A mended Sophie would be the best present ever

Sophie looks out from her makeshift confinement area in the kitchen of Robin Mcgown's home on Jim Grant Road. (Harrison Thorp photos)

LEBANON - Inside their sprawling, rented farmhouse, across the street from a church, the MacGowns and their beloved Sophie, a gentle giant of a dog, are waiting for a Christmas miracle.

Sophie, their year-old Mastiff/ Rottweiler mix, wriggles and bobs her head from a makeshift jail behind three kitchen chairs. She strains to greet her visitor but is unable to because her left hind leg was crushed when on Dec. 13 a speeding sports car turned off Center Road and onto Jim Grant, struck Sophie and kept on going.

“There’s no way they didn’t know they hit something,” Robin MacGown says.

A light, pleasant scent of woodsmoke fills the bright and roomy kitchen where MacGown, a single mom, is raising her two teenage children.

She was working at Walmart that fateful Friday when Sophie was struck, and somehow - she doesn’t know - the front door was left open a crack. Sophie is always kept on a leash or run, but on this dark evening she managed to get out.

Robin MacGown gives a pat to Sophie, whose left hind leg remains swollen.

A couple driving along saw her in the road, and knowing the danger of speeders on Center Road, they stopped to get out of their car to gather the dog and get it to safety. But before they could a sports car drove around their vehicle and plowed into Sophie sending her sprawling.

The Good Samaritans knocked on the door and alerted MacGown’s children to what had happened. In the dark they found Sophie bleeding from the nose and mouth and her legs badly mangled.

When MacGown got home they rushed Sophie to an urgent care veterinarian in Portsmouth, because the local animal hospitals were closed, she said. The urgent care facility wanted $1,500 to provide Sophie with preliminary care that night.

That was $1,500 MacGown didn’t have. After having gone through recent bankruptcy and foreclosure, she told the vet she wouldn’t be able to secure credit for the payment either.

Finally the urgent care veterinarian clinic agreed to scale back the number of X-rays taken, trim some of the other services and enable MacGown to get cut-rate medications for Sophie to bring the cost down.

Still, the final cost that night was $754.

“I had to pay it or they weren’t going to do anything,” an emotional MacGown said on Sunday.

Unfortunately, that was the rent money.

“I’ll make it up (to the landlord),” MacGown said. “But I had to do it. She’s family.”

For the time being, the MacGowns are working to keep Sophie as immobilized as possible. She’s confined to an 8-square-foot area in a corner of the kitchen. When she goes out to do her business, they put a sling under her hindquarters so she won’t put too much weight on her shattered left leg, though she occasionally tries to walk on it.

“It’s been a tremendous chore,” MacGown said. During the day, her daughter, Morgan, who is home-schooled, keeps watch over Sophie. At night when she gets home from her work shift, Robin MacGown takes over.

Matthew, her son, also helps out.

But time and money are against Sophie and her family.

The cost of an operation to fix her leg is somewhere between $3,000 and $3,500, Mcgown said. If the leg isn’t fixed soon, it could lead to improper healing of her fractured bone and force amputation of the limb, she said.

“I don’t want to give her up, she’s a part of our family,” MacGown said. “But I will if I have to, to make her well.”

Sophie waits patiently to go out as a sling is fitted to keep her from further injuring her left hind leg.

In the meantime, MacGown has started a fund-raising effort at gofundme.com, where in just three days friends from around town and on social media have already donated $400 to the Sophie Fund.

MacGown said she’d be thrilled to get just half of what she needs, hoping a local veterinarian might come forward to do the operation and then allow her to make payments on the difference.

She’s also calling on the reckless motorists who hit Sophie to come forward and accept blame and perhaps share some of the cost, and asking the Good Samaritans to notify her in case they have more info on the suspect vehicle.

“That night of the accident, we were so worried about Sophie we didn’t think to get their personal information, which might be helpful,” MacGown said.

It’s time for Sophie to go outside. MacGown gingerly fits a sling under the dog’s hindquarter and against her swollen and disfigured left hind leg. As she lumbers toward the door she groans and grunts with excitement as she reaches out to nuzzle her visitor.

If you would like to donate to the Sophie Fund go to http://www.gofundme.com/5uekq4.