Well, technically, I guess we're going to talk about my feelings on pitbulls, but it will be fun. I promise.
This is Emmitt. He is deaf, bowlegged and was probably abused before we got him. He has an abundance of personality, possibly more than I have seen in any other dog, in all my years at this job. (As I started as a volunteer at 11, was there for three years and back as staff for two more seasonally, this is actually pretty impressive.)
Every morning, I get to work at 7 am and the first thing I do is open all of the kennel run doors and let the dogs into their outside run areas. We lock them in at night so that they stay warm (or cool, depending on the season), but they usually really need to go out in the morning after being inside for so long. Every morning this summer, I would get to Emmitt's cage, open the outside door and say "Out!" just like I did with every dog. He may have been deaf, but like all of the other dogs that had been in the shelter for a while, he knew the routine; he knew exactly what I wanted him to do. (Despite being the world's biggest goof, he's hella smart.) Every morning Emmitt would, without fail, do the following things:
- Pick his head up and look at me.
- Cock it to the side, raise ears in question, as if to say, "Really?"
- Stare at me for another few seconds, sleepy and disbelieving. Blink a few times.
- Put his head back on to his paws, possibly resettle himself into a cute little dog-ball... and go back to sleep.
"Really, Emmitt!?" I would say, half-exasperated, half-amused... ok, mostly just caught up in the fact that he is freakin' adorable. He would usually close his eyes and ignore me, at this point. I would finish up with the other dogs and go back to him again at the end. (I actually spoiled him a lot by starting my other work before really having to force him outside... what can I say? I liked having company while I sorted through dirty laundry and collected water bowls to wash.) He might look at me hopefully, if he thought I was going to pet him, or give him something fun and/or tasty, but mostly he would just keep pretending to be asleep. I had to open his cage and physically drag his blanket out from under him to get him to move. He would then stare at me insolently as if to say "Why'd ya do that?" Walk around his cage and, finally, deciding that since he was no longer warm and comfortable, he might as well do what I wanted, make his exit into the outside run, doing his characteristic morning stretch along the way.
Emmitt went home at the very end of the summer (one of my last days of work) with a vet from Maine. Her deaf dog had just died, so she had plenty of experience and could give him the attention and appropriate training he desperately needed. Emmitt is a great dog, but he needed a lot of obedience work, which would be a challenge for even a relatively experienced owner, considering his deafness. I got to meet the vet, and she is a truly wonderful person. She sent us pictures and a letter, telling us that he's doing really well. Here's an excerpt from what she said:
"[Emmitt] is proving to be very smart. He has already learned the hand signal for "sit" and he walks so well on a leash it is amazing. He also is well aware that delicious stuff is kept in the fridge and keeps a sharp eye out for anyone moving in that direction, and even though he couldn't hear the raccoon clumping about in the weeds, he still knew she was there and gave a good growl. My folks are Irish and have taken to calling him Brian Boru after a great Irish king, and also Connor. He seems to enjoy being Irish."
This is Padme and her story is basically phenomenal. So, Animal Control gets a call about a dog living in an abandoned crack house. They go to investigate, trying to approach slowly and trap her upstairs in a secluded room to bring her in. She gets freaked out and ends up jumping out the second story window and running away. The ACOs think that she's going somewhere to die, because, I mean, consider the internal injury implications of that. However, they start getting calls over the next few weeks (that turns into four months, from the time they first got a report about her until she was eventually brought to my shelter) --
"Hi, uh, yeah, there's a dog sleeping in my yard..."
"There's this cougar..."
"...coyote..."
"...dingo..." (Clearly a geographically challenged individual.)
"Er, there's this dog dragging a dead deer down the side of the road..."
They come close to catching her a few times, but she's apparently freaking Houdini reincarnated, because she broke out of, like, two traps. (FYI: They're made for this kind of stuff, so that's really hard to do.) Then, one of the Animal Control Officers decides that he's just really tired of having to carry around a loaded tranquilizer gun for this dog all the time, so he buys 2 dozen Big Macs and puts them in a trap. FINALLY, they catch her. And bring her to my shelter. Of course, I'm not there at this point, since it's April, but after all of this, my co-workers are pretty sure she's going to be too feral to adopt out to anyone, after being on her own for so long, etc.
Within two days, she was wagging her tail at the staff.
A week later, my supervisor sends the picture above of her lounging in the pool to the ACO that finally caught her with a smartass comment along the lines of: "So, this is the world's hardest dog to catch, huh?" (They're friends, so it was appropriate "guy humor" for the situation.) When he did her evaluation (all of our dogs are temperment tested, to see what kind of personality they have, what home they'd be best suited with, how they interact with other animals, etc.), she knew TONS of commands, was super smart (as one co-worker said, "Padme knows it all: sit, stay... cook meth...") and her only issue was a bit of food guarding - as in, she'd move to block her bowl if you tried to take it, but never growled or bit or anything. (And I was told that she worked herself out of it after being in the shelter for a few months and adjusting to getting meals regularly.)
When I last saw her in October when I was home for fall break, I was a little worried about her - as much as she had seemed to be enjoying the shelter over the summer, she was seeming a little depressed. Although we do a really good job taking care of them, giving them food and shelter, exercise and attention, a shelter is just not a home. We try, but it's tough on dogs to be there for months at a time.
In November, right before Thanksgiving, Padme was finally adopted... by this badass biker dude! Apparently they're perfect together and he gave us an update recently on what a wonderful dog she is. I'm just so happy for her. She's been through so much, was still such a phenomenal dog and she just deserved so much better than the life she had been living. Now, she can finally get that properly, in a loving home.
(Also, you guys have no idea how many times I have used this story to entertain at parties. So inspirational!)
This is Riggs/Jack. He'd been picked up before, and we knew his owner was kind of a deadbeat (who KNEW his two dogs were at our shelter... and just never came for them) and that his original name was Jack. But somehow his paperwork didn't get changed from the name we gave him as a stray, which was Riggs, which I kind of hate. I still call him Jack. Anyway, Jack and I connected on an emotional level this summer. He had just arrived at the shelter when I came back to work there this summer. He was scared, timid and unsure, I was scared (of a scary supervisor), timid (because I get very subservient at work sometimes) and unsure (because I was newly back on the job and learning all of the rule changes enacted in the 6 months I'd been gone) -- we were a perfect match. I loved watching him come out of his shell, little by little, as he got more comfortable with his surroundings (and I did, too). The shelter can be a hugely scary place for some dogs - with all of the smells, sounds, and just general unfamiliarity, some of them get really freaked out.
One of my favorite things about Jack is his gentle nature. He's a pretty submissive dog, and is actually highly recommended with children. Frustratingly, the fact that he happens to be a pitbull worked against him - otherwise, I'm sure he would have flown out of the shelter in days, with a personality like his. We had this golden retriever - beautiful dog, but seriously food aggressive. Like, he would eat yo' face. People would always ask to see him and have their 5-year-olds with them, and we'd be all "No, really. You can't have this dog with children." Then, we'd offer to bring out a dog that would be great with kids. And they'd take one look at Jack and shake their heads.
Finally, around the end of the summer (it was great - in one week, almost all of my favorites magically got adopted; Jack and Emmitt went home within a day of each other) Jack found a home. I didn't meet his people, but they sent an update, thanking us again for a "one in a million" dog.
There are many other stories like this, and there no doubt will be many more. These are just the highlights, of some of the dogs that were the focal point of my summer this year. I love that they're pitbulls, and that they just prove everything that people believe about the breed SO wrong. I love that even though they've been through so much, yet are still able to love life and move past it to be amazing companions for their owners. I love that I could look forward to seeing them every day; they knew who I was, and I know that they appreciated that we were there taking care of them and paid us back with their unconditional love. Most of all, I love that there are other people out there who were able to see in them what I (and the rest of the staff) saw: their kindness, their intelligence, their positive attitudes and their potential to be amazing pets. And that they were willing to take a chance on them and give them their forever homes.
It's recollections like this that allow me to keep my faith in the goodness in the world.
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