Allthesilver

Sort of???  How do you sort of have a dog?

Well.

.......the little doggie in my bushes

Somewhere about the begining of December 2006, I was pulling out of my driveway on the way to work.  There once was a garden at the end of the driveway, with daylilies and wild roses.  Now it is overgrown with hickory trees and a tangle of rose vines.  I had to creep out to the edge of the road so I wouldn’t get creamed by an unseen motorist, and as I paused, I noticed a little doggie in the briars.

I got out of my truck and went over to the briars for a better look.  The little dog got up and snuck through the briars and off into the woods.  She was holding a back leg up at a weird angle and seemed pretty skinny.  And young.

When I got home from work it was dark, so it wasn’t until the next day that I saw the little dog was back in the briars again.  It made good protection.  I sure wasn’t going to try and push through those gigantic thorns!  I tried calling her to me but she was very frightened and cold.  She stayed put.   I brought a dish of food out and left it at the edge of the briars.

By the next day she had eaten the food.  I left her some more.  I called my friend Linda and told her about the little doggie in my bushes.  She’s a little black dog with short hair and looks something like an Italian Greyhound (but not quite).  This is a small town, we know everyone’s dogs.  I had to wonder whether this one had wandered off and gotten hit by a car, or whether some miserable person had dumped her out of a moving vehicle and she was hurt in the landing.  It was cold.  It was December in New England.  I wanted to bring her in the house and take care of her.  She wanted to stay in the briars.

Dana asked me, “What are you getting me for Christmas?”  I said, “I got you a puppy!  She’s out in the bushes by the mailbox.”  It was a joke, of course, but we started calling her Dana’s dog anyway.  We kept feeding her, on into the spring, but she still would not get near us.  Her leg seemed better but she still limped on it.

My friend, who drives a propane truck, would stop by and try to get the dog to come to him.  She’d act like she wanted to, but at the last minute she’d turn and run off.  Linda knows a woman who is an animal control officer, and she wanted me to get some tranquilizer and put it in the dog’s food so I could catch her.  I was afraid the dog would get wobbly and totter out into the road and be run over.

It got to be summer and I started putting the dog’s food in a dish inside my empty dog pen.  (My German Shepherd was long gone.)  Eventually, I was able to pull the gate shut with a rope when she went in for her food.  There!  Now I could get her used to being handled.  She could finally be taken care of.  Dog license.  Rabies shots.  Vaccinations.  Worming.  So I thought.

The poor little doggie was so depressed that she wouldn’t eat or drink.  At all.  It is a nice big 12X24 pen with a comfy dog house and some nice shade trees overhanging it.  I went in the pen with her and would sit next to her stroking her head and talking to her.  She tolerated it because she knew there was no escape.

After three days she still would not even drink and she was starting to lose her hair on her thigh from just lying there.  I opened the gate and walked away.  As she ran off, I thought she wouldn’t come back.

She did.  I still feed her.  She comes running, all excited, when I pull in the driveway.  Almost wants to jump up on me.  But not quite.  If I turn to walk in the house, she’ll bump the back of my legs with her nose.  And sometimes, when I call her, she’ll come and put her nose in my hand.  She still won’t let me pet her.

She brings things from all over the neighborhood.  Milk jugs, paper bags, little tiny work boots, mittens, (the neighbors have little kids), dog bones, balls, etc.  She plays with them in my front yard, flinging them in the air and barking and racing great circles around them before flinging them in the air again.  She leaves all her toys under a Douglas Fir.  Once in a while I go out and fill a trash bag with her collection but it isn’t long before she’s brought home new stuff.

Sometimes, when I’m out driving, I pass the little dog more than a mile away from my house, trotting happily along.  She always comes back though.  She sleeps in my garage.

It’s been over a year and a half now.  Maybe I should give her a name.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 10th, 2008 at 7:15 pm and is filed under The Home Planet.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.