The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

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June 30, 2009

Mike Pound: Some things naturally inspire memory

She can’t be sure, but Dina Meek thinks the deer remembers her.

I don’t know where deer line up on the animal intelligence scale, but I’m pretty sure that the dolphins don’t exactly feel threatened by them intellectually. But still, Dina is pretty sure the deer remembers.

Dina recently opened Your Dog’s Best Friend at 2922 S. Main St. in Joplin. The shop is open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. For appointments, you may call 439-5602.

The walls of Dina’s grooming business are covered with photos of her dogs, her relatives’ dogs and her friends’ dogs. If you ask Dina, she can probably tell you a story about each dog in each picture. A picture of the deer also is on the wall. The deer story is pretty neat.

About three years ago, Dina was driving to the family home with her then-5-year-old daughter, Maddie, when they saw a doe lying in the road. The animal was covered in ticks, and her eyes were swollen. The deer stayed in the road for a day or so until Dina and Maddie couldn’t take it anymore, and they went out and rescued the animal.

“If we hadn’t, it would have died a slow and painful death,” Dina said.

It took a while, but Dina was able to nurse the doe back to health. She bottle-fed the deer, who initially stayed inside the Meeks’ home. The family fed the deer a relatively normal, healthy diet. I say “relatively” because the Meeks occasionally slipped the doe — who they named Saginaw — a less than normal bit of deer food.

The deer “loved Thin Mint (cookies),” Dina said.

The Meeks kept and cared for Saginaw for several months until one day, she decided she was ready to head back out on her own.

She just jumped the fence one day, Dina said.

But she apparently didn’t go far. Dina is convinced that Saginaw hooked up with some other deer pals that roam in the area around the Meeks’ home. Occasionally, the group will pass the Meeks’ property. When the deer see any member of the Meek family, all but one of them will scatter. One deer will stand alone, unafraid, and stare for a few minutes before taking off to join the others.

Dina is pretty sure that deer is Saginaw.

It’s easy to tell that Dina is an animal lover. Not just because she let a deer live in her house, although I think that pretty much seals the deal, but because of the way she talks about animals. When I mentioned that I have a German shepherd, Dina launched into a detailed conversation about the breed and talked specifically about the type of shepherd my dog is.

I listened because Dina knows her stuff. She has spent the better part of 25 years training and grooming dogs. For a number of years, she worked in Oklahoma training drug dogs for law-enforcement agencies. She also worked with a friend who ran a grooming business.

A few weeks ago, Dina decided to open her own pet-grooming business. For her, it’s a labor of love more than anything else.

One of the neat things about Dina’s place is the special “resting room.” Instead of dogs being transferred to crates after grooming, they are taken to the resting room, where they can loll around on soft quilts and relax. Dina often will pop in a dog-appropriate video for the animals to watch. Earlier in the day, Dina told me, a few of her clients watched “Hotel for Dogs.”

I thought that made sense.

There are a lot of great pet-grooming places in the area, and I can’t list them all or do columns about them all. I don’t want folks to take this column to be an endorsement of Dina’s place over all the other great grooming shops out there. Because it’s not.

I just thought the deer story was pretty cool. And I’m pretty sure the deer does remember her stay with the Meeks.

I think she specifically remembers the Thin Mints.

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