s owners to get it check out.

They did, and the lump turned out to be cancerous.

Not able to pay for treatment, Jay-Jay’s owners made the difficult decision to let Ogden adopt their pet. After all, Ogden had already formed an incredible bond with Jay-Jay, and she had the will and the means to ensure the cancer — and the granular cell tumor discovered on Jay-Jay’s tongue during surgery — was treated promptly and by the best doctors available.

“I felt there was some urgency to this,” Ogden said of the diagnosis. “I wanted her to have continuity of care close to home. [Jay-Jay’s owner] made a very hard, painful decision. … We hugged each other and we were both crying. It was a really big deal to give her up.”

Long-time cat owners, it was the first time Ogden and her husband, Andy, had never owned or cared for a dog in their entire adult lives.

“It wasn’t like my husband and I planned to have a dog,” she said. “It’s just that she and I just became closer and closer, bonding with each other. I clearly loved her, and she was very happy when she was around me.”

As the months have gone by, Ogden and Jay-Jay continue to walk together nearly every day, along the Peterson Ridge Trail, covering around four miles each time. Jay-Jay pulled through her original round of surgery and treatments like a champ, but the tumor discovered on the underside of her tongue has grown considerably, now making it difficult to eat and drink.

“We’ve got to do something,” Ogden said the evening before heading to Springfield. “I’m eager to see how this all plays out for her — if she still has a good, functioning tongue after surgery.”

The statement was one of anxiety and exasperation, and yet, just three days earlier, Ogden herself was willing to consider what she’d walked into when she agreed to adopt a dog with cancer — a companion that has since cost so much financial as well as emotional capital.

“I didn’t really think about it all that much [before adopting her]. I just wanted her.” Ogden said. “With what’s going on, quite frankly, I wonder at times what my life would be without her. I’d be so sad.”