Dog injured in hit-and-run creates financial challenge for couple

Elly runs off and gets hit by a car

By Kristen Forbes

The Times, Jul 9, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Submitted photo / Times Newspapers

After being the victim of a hit-and-run, Elly had to have $5,000 surgery on her leg. Her owners have teamed with Tails of Hope and set up a Web site (www.ellysroadtorecovery.blogspot.com) to help with the cost.

ADVERTISEMENTS

On Tuesday, April 28, Erin Enright and her fiancé Tim Bompiani thought they were doing the right thing.

“We wanted to get a dog, and we thought a good thing to do would be to rescue one,” says Bompiani. “Then you really have a responsibility to this dog.”

They had visited a shelter the Sunday before to scout out their options, when they saw Elly. Their immediate love for her was the deciding factor in their “are we or are we not ready for a dog?” debate.

Bompiani picked her up, and they both were pleased with the new addition to their family – not knowing that less than 24 hours later, their role as adoptive parents would be tested and a strange chain of events would get set in motion.

On Wednesday the 29th, Enright took Elly for a walk on one of the paths behind their apartment complex in Hillsboro. The shelter had supplied a collar and leash for Elly, which she was wearing at the time. As they walked, an elderly woman with a cane and a young girl approached from the other direction.

The smack-smack-smack of the cane on the pavement was all it took to spook Elly, who thrashed around, flipped out of her collar and took off.

“We have no idea of knowing what she’s been through,” says Enright. “But the way she reacted, we hadn’t seen yet in any of the time we had spent with her.”

Enright knew she had gone to the nearby woods. She called Bompiani and asked him to come home from work. She called a friend, who brought over her dog and helped look for Elly.

“We were searching for four hours with not even a glimpse of her,” Enright says.

Enright called the police, who she says laughed at her. She called animal control, whom she says wasn’t very helpful. She called her Rock Creek veterinarian to cancel the appointment she had set for later that afternoon.

“They were the most helpful to us, I have to say,” says Enright. “And they were the ones to ultimately call and say they had her.”

A Hillsboro police officer found Elly on Aloclek and Evergreen. She had been left in the middle of the road, the victim of a hit-and-run.

“We immediately went over and saw her,” Enright says. “She was in a lot of pain.”

Elly had suffered a dislocated hip, fractured pelvis and fractured femur in two places.

“Normally, for a dislocated hip, they set it back in under anesthesia. But because it was fractured, they couldn’t do that,” Enright explains.

The vet’s recommendation: amputation. The panic in Enright and Bompiani’s eyes said it all.

1 | 2 Next Page >>