Partial Stories

One of the things that defines a family is shared stories. There are the stories about how mom and dad met, vacation stories, disaster stories, etc.

It's the same with a beloved pet. Every family tells stories about the time that Fido got caught in the sheets, or the way Fluffy was so protective of her kittens.

With a shelter dog, one of the quiet stresses are the partial stories. Why was this dog surrendered? Well, the owners said…That dog was found wandering on the street. Was anyone looking for him? More importantly, what was his life like before that? You don't know.

Sometimes you can trace fragments of these partial stories on the dog itself. Bo, for example, came in with ribs that could be counted. He was desperately underweight. Other times you get baffling glimpses, like I did yesterday with Drake.

A bit of background: Drake is a happy-go-lucky dog. You can startle him, certainly. The humane society's out by the airport, and low flying planes made him flinch. So did especially loud car sounds. Then he'd take a moment, figure out that nothing was wrong, and go back to bounding along the sidewalk.

Another example: a Great Dane who wasn't on a leash jumped on his head the first week we had him. Squashed beneath the paws, Drake just sort of looked at me, as if he were saying, "Yo, you going to do something here?" And I did, of course. But no fear, just a kind of patience.

Yesterday, though, I saw fear. We went through a park and Drake decided he wanted to sniff the swing set. Okay, no problem. It's his walk—he can sniff whatever he wanted. Except that when we got close, a breeze shifted the swings, and a chain clanked.

Drake freaked out. Just freaked. He bolted to the end of the leash, where he jerked to a halt, flipping around in mid-air. His head was down, his tail was tucked, and when I raised a hand to reassure him, he flinched.

He stayed afraid. We had to take a long detour around the swing set, and he was twitchy for five minutes after that.

I know that some dogs have neuroses that seem to come from nowhere…but this was so sudden and so specific that it makes me wonder if there's a chain in Drake's background. And I'll never know.
Greg