The other day Kathy was checking the Whatcom Humane Society's site, to see if they'd updated their information on adoptable dogs. They had, and that was sad.
It was sad because Kathy is even more vulnerable than I am in general to the dogs who have been abused, neglected, or abandoned. (I'm just as vulnerable to specific dogs who have had this happen, when I meet them, but Kathy can read about one and want to adopt it.)
I think it was the section about Melanie not receiving proper nutrition that got to Kathy. The idea of a dog's growth being stunted…yeah.
So, on Tuesday I went to the Baker Creek branch of the shelter, rather than my usual Williamson Way shelter, in order to walk Melanie. Melanie is a German Shorthair Pointer, and she is beyond a doubt the scaredest dog I've ever met. This includes Seth, the chocolate lab who was so scared of the road he wouldn't walk, and who just crawled into my lap. This includes the black lab puppy who was separated from her mom at too young an age and glued herself to my neck for as long as I'd stay in the cage.
Melanie is worse. She's skeletally thin. Forget about seeing ribs—you can see them, count them, etc. Above her hips, at the narrowest part of her body, I can get my thumb and index finger over her, like a large orange.
Melanie flattened into her cage, making herself as small as possible, and when the other dogs started barking because I was there, refused to move. She jerks forward in short bursts, then hunkers to the ground. It took four bursts of movement to get her out the short hallway in the shelter, and I only got her outside because one of the workers saw us coming and left the outside door open for us.
The nub of her tail stayed tucked between her legs the entire first walk except for maybe two bursts of about two seconds when it wiggled out. She jumped at every stray sound, every breeze, every unexpected motion.
The one exception? A dachshund puppy escaped from a teenager who was getting into a car, and Mel perked up. It ran towards us, and it was the only thing all walk that she didn't run away from.
More soon.
Greg
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