Another way Ian is different, beyond the lack of hair on his head, is that he expects the best of people. When he was little, and even now occasionally, people mistake him for a cancer patient. They treat him generously and kindly. When he was five and the security guard at Hershey’s Chocolate World gave him a huge chocolate bar, he told us how nice the policeman was, never realizing that it was a sympathetic gesture. That same scenario played out again and again, leaving Ian to believe that most people are friendly and nice. And so he is friendly and nice. He’s also learned to have a sense of humor about his condition. That’s not to say he doesn’t ever wish he were like other kids. That pain is there too, but it’s made him a stronger person. Maybe he loved this dog so fiercely because he knew what it was like to be different. Momma Bear looked like no other dog I’d ever met.
After only a few days with Momma Bear, Foo Foo left for her forever home with a young teacher from Virginia who laughed when Foo Foo bit his nose upon introduction. I was glad he had youth on his side and hopefully the patience of his profession. I would miss my puppy, but it would be good to have her out of the house as Thanksgiving was upon us and cousins were arriving that evening.
Momma Bear handled our crowded house and the chaos of dinner for thirty just fine. Our Ohio cousins stuck around a few extra days after the holiday and we enjoyed board games, hiking, and possibly more wine than truly necessary. Ian, teenage cousins Delia and Ben, and I took Momma Bear to the pet store for a fancy bath one day. She hesitated when we led her into the busy pet store, but walked obediently up the ramp at the bathing station, filling the entire tub and standing like a statue as Delia and I bathed her. She even tolerated the blow-dryer.
We also took Gracie for a bath because as usual, she stunk of the horse manure she’d rolled in the night before. Ian and Ben were tasked with bathing her, since they were teenage boys and not afraid of a little wrestling. Despite Momma Bear’s example, Ian and Ben were as wet as Gracie when they finished. In retrospect, I suppose the busy pet store and our chaotic Thanksgiving household were nothing compared to the chaos Momma Bear had endured in her homeland.
Many, okay, pretty much all, of the dogs we have fostered have won our hearts quickly and given us as much love as we’ve given them, but Momma Bear’s love was different. It was almost reverent. Maybe that sounds odd speaking about dogs, but her affection was embarrassingly honest. She adored us. But then, she seemed to adore everyone she met.
Considering her history, this was more than remarkable. Her cut ears and tail and the large pink scar on her elbow were the obvious signs that life had not been easy for this girl, but there were a few other clues, as well.
She continued to avoid the front hall, and walked a long detour around the island counter in our kitchen, circumventing the narrow passageway it created. She simply took the longer route around the other side of the island where there was more open space.
Something very terrible happened to this sweet dog in a passageway. Something worse than humans cutting her tail and ears. When I watched her walk the long way around to the kitchen door, I was angry that so many in this world do not value the life of an animal. Angry that someone could hurt a dog as gracious as Momma Bear. But then I looked at her sweet, trusting face and I realized that her heart was bigger than mine. So I tried to let my own expand a little. Forgiveness seems to come easier for dogs.
Momma Bear’s paperwork said she was between two and five years old. As she began to relax at our house, she became more puppy-like, suggesting she was closer to two than five.
A few days after Thanksgiving, I was shocked to retrieve Addie’s red-polka-dotted slipper shoe out of Momma Bear’s mouth. For some reason, known only to the canine world, those shoes were the best tasting ones in the house. Pretty much every foster dog had savored them. Somehow they’d survived the onslaught, although several dogs ago, Addie had to use blue flowered duct tape to resecure the liner to the bottom of the shoe.
It wasn’t just Addie’s shoes. She’d gnawed on the directions for my new iPhone, multiple ballpoint pens, and then she found a box of packing peanuts. They were the kind made of cornstarch that disappear when wet. She poked her long snout into the box in the corner of the kitchen and fished out one peanut, and turned to take it to her favorite chewing spot only to discover it was gone! She returned to the box and grabbed more, repeating the process until I put the box up because I didn’t know if cornstarch was poisonous to dogs.**
Momma Bear was such a pleasant, easy dog; I couldn’t imagine why anyone had returned her. Her adoption coordinator was working hard to be sure the next adoption stuck. The more we got to know Momma Bear and the more she revealed her true personality, the better chance we all had at finding her the right adopter. I think plenty of returns happen because adopters are thrilled with the dog they adopt, but after the dog settles in their home, the dog relaxes and reveals new behaviors. Instead of adapting or seeking training help, adopters sometimes have second thoughts about this new dog, who is so different from the one they adopted. While my kids are reportedly excellent guests in other people’s homes, here they feel free to leave their dirty socks on the kitchen floor and their wet towels in the hallway. I imagine if they stayed a few weeks in another home they would eventually reveal their dirty-sock-and-wet-towel-leaving habits. Maybe dogs act the same way.
Rescue dogs have experienced a lot of uncertainty and until they’re certain they’re really home, they might not be acting like their true selves. A dog might not be as quiet as it was at first. As it relaxes, it might be more playful, chewing things it had no interest in touching when it arrived. The dog might find its confidence and its voice, and begin barking more. These are all good things—they mean the dog feels safe. It feels at home.
Momma Bear was due to meet her new adopter in a few days and possibly go to her forever home. I hoped this time her adoption would stick. I hoped that she would be happy there and that within a few weeks she’d be chewing up the shoes, racing around the furniture, and leaving her wet towel wherever she wanted.
*I’ve never been able to speak with these people and so I don’t want to use their names. I couldn’t even figure out if they were American or not, but guessed they might be British. Oscar is a name I’ve always wanted to use in my fiction, so indulge me here.
†Stray and feral dogs are a huge problem in war-torn countries, as families are separated and homes are destroyed. Tens of thousands of pets are left behind to fend for themselves.
‡Nowzad is a British nonprofit organization originally started with a mission to reunite servicemen/women with dogs they adopted while serving in Afghanistan. Nowzad now runs the only shelter in Afghanistan, just outside Kabul, and works with rescues to rehome dogs from war-torn areas.
§She would not use the Frank bed, instead she slept on the floor beside it.
¶I’m gonna let you in on a little secret about foster dogs. They are rarely perfectly housebroken. The write-up might say housetrained, but that’s almost always an optimistic take. Nearly every dog we’ve ever fostered has peed in our house at least once, usually more. I’ve accepted it as part of the deal, and no longer freak out when it happens. I figure, who wouldn’t be wigged out after a twelve-plus hour van ride in a cramped dog crate, only to be dumped in an unfamiliar house with a snarly, socially awkward girl dog? I’d pee, too.
#His father forgot he was home on Thanksgiving break and accidently locked him out.
**It isn’t.
ELEVEN
The Healing Power of Safety
It was still several weeks before Lily’s puppies would move in, so I combed the latest transport list and picked a beautiful eight-month-old puppy named Hadley. She had brown and white patches, and one of her eyes was ringed in black—like a pirate patch! She wasn’t a big dog—about thirty pounds or so, the perfect apartment-sized dog that OPH seemed to bring up by the dozens. All the week before transport, whenever I told anyone about the new puppy, I said, “She’s a pirate puppy!�
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“Wait? What about all those other puppies we’re getting?” Nick asked.
“They’re weeks away and this puppy is so cute—someone will want to adopt her straight away. She’ll be gone long before Christmas!”
“Famous last words,” was all he said.
We picked Hadley up Friday night from transport and she cowered silently in her crate the whole ride home. There was nothing pirate-y about her. When we got home, I coaxed her out of the cage, clipped on a leash, and set her on the ground. She froze. I tugged on the leash and she reluctantly followed me, creeping close to the ground, eyes darting every direction. She’s freaked out from the long ride, I thought and picked her up.
She was filthy and smelly, so the first order of business was to bathe her. She sat still, trembling in the tub as I scrubbed her all over and the water ran brown. Finally clean, I carried her to her crate in our puppy room and spent a few minutes with her. She retreated to the back of the crate, burrowing under the blankets and towels, avoiding eye contact with me.
The next morning when I opened her crate, she pressed herself against the back wall. I knew she had to be hungry and thirsty (she’d refused food and water the night before), so I left the crate door open and the bowls nearby and went for my run.
When I came back she hadn’t touched either. I reached to pet her and she allowed it, but tensed up and wouldn’t look at me. We left her alone for the morning, figuring she was just shell-shocked after her journey from South Carolina. When she still hadn’t emerged from the crate by afternoon, I pulled her out and took her outside. She followed me, crouched close to the ground again, as if under sniper fire.
Later that morning Momma Bear’s new adopter arrived to take her home. She took to him right away, even whimpering softly in happiness as he petted her. I liked that when he met her, he knelt down to be on her level and talked to her, not me, as they got to know each other. I was happy for her, even as I endured the wrath of Ian who was furious that I let her go. He made me promise that if she was ever returned again, we would keep her.*
I said goodbye to our sweet Momma Bear, and took my already lonely heart back inside to sit with my cowering puppy. I wished we knew what Hadley needed. Since she couldn’t tell us, all we could do was love her even though, right then, it didn’t seem like enough.
Hadley spent the rest of the day Saturday and all day Sunday lying on the back edge of the Frank bed, against the wall, watching all of us. We gave her toys, but she looked at us blankly, not touching them. She refused to eat and wouldn’t even sniff at the treats we offered.
Exasperated and worried, I finally placed a few pieces of kibble in my hand and held it out to her. She sniffed at the food and then tentatively ate one tiny piece at a time. Twenty minutes later, she had finally finished her whole bowl, piece by piece. “Good girl,” I told her. I leaned close and she turned her face up to me, touching her nose to mine, like an Eskimo kiss.
In the days that followed, we each took a turn, sitting with her; sometimes offering her food, sometimes just our presence. She allowed us to pet her, holding very still for each touch. Ian curled up with her often, always letting her sniff his hand first. He told me he’d read somewhere that it was important to let the dog smell you. Seeing my nearly six-foot-tall teenager curled up on the hard floor talking sweetly to Hadley reminded me what a good and kind child we were raising.
I spent hours petting her softly, talking to her, reassuring her. She endured my touches, tensely braced for some unknown danger. Every now and again, I would feel her soften against me, but that always seemed to be about the time my leg fell asleep and if I shifted my position at all, she became rigid again, the whites of her eyes flashing.
By Wednesday the only improvement evident was that she now lay in the center of the Frank bed, instead of at the back, pressed against the wall. But she remained there all day long, only getting up occasionally to creep to the edge of the bed where I’d placed a water bowl, before resuming her spot. She continued to eat only when I fed her by hand. Each time we finished, she looked up at me and waited for me to lean down so we could touch noses like Eskimos. I think it was with this little gesture that she stole my heart.
I’m a storyteller, and I wanted to know Hadley’s story. We all did. And while we probably never would, it didn’t stop us from guessing. Had she spent her entire life in a crate? Was that why she was terrified to move in open spaces? Was she raised on the streets? Maybe that would explain why she was so uncomfortable with human touch.
Just being near Hadley hurt my heart. I wanted to fix her—NOW. I’m not the most patient of people, but I did understand that this was only going to happen in her time and in her heart. I didn’t know what had closed it up so tightly. If I did, I might have driven down there to South Carolina and done something that got me arrested. My foster coordinator, Mindy, told me, “I wish we knew their backgrounds, but sometimes I’m glad we don’t.” She was probably right.
When Gracie met Hadley, she snarled. Gracie, in human form, would be an insecure bully who is all bluster. She seemed to consider it her duty to threaten each new dog. It was probably a pack thing. Animals need to know where their place is in the pack. Each time Gracie did this, I scolded her. Most likely all this little interaction ever did was make it clear to our new guest that I was the alpha dog, not Gracie. Most likely, Gracie was a frustrated alpha-dog wannabe. Since that first introduction, Gracie had reined it in, though. I guess even she sensed that Hadley was a fragile soul.
After more than a week of Hadley spending her days/nights either frozen on the Frank bed or burrowed in her crate, Nick, who had always been the hardliner when it came to animals on the furniture, carried her to the couch to watch football with him. She seemed content tucked between him and the back cushions of the couch. She even closed her eyes and slept.
Eight days after she arrived I opened her crate as usual in the morning and she thumped her tail and crawled to me (as opposed to me crawling in the crate with the leash and dragging her out). That was a first. And then later when I touched noses with her after her breakfast, she actually licked my nose.
I was certain that Hadley wanted to be loved and was on the verge of returning it. Someday maybe she’d be like the cat I once rescued from a hoarding situation who’d never been touched. Once she discovered what a loving touch was, she followed me everywhere, even climbing in the bathtub for attention. It was as if she wanted to make up for lost time.
As the month wore on, Hadley scuttled between her “safe zones”—the Frank bed in the kitchen, her crate, the dog bed next to my desk, and the space behind the couch cushions on the sofa. She moved between them, head down, tail clamped to her side, in a crouched position as if she were ducking under the laser trip wires like the bank robbers did on TV. On the plus side, this meant she never stopped moving long enough to pee and consequently seemed to be more or less housebroken.
There were other signs that she was opening up. She’d begun chewing on a few select toys and toted some to her bed. She was especially fond of my shoes and Gracie’s flat fox (what was left of it). To Gracie’s credit, she never said a word about the interloper dog making off with her favorite stuffy.
Hadley also began to come alive outside—wagging her tail and prancing on the leash. Walking around the pasture, she raced ahead until a leaf fluttered to the ground or she heard a car on the road below, then she hurried back to my side. Most of the time on our walks around the pasture she seemed genuinely happy and I was treated to glimpses of a joyful little girl just waiting to join the world.
When I found the remote control dismantled and bearing obvious chew marks, I first looked at Gracie. She didn’t usually chew up anything except stuffed animals. I waved the ruined remote at her and she yawned. Either she didn’t take my threat seriously (as usual), or she wasn’t the one who chewed it. And then I found Ian’s favorite set of earbuds stripped of their buds and lying next to a whole host of shredded nerf darts. Apparently, Hadle
y was getting around. We rarely saw her moving about the house, but the evidence was clear. She was most attracted to things that smelled like us—shoes, devices, playing cards, etc.
Hadley’s confidence was growing. One night, after finishing her dinner, she trotted off to her favorite spot on the couch, only to discover Ian already occupying her space. He was lying on his stomach reading a book, filling the entire couch. She glanced around anxiously and then hopped up and sat on his back. In the picture I snapped she looks awkward and uncomfortable, but determined.
Hadley’s progress screeched to a halt with the holidays. In addition to my mother-in-law visiting, Brady was home from college, so the household dynamics shifted. Hadley, being such a sensitive soul, picked up on that and regressed to some of her earlier insecurities.
She was back to staying in her crate for hours on end—running for it at every frightening new sight or sound or visitor. Brady had noisy reunions with friends who were also home from college and they took over the kitchen laughing and talking and eating pizza.
“Do they always have to hang out here?” asked Nick, as we ate our dinner on the living room couch with Hadley. There was no room for us in the kitchen. “Can’t they go to someone else’s house sometimes?”
“I like them here,” I told him.
We listened to them for a moment. “Yeah, I guess it’s only for now,” he said.
And he was right. Every time I saw Brady I realized we were on a countdown. Soon he would have his own life and we would be his parents back in Pennsylvania. Noisy, messy, constantly-eating young people in my kitchen? The more the merrier.
Hadley watched them nervously from her crate and I watched Hadley. It was frustrating to see her hiding in her crate again, but I knew it was her safe place. We all need a safe place, so I let her be. I looked up fearful dogs on the Internet and read that you couldn’t force them to interact or they could become aggressive. I couldn’t imagine Hadley ever being aggressive about anything, still I didn’t think we were pushing her hard enough. Her regressive behavior was frustrating me.
Another Good Dog Page 14