What Have We Gotten Ourselves Into

If you know us, you know we love dogs. We had Little Man (one of his many nicknames) for five years or so before we got The Golden. The two lived with us for 10 years before we had to let Little Man go. While we took great care of him, he had advanced renal failure. That, plus his severe allergies made him miserable.

We then were down to just one dog, The Golden for nine months or so until yesterday. While we had been talking about it for a few weeks, yesterday my wife adopted a dog from the humane society. It is a three year old Golden that was used in a puppy mill. She is adorable but she is very skittish. She tries to hide every time she gets the chance but she does not tremble nor does she cower when we pet her. So far we all like her, including our other dog, whom I simply call "The Golden". The Golden tolerates the new dog, mostly because New Dog does not challenge The Golden for Alpha-hood. But also she senses that New Dog is broken. Her spirit is just not there.

She needs a lot of work to get her to a point where she can function normally in a household. She reminds me of a character I read about in a fantasy novel, "The Guardians of the Flame". In that series of books, a warrior takes it upon himself to liberate every slave he finds. One, a dwarf whom was a slave to a very cruel man and has had his spirit completely broken, takes years to return to a "normal" life but even then he still slips into "broken mode" around those who freed him.

New Dog is like this dwarf in that she is broken and it will take a long time (if ever) to get her acting like a dog again. How people can treat animals this way is just something I do not understand.

Anyhooo, pray for us. I have a short fuse and it takes daily prayer just to keep it at the level it is now. Adding this to the mix is only going to test my mettle even more. God can do anything and I need him to help me be loving around this poor broken critter.

Just one thing to add. Even though my wife adopted this dog and she is more of a dog lover than I am, New Dog licked my hand and not my wife's. Maybe I am not such a bad guy after all.

Keep us in prayer. Pictures to follow. Sometime.