She never talked behind your back. She never told a joke. She would pick up a shoe but wouldn't pick up the check. She managed to touch the lives of others in her 91 years of life. That's 13 years in a dog's life.
Meet Molly the Goldendoodle. She made sure we would see golden sunrises day after day.
"I got Molly after my first round of chemo," said Barb Cavelius. Barb would lick leukemia twice and then go through a bone marrow transplant. And it was Molly who coaxed her to get off the couch and back into life. Barb wanted to share her love; she saw her first paw. So she and Molly would walk the hall of the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center here at Hopkins.
"To give back and to be kind is the greatest medicine of all." Molly would gently jump up and snuggle up to a stranger who was just trying to make it to the next minute. But with every stroke down Molly's back, that stranger would turn into a friend in a second. And what is even better? That friend would get better.
Barb taught Molly how to sit and dance. Molly taught Barb how to live.
In November, Molly took a turn. She wasn't herself. After all these years of caring for humans with cancer, it was Molly who was now fighting cancer. After giving so many people so much hope, the hope now was that Barb and her husband wouldn't have to make that decision. If you are a pet owner, you know what I'm talking about.
"I turned to my husband and said, wouldn't it be something if God took Molly, and she looked up at me for the first time in days and laid back down in her bed, where she died the next morning? It was her last act of kindness, taking the decision out of my hands," said Barb, who knows Sara has her second pup. And again, they will now walk the halls of Hopkins, following Molly's paw prints.
Molly is being honored on petpartners.org.
