Penny is mischievous. She steals things she knows she's not supposed to steal, but she does it cleverly, always hiding the evidence. Dorothy just gets rattled in the head, too wound up: She forgets herself and chews on furniture right in front of us.
Both dogs have an absolutely pathetic fear of punishment. One loud word sends Penny squirming and twisting into a ball with her head tucked — dog language for, "Please oh please, don't beat me too terrible bad." It's awful. You have to tell a dog no sometimes, but Penny really makes you pay in the gut.
Mark Graham
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Dorothy flies from the room like a bullet, bounds up the stairs and cowers at the far end of our bed, which is her lair now. When I find her there in shadows, she is shivering, but the unwavering eye is on me, watching, watching. I think she would take three good licks without moving. Then she would leap to kill.
Nobody's perfect. But as we come to the end of this year, what impresses and even amazes me is the improvement, the amount of rehabilitation both dogs have accomplished. I didn't know dogs could do that.
I have had dogs all my life, but I always got them as puppies. I just assumed, I guess, that a dog started out at Point A and proceeded pretty much to Point B without any detours, certainly without turnarounds. These two have opened my eyes.
The abuse is so clear to read. And, no, I don't really think Dorothy's nemesis was a puppeteer. Maybe nobody picked on her on purpose. Simply being left to fend in alleys can be a pretty savage beginning for these beings who carry in them some spark of human comprehension, an eye that can see into our eyes. Does that spark protect or weaken them? I guess that's up to us.
I know that even when our dogs were at their most tentative and afraid, when the wounds of tough puppy-hoods were plain to see, they were always inching back across the floor, creeping slowly out of the shadows to be comforted and cajoled. Why would that be? If life taught them to bite, why wouldn't they just learn to bite faster and harder? What is it in a dog that seeks reconciliation and love, even from the hand it fears?
Even more stunning, however, is the complex and layered development of new personality. In any animal, human or non, what is more complicated than trust? How can an animal that does not trust learn to trust after all? But these two have.
Penny trusts everybody now. She's a jump-up give-me-a-pet kind of a dog. We have to watch her for that. Who likes dogs who jump up? Dorothy trusts us, other people not so much. I really have to watch her when we pass people walking. Every once in a while she would like to kind of arc out to the end of the leash and give a nice little chomp on the ankle to some lady pushing a stroller. We try very hard to avoid that.
She also has developed an insane phobia for the opening of motorized gates on apartment buildings. She starts leaping on the leash, foaming at the mouth and howling like the Hounds of the Baskervilles. I think at some point she must have been abused by an apartment-dweller. Or a gatekeeper. Or she's just nuts.
I know this much. It makes me feel guilty to say it. It makes me feel terrible. But I know it's true. No pure-bred Weimaraner fed by hand and raised from a pup ever came close to feeling the gratitude these two feel for having a home. When I open that door at night, I know what all their jumping and barking and licking and dancing around means. It's dog language for, "Oh, Boss, please, can we stay one more night?"
I'm writing this a week before the holiday, but I already know what I will tell them on that special evening. I will pause inside the door, stroke my chin like Nick himself, shake my head gravely, mutter out loud, "Well, I don't know. I just don't know."
Then I will throw up my arms and say, "Oh, what the hell. It's Christmas! OK. One more night."
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