That Dog is Our Dog

Parts of  Gypsy's story would resonate with anyone who has adopted a dog with an abusive past. After Rick came home on New Years Eve, 2011, the day I brought Gypsy home, she tried hard to avoid him, but didn't want to let me out of her sight. She followed me everywhere unless he was close by. If he entered a room she was in, she got up and walked quickly out of it, tail between her legs. I knew that if anyone could win her over, my husband could, and by the next day she was starting to relax around him.

It took her longer to warm up to our son, Paul, who is single and spends a lot of time at our house, but eventually she decided he might be safe too. They were both patient with her and learned to wait for her to come to them. For a long time she cowered when either of them raised their voice just to be heard from another room or in excitement over a sports play on TV. She did the same if one of them moved toward her abruptly. Sometimes if they lifted a hand  in her direction she cringed and yelped in anticipation of pain that didn't come.

She became completely comfortable with both of them in time, with Rick first, of course. Now she loves to play "rough and tumble" with  him  and knows he can always be counted on for a treat.

She was afraid of any situation that presented no way of escape. She liked to rest in the crate I had put her in the day I brought her home, as long as the door stayed open, that is. The first time I latched the crate door and left the room, she panicked, crying, jumping and pawing frantically against the wires.

If I wasn't around, she was comforted by anything with my scent. She would pull my bathrobe off the bed and lie down on it, or snuggle up with one of my shoes.

Our home was the only place she felt safe and it was a struggle to even get her out the front door. She pulled hard on her leash to turn around and go back in. We would start out the door for a walk with all three dogs, but couldn't get Gypsy to venture past the middle of the front yard, so I'd bring her back in while Rick walked Penny and Zoe. We kept working at it, coaxing her a little farther each day, until we could finally go all the way around the block.
 
Still she was afraid of everyone she saw. One day Rick was ahead of us with Penny and Zoe when a neighbor came out of his house, talking in a loud, but friendly voice. Gypsy stopped in her tracks as I tried to coax her forward. She pulled back hard, jerked her head, slipped her collar and ran in the opposite direction, leaving me holding the leash and empty collar. Rick gave chase and caught her as she headed around the block back in the direction of our house. I took her home while he finished the walk with the other two dogs.

Now she eagerly anticipates her walk and will allow the neighbors to pet her, although not as enthusiastically as Penny and Zoe do. The neighborhood children have been more than happy to help us socialize her.

She is still wary of anyone new coming into our house and she's so afraid of going anywhere new that I often have to carry her out of the car and inside the vet's office or pet supply store, which must look ridiculous. Once inside, she plants her feet and I have to coax her forward step by step. She's making progress though.

Through all this, we've never seen her fear take the form of aggression.

There's so much we'll never know about her old life, but let me show you a little of her new one:

She gets along quite well with her new big sisters, Penny and Zoe.

She loves to chase Luna, who likes Gypsy better when she's sleeping. I found them both at the shelter on the same day and since they're the youngest animals in the household, I hope they'll grow old together.

She likes to lick Sasha's bowl clean, but knows better than to mess with her. Nobody chases Sasha.

Although she likes to cuddle with my tennis shoes, she prefers sandals for chewing.

She likes to steal bubble wrap and run out the dog door with it so she can have it to herself as long as possible before she gets caught.

 She loves store bought chew toys but is also perfectly happy to find her own in the backyard and haul them in the dog door.









       If sweet friendly children want to pet her and walk her, she's okay with that now.

 She sleeps quite soundly like this...

        or like this.













When she wakes up in the morning, she comes and paws gently at my side of the bed. If I don't respond she pushes her face close to mine. If that doesn't work, she'll plant her front paws and upper body on the bed until I say good morning to her and stroke her head. Only then is she ready to start her day, even if that means going back to sleep for awhile.

I think "that dog" is happy to be our dog now.

THAT Dog

Early last New Years Eve, after finishing my paperwork to hold the cat I was going to adopt, Claire, the adoption counselor and I were walking from the adoption office at the back of the dog shelter through the dog kennels. As we walked past one kennel in particular, she said,

"That dog breaks just breaks my heart"

I could barely make out the dark form of a medium sized dog in the back of the kennel as I asked why. She explained that the dog had been picked up on the west side of town the day after Christmas with a pickle jar jammed over her head and duct taped into place around her neck. She'd had to be sedated to have the jar  removed after she was brought in on the animal control truck.  She was still in pain recovering from her injuries and was terrified of everyone. She was scheduled to be euthanized and Claire had been able to get her a twenty four hour stay, but her time was running out.

I sat down cross legged on the concrete floor outside the kennel, held my closed hand up to the wires and began talking softly to the dog as the tears came. The dog finally approached me slowly, warily. I looked up at Claire and asked through my tears,

"Is there anything I can do?"

"You can get her out of here."

Gypsy at the shelter, scheduled to be put down the next day

After a call to Rick, I signed some paperwork with Claire, who gave me the dog's antibiotics and pain meds. She advised me to feed her soft food since the inside of her mouth was injured. One ear was held together with surgical staples. The agreement was that I would foster her to buy her time. After ten days I would bring her back to be spayed and have the staples removed from her ear. Then if the fostering was going well, I would bring her to public adoption events to try to find her a home. The shelter hadn't named her because she was going to be put down, not put up for adoption. Claire said I could pick a name for her, and Gypsy just seemed to fit.

When we opened her kennel, Gypsy trembled and was too frightened to take a step forward, so a kind man who was also visiting the shelter picked her up and carried her out for me. She was completely subdued, passive on the car ride home. I had no idea how the introduction with Penny and Zoe would go. I knew nothing about Gypsy's background and wondered if she would react aggressively when faced with the inevitable excited barking and jumping.

It took a lot of coaxing to get the poor thing out of the car and into the house. I led her into a large crate that Rick had left near the inside of the front door before he'd had to leave the house after my phone call. She was quiet as Penny and Zoe barked and sniffed at her in the crate. When they calmed down, I sat down and read from the paperwork Claire had sent home with me.

Some excerpts from the veterinarian's transcribed report from the day Gypsy was brought in:

"...this pet is actively hemorrhaging from head and face...frantically resists handling during attempt to remove pickle jar by cutting the tape and jar from around the pet's head and neck...pet is fractious and requires gas induction to explore other injuries...presumptive evidence of mistreatment of pet by a person--evidence of pet's struggle to escape whomever mishandled her or otherwise to remove pickle jar from her own head to the point of possible self-induced injuries to ear, inside mouth, inside nose and all paws...This appears to be a case of animal cruelty...Pet's age est 1 yr...weight est 35 lbs..."

Gypsy her first day home wearing an old collar of Penny's

She seemed to view me as her savior in the beginning and followed me everywhere.

Ten days later, when I met that veterinarian, she was overjoyed to learn that we had decided to adopt Gypsy. What a bighearted lady she was! She said that the vet clinic staff was tempted to go out on a "vigilante run" the night Gypsy was brought in, if they only knew who they were looking for. She said several times of Gypsy,

 "She's just a baby." 

She thought Gypsy was not even a year old. I was happy to know that she approved of the name I had chosen. The vet told me that her mother and niece had been visiting her for Christmas when Gypsy was brought in and had texted and called a few times since then wondering what had happened to "that dog." She was going to be happy to tell them Gypsy had been spared and had found a home.

A few weeks later when I took Gypsy for her first checkup with our own vet, she too was delighted to learn that we had adopted "that dog," the one they called the "pickle jar dog" on Facebook. Dr. Williams said that the "rescue community" had been all abuzz about Gypsy on Facebook after she had been brought into ACS. Apparently a volunteer who had been there that day had posted her story...

...but not the rest of the story...


 

Confessions of the Wife of a Kindhearted Man

Some of my recent posts may have given the impression that I am a passionate animal lover whose passive indulgent husband is just along for the ride. Nothing could be further from the truth. My husband is the one who cannot bear to walk away from a needy animal. And he is certainly indulgent, but more about that later.

Rick with our pack of three plus one grandpuppy,

Upon seeing a needy stray animal, I tend to wish there was something we could do, while thinking of lots of practical reasons why we can't. Not him. He'll rescue first and then try to figure out the details.

This explains:

why he'll walk in the front door carrying a dog in his arms while our three resident dogs go ballistic, barking and jumping at the anxious new-comer...

and why I came home from work to find this stray cat in the garage one day last December...

and how these homeless traveling companions ended up in our backyard and then in our house one day in the fall of 2007.

Ginger and Louie, dirty, matted and hungry.

We called this guy, Louie, because he was short, squat and somewhat obnoxious, but lovable, like the character from the TV show, Taxi. He was a purebred Pekingese and after we had him scanned for a microchip (he didn't have one) and tried in vain to find his owner, we took him to a Pekingese rescue organization who were able to find him a loving home.

Louie all cleaned up.

We called this pretty lady Ginger. Beautiful as she was, it was harder to find her a home because she wasn't purebred. Sad, isn't it?  Her microchip traced her back to a shelter in Los Angeles. She had been adopted by someone who never registered the microchip in their own name and didn't seem to be looking for her.

We might have kept her permanently, but sometimes she was aggressive toward Zoe.

These three didn't always get along this peacefully.

Ginger never showed any tendency toward aggression with people though, and she became the only dog of a loving family that adored her and continued to call her Ginger. As far as I know, she still sleeps at the foot of her best friend's bed, a little boy who told his parents that they didn't need to check on him at night anymore because Ginger was protecting him.

Ginger and Louie both owe their new lives to my compassionate husband.

One of our grandpuppies (in the back) joins our pack for treat time in the kitchen.

My husband is a creature of habit and our four legged creatures have happily fallen into the rhythm of his habits. Most mornings he eats Frosted Mini Wheats for breakfast and that means three dogs each get a Mini Wheat and two cats each get a little milk in a saucer. If he has a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, three dogs get a peanut butter filled "kong." If he has a banana, each dog gets a slice of banana. When he makes himself an ice cream sundae, three dogs and two cats gather round as soon as they hear him squirting Redi-Whip out of a can, because they know they are each going to get a dollop. Now you might say that these are not the healthiest of treats, and believe me I've said the same, wagging my finger and shaking my head in the background. His reply is always that this little bit of (fill in the blank) isn't enough to do them any harm. I've given up. He knows what foods are truly harmful to dogs and cats and knows better than to give them those.

Sasha and her favorite human

He grew up with dogs and cats and his mom has never met a hungry cat she didn't feed. When I decided I would like to adopt a cat from a shelter I knew he would take no convincing.

He once asked me why I had turned off the ceiling fan in our air conditioned living room. "Because there was no one in there," I answered. "The dogs are in there," he replied.

He carries Zoe up and down the stairs when she's in pain from her hip dsyplasia and arthritis.

He is the reason our dogs can count on their daily walks, which would probably be less frequent if it were only up to me.

He is the reason our grandpuppies are just as excited as our grandchildren when we come to visit, because they know they are in for lots of extra attention and treats.

And he is the reason I was confident I could bring this dog home and try to save her when I found her cowering at the shelter within 24 hours of being put down on New Years Eve 2011.