ST. LOUIS, MO — Shell the dog has a new home after Stray Rescue of St. Louis posted her owner’s heartbreaking suicide note last week.
“Dear Stray Rescue, I am writing you cause I need you to take my dog, Shell,” wrote 46-year-old Crystal Chrisp. “I’ve been fighting cancer for a few months and if you’re reading this I lost my battle. I need for my baby girl to be taken care of in a home … In these days all I do is worry about what’s going to happen to her. I love this girl, she is my daughter.”
Police confirmed they found Chrisp dead in an Affton apartment last week after her cancer, which apparently had been in remission, returned. Police said she took her own life.
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Chrisp was a bus driver, Metro Transit officials said last week, and had taken in the dog after her mother had a stroke in 2012.
“Shell is a very sweet girl,” Chrisp wrote of the dog. “She’s been through a lot so she has trouble with trust in the beginning. She loves to cuddle but don’t like to be carried. She’s very smart…”
Stray rescue announced on Friday that Shell now has a new home. After seeing a report on KMOV, the shelter said, a woman came in the very next morning to fill out the adoption paperwork.
“The two of them hit it off and she knew it was definitely the right time,” Stray Rescue wrote on Instagram Friday. “She says #Shell is already running the house, and that they are inseparable. We are honored to have fulfilled the final wish of her Mom, who is no longer with us. We promise she will be spoiled for the rest of her #life.”
Anyone struggling with mental health can get help by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, visiting this website or by texting HOME to 741741. You can also reach Behavioral Health Response’s local crisis hotline at 314-469-3638 or TTY for the hearing impaired at 314-469-6644.
Photo by Global Warming Images/Shutterstock