If any of these four dogs in Weare – basset hounds Miss Bailey and Molly and beagles Morty and Ty – had said something Tuesday, it might have gone something like this:
“God bless Chuck Bolton and Kate Rhodenizer. Woof.”
In fact, it’s a pretty good bet that’s what we would have heard, because the couple, together for 19 years, are engaged in a cycle of caring that comes with a heartbreaking caveat: the dogs Bolton and Rhodenizer adopt, old and sometimes sick, simply won’t live for very long.
They adopt them anyway, and knowing this going in, you’d think they might eventually shy away from an endless stream of pain that has marked their lives.
You’d be wrong.
“You just give them what you have when you have them and remember what they’d have if you never brought them into your home,” reasoned Rhodenizer, 68, who manages the bus company in the Weare School District.
Putting that philosophy into practice, however, is certainly easier said than done. Yet Bolton and Rhodenizer always move forward, creating a conveyor-belt of doggie dedication into their home from adoption agencies in Tennessee and New Jersey.
Each of their current family members has soulful eyes, hot water bottle-like ears and the white fur on their snouts associated with senior dogs. The dogs’ guardians have known the joy of man’s and woman’s best friend for decades.
Bolton, who’s 78 and semiretired after owning a machine shop, had 12 hound dogs as a young man in Goffstown. He loved hunting, and his dogs would chase raccoons up trees and flush rabbits into the open.
Rhodenizer had three Dalmatians growing up and later three German shepherds.
Now, the two have joined forces at Bolton’s old 18th century family farm, a small home with wooden walls and ceilings, wood beams, a pair of wood stoves, a kitchen oven that dates back to at least the 1940s and plenty of sleeping options for their dogs, like little pillow-beds and couches.
In fact, Rhodenizer recently broke her pelvis slipping on ice and now sleeps in a single bed in the living room, oftentimes with three of her dogs right there with her.
“It gets crowded,” she told me.
Their history together is filled with selflessness, wrapped around beagles and basset hounds picked up at rest stops in Maine and Connecticut and Massachusetts, from those agencies in Tennessee and New Jersey.
There was Emily Lou, whom the couple brought home in 2015, aware that she was 15, and had cancer and ear infections. Emily Lou died last year. She was hypoglycemic, meaning Bolton and Rhodenizer had to feed her at all hours of the night.
“We took turns at midnight,” Rhodenizer said.
There was Buster Brown, a family member beginning in 2012 who died two years ago at age 17.
“He was just old,” Bolton said, “so no one would adopt him.”
“We thought he needed a home,” Rhodenizer added. “People look through Petfinder and any dog who’s eight or older, they’re like, ‘Forget it.’ Or maybe a family has them for 10 years and gets a puppy and dumps them, and they’re so grateful when we get them here.”
Basset hounds Chester and Sally, both 12 when they arrived in Weare, fit that description. Sally had congestive heart failure, so the couple took her on a final vacation to a lake in Maine. Sally died soon after in 2017.
And then there was 14-year-old BB, another dog with cancer who lost the use of her hind legs soon after an agency called Bolton and Rhodenizer and asked them to take her. Rhodenizer fashioned two little wheelchair wheels to BB’s back legs so she could walk and wheel. She died a few months later.
“It’s sad,” Rhodenizer said.
“It hurts like hell,” Bolton said. “But rescue places call us when they get wind that we’ve lost one and it fills a void.”
Rhodenizer, divorced, never had kids. Bolton, also divorced, has five children and lots of grandkids and great-grandkids. Those photos are in the living room.
But the refrigerator door is reserved for BB and Chester and Sally, along with the current crop of hounds and beagles.
It’s a good thing Bolton earned good money through his machine shop and the rental of building space on his property, because he said they’ve spent at least $50,000 over the past decade on food and medical bills – “and that’s low-balling it,” Bolton said.
“We live frugally,” he added. “I have a garden and I cut my own wood and I have my own deer meat.”
Morty, Ty, Miss Bailey and Molly are all 9 or 10 years old and spoiled. At Thanksgiving, they get turkey and potatoes and peas.
They’re all friendly. Ty needed surgery to remove an imbedded collar, yanked mercilessly during a previous life, in his neck. He spent nearly a year hiding in his crate when visitors came calling, but he greets them now with only limited trepidation.
Bolton said he loves Rhodenizer and their relationship is strong. But he also said this: “It’s a good thing we do this, because when things look grim, this is it. Petting a dog is very therapeutic.”
Both said they cry every time they lose a dog, but they know the life they provided was better than the alternative would have been.
They hope to see all their dogs again in another place, in another life. They expect the dogs to jump on them, happy to be reunited.
“They know someone loved them,” Rhodenizer said. “Probably some of them never had that before.”
(Ray Duckler can be reached at 369-3304, rduckler@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @rayduckler.)