Every so often, Bill and Mickie Britton get a card in the mail with a little pocket change taped to the back. The cards are from a blind girl trying to say thanks for a miracle.
The Brittons say their lives - and back yard - are full of such wonders. The only problem is cleaning up after them.The couple runs the Companion Golden Retriever Rescue Program, a nonprofit business operating on a shoestring and lots of good will with only one goal: finding homes for abandoned dogs.
"Dogs are very big medicine," says Britton, a 64-year-old retired government worker and disabled veteran, a dog at either hand. "The therapy of having a dog in your life is just out of this world."
Britton has found homes for sick dogs, blind dogs and old dogs - 1,800 in all, and not just retrievers, since the rescue program was started in his home six years ago. He can prove it, too - a half-dozen photo albums stuffed with Polaroids of his canine charges crowd a corner of the mantel.
A medical bill collection manager during the day, Mickie Britton spends her nights arranging for dogs or making pickups. Friends consider her the backbone of the organization, while Bill is seen as an idea-a-minute man with a knack for getting things done.
Witness the 2,000 tennis balls (something for the retrievers to, well, retrieve) donated by Pepsi Cola, or the hundreds of old Primary Children's hospital blankets lining the four kennels in the base-ment.
Bill long ago gave up trying to grow a lawn. His back yard is covered with hay - donated, of course - to make daily cleanup a little easier. Dog runs were donated. Ditto the truck in the driveway.
The $2,500 needed to register as a nonprofit corporation? Provided by a local gynecologist and golden retriever owner. And Bill skirted ordinances requiring a kennel license by finagling a noncompliance permit.
Every day, he said, the mail brings a letter "from one of my dogs," and a check or two. Dog food is bought below wholesale, and vets give them discount rates.
Britton is a walking conundrum with a gruff, Texas drawl. A combat soldier in World War II and Korea, he's seen people do horrible things to one another. So he's placed his faith in canines.
"There's people I'd like to kill 'cause of their cruelty to animals. But a dog loves you whether you've got money in the bank or not," he said, his eyes misting.
"If you had no home and had to sleep in the gully, that dog would lie down beside you and be just as happy."
Britton's got no shortage of stories of man's inhumanity to beast. Yet he also can reel off dozens of tales with happy endings, like the little blind girl, which he jots down as children's stories.
A certified animal behaviorist, he has placed a number of dogs with disabled veterans and other handicapped individuals - including Remington, a companion retriever to 32-year-old Barbara DeMent of Kearns.
DeMent was barely able to get around the house following radical surgery five years ago. Often alone, she lost her will to live.
Her family, in desperation, got her Remington - an abandoned dog trained by Britton - who helps her negotiate stairs, brings her the phone and answers the door.
"I don't know what I'd do without him," DeMent said. "If I need help getting up and down the stairs, I can call him over and he'll let me hold onto his collar and pull me up."
Any visit with Britton is interrupted by phone calls - some from people looking for dogs, others from area animal shelters. Virtually every shelter in Utah - and dozens in surrounding states - know who to call when they've got a stray golden, and all of them list him as a last resort before euthanasia.
Britton readily admits he can't save all the dogs, but his philosophy is simple: The ones he does save make a difference in people's lives.
Still, not just anyone can walk up and take one of his furry charges. While he doesn't sell them, he does require a new owner to pay for shots and spaying and neutering to offset often horrendous veterinary bills.
He won't let a dog go if it hasn't been fixed; there are enough dogs without homes, he said. And new owners also must have a fenced yard and promise to let the dog sleep in the house.
"It's tougher to adopt a kid than one of my dogs," he said.
Even then, Britton often solicits a promise that if, for any reason, an owner doesn't want the dog, it will be returned.
Giving them up is hard enough.
"Sometimes, I just cry when I see them looking up at me, wondering why I'm sending them away," he said, his voice cracking. "It's like they're saying, `I was happy here? What did I do?"'