[Dailydrool] Odell ATB. Chapter 1

[Val lbrewerzwick via Dailydrool]

I am writing to let droolers know of the journey to the Rainbow Bridge of the most fabulous and famous Hawaiian basset of all times, Odell Slagel.  

Odell was the littermate of my own two ATB bassets, Commander Bo of the Pacific Basset Fleet and his brother, Harley of Hawaii. The litter from which they were born was "accidental", an unanticipated pairing of two bassets owned by a military family shortly  deployed to Germany.  The five pups were farmed out early to other families in military housing (navy) and passed from one household to the next as each family deployed until some ended up on Craigslist, others on the Naval Exchange board, others in the classified section of the newspaper and so forth until all bounced into the civilian population of Hawaii.  (We were the seventh home before the age of three of our late beloved Harley). Odell somehow escaped one of his hand-me-down homes and lived as a feral basset hound puppy for a time until scooped up by the Humane Society and subsequently adopted there by Kim and Jim Slagel.

It is through the bassets that I met Kim and Jim, teachers at the prestigious local native Hawaiian high school. (Kamehameha School).  Whenever I was out in public with Bo (Harley joined us later),people stopped me and said "Is that Odell?"  So I tracked down who this Odell was, became friends with the Slagels,  and the story takes off from here.  This was fourteen years ago.  For the past thirteen years, Kim and I have coordinated what passes for "Basset Rescue" in the islands, an internet matchmaking service which connects folks wanting to adopt bassets with folks wanting to rehome them. (There aren't very many bassets here and there are always more than a dozen homes waiting for them. Quarantine restrictions make it difficult and expensive to import bassets).

Okay--post long enough.  Move to Chapter two. Next post.

Val