I have found that when you are deeply troubled,
there are things you get from the silent devoted companionship of a dog that
you can get from no other source.
---Doris Day
Rescued
by Love
By
Glenda Beall
Bundled
against February’s cold, my husband Barry and I walked along the road near the
Hiawassee River, making our way up to Chatuge Dam where we would find a flat
trail for our morning walk. At the corner of the main road and the road to the
weir, a puppy lay under a bare limbed tree. Stretched out on his belly, head up
and ears alert, he watched the road before him as though he expected someone to
appear at any minute.
Barry
talked to him as we approached. “Hey, Bud, what are you doing here?”
When
we came closer, the dog moved away from us and growled low in his throat.
Obviously, he was frightened.
“I
hope he doesn’t get hit by a car. I think he’s been dumped out here. He’s not
very old.” Barry loved animals. It angered him to see them abused. “How could
anybody throw away this puppy, and on a cold day like this?”
A
dog’s tail can show his attitude, angry, cowed or happy, but this dog’s tail
had been bobbed to a short little nubbin.
“He
has the coloring of a Doberman or Rottweiler,” I said as we continued to walk past.
I hoped he would be safe. He was close to a fairly busy road.
Later,
on the way back to our car, we saw the dog again, and this time he ran when we
approached.
Back
home after lunch, I read a book while Barry napped. Around 2:00 p.m., after he
awakened and watched some golf on TV, Barry said to me, “I’m going to take that
dog something to eat if he is still there. I imagine he’s been picked up by
now, but I hate to leave him with nothing to eat.”
He
pulled a couple of cans of dog food off the shelf in the pantry. As he left, I
thought about Kodi, our lovely and sweet Samoyed who stayed on my mind most of
the time. We had to put him to sleep on Christmas day. That had been only a
couple of months before. Kodi was thirteen years old, snowy white with fur as
soft as down. His black eyes had become a milky blue, but his smile was the
same. I never looked at my loving white sled dog that I didn’t smile back at
him. The last four years of his life had been tough for him and for us. He had
developed corneal ulcers on both eyes. We’d taken him to specialists and
finally cured that problem, but his hips began to fail. Getting to his feet
became a struggle, and often I had to lift him up off the floor so he could get
his footing. But he continued to steal my heart with his gentle way of leaning
against me and laying his muzzle across my knee while I stroked his head.
Everything
in our house reminded me of my beloved pet: his food bowl, his pink toy with
chewed ears and even the recliner where I sat. I still checked under the foot rest before letting it down to
be sure Kodi was not lying there, right under my feet, as he had done for all
those years.
A
friend, a few weeks after Kodi died, told me we should get another dog right
away. “No,” I said. “I don’t want another dog. I can’t stand losing another.”
The only dog I wanted was gone.
When
Barry said he would like another dog, I said, “I don’t want a dog now. If I
ever do get another dog, I want a small lap dog.”
I
knew Barry did not want a small dog, and I wanted no dog at all. Nothing was
fun anymore. And only my dearest friends and my sister knew how devastated I
really was over the death of Kodi.
That
Saturday afternoon in February, as I sat warm and cozy reading, Barry knelt on
the ground near the black and tan pup, coaxing him to come eat from the can in
his hand.
Two
hours after he left, I heard my husband’s happy voice calling from downstairs
in the basement. “Come down here and see what I have. I brought this puppy home
with me.”
I
heaved a large sigh. I didn’t want a mutt found beside the road. Who knew what
kind of health problems he had? And I didn’t think he was handsome. He was just
a mixed breed puppy with no tail.
“We’ll
have to find his owner or find a home for him,” I said. I made sure Barry knew there
was no way I was going to keep this thrown-away dog. He agreed that we would
use every means to find the owner, and if we couldn’t, we would find a good
home for him.
This is part of a story you will find in the book and there are many more.
