People in Little Furry Suits

What goes through a dog’s mind? This week, as I watched my three musketeers – Gracie, Estelle, and Vera, following me from room to room, up and down the stairs, my three furry shadows, I’ve wondered what, exactly, are they thinking?

Vera has only been here about ten days, but she has easily stolen our hearts.

In the past year she’s been rescued from death in a shelter, arriving in her first OPH home testing heartworm positive and bearing a ghastly embedded collar wound. After her neck healed (with a scar so deep you can sink your finger in it up to the first knuckle) and she was treated for heartworm, she was adopted. Yay, happy ending, right?

Wrong.

Eight months later, she has been returned because her adopter’s landlord said she had too many dogs. Veterinary records indicate that while Vera was living with her adopter, she was bitten so badly by another dog (that lived in her house) it required veterinary care.

Her adopter dropped her off here, medically sedated (ostensibly because travel makes her anxious) and confused.

Vera lay on the Frank bed unmoving for a day or so until she was wooed out of her sadness by persistent Estelle who refused to take no for an answer. Since then they have wrestled and played all the day long.

Gracie, surprised us all by accepting Vera without her customary snarl, growl and threaten. But then again, Vera is hard to resist. She pushes her love on everyone, leaping to kiss faces, leaning on legs, and joining you on the couch without invitation—a sixty pound lap dog. For the first time in eight years, Gracie allowed another dog to snuggle her.

When Vera arrived she was overweight and very out of shape, getting winded with only a short walk. Slowly, she’s building her stamina and dropping a little weight. Her coat which was dry and dandruff flecked has glossed up and her eyes are much brighter. She’s happy.

And now she has a new adopter. A smart, patient woman looking for a dog to be her companion and to help her raise her four boys. I have no doubt that Vera is up to the task.

I have every belief that this will be Vera’s real happy ending, and yet…I worry. When she leaves my house to embark on her new life, what will she be thinking? Here I go again? How long will I be in this place? Will these people be kind to me?

I do know that dogs are not people in little furry suits, but still I wonder how it is that dogs don’t run out of trust at some point. Just how much love and trust can Vera shell out on people who simply disappoint or disappear?

Apparently, it’s an endless supply.

It’s a good thing that dogs aren’t people in little furry suits. A person would have long given up by now.  A person who had been through what Vera has been through would not be so unreservedly happy to meet every new face or inclined to ladle out trust so easily.

So, yeah, dogs are not people in little furry suits.

Thank goodness.

UPDATE: Vera’s adopters had a health emergency and will not be able to adopt her at this time, so she is back to ADOPTABLE.

If you’d like regular updates on fosters past and present, be sure to join Another Good Dog facebook group. If you’d like to know more about my writing, I’d be thrilled if you checked out my website, CaraWrites.com where you’ll find links to my books, other blogs, and far too many pictures of dogs.