A special species that’s made of love
Idon’t know how it is with you, but sometimes I believe human beings are just awful. When I listen to the news, or pay attention to the outrages presented via social media, I think most of us are vain and hateful, obsessed with curating our own brands and shaming those who fail to meet our standards of taste and decorum.
It’s only when I disconnect myself from electronic conduits—when I put down my newspaper and walk outside—that I realize how sweet and humble and surpassingly kind most people can be. We are not so concerned with junk TV or the cynical promises of politics as attending to those whose job it is to snatch our attention makes it seem. We can still be amused by grasping babies and children unself-consciously at play. We are able to empathize with the young couple just moving in down the street, the ladies sitting sentinel on their porch and the old veteran who still marches around the block, an ancient dachshund at his heel, every evening, no matter how brutal the sun. If you live among people, you know how they can grow on you, how you can become interested in their stories and affected by the complications that shade and kindle their novelistic lives. You know how you can come to love them.
They do things to make the world less harsh. They gin up goodness in quiet ways.
My neighbor, for instance, is providing foster care for a dog.
This one is a young terrier, a fuzzy-faced little thing my friend is calling Lizzy Belle for the duration. She was rescued from a situation that might be better described as cruelly indifferent. A volunteer for an organization called Out of the Woods Animal Rescue of Arkansas (ootwrescue.org) discovered Lizzy Belle and her six puppies in late August, living in a backyard with no shelter or water. After she saw one of the residents of the house kick the dog, she intervened and negotiated with the owner, who let her take the obviously unhealthy Lizzy to the vet, though he didn’t immediately agree to relinquish the puppies. (As of this writing, OOTW is still trying to get him to give up the pups, who have a family willing to adopt them).
I saw a notice about the rescue on Facebook, and I was especially drawn to the photo of Lizzy because she looks very much like our terriers Paris and Dublin. We adopted our girls five years ago, after they had been abandoned in a box by a Waffle House Dumpster. There were four pups in that box, two of them mostly brown and two mostly black. We chose a pair almost at random— Paris’ foster father placed her in my arms when we met, and then, rather than being too matchy-matchy, we decided to go with one of the black ones. The one who became Dublin seemed just a touch less shy than the other. The two we left behind seemed likely to be adopted that same afternoon and I believe they were, though they were split up.
When I saw Lizzy’s photograph it looked enough like Dublin I thought it possible she was a sister—and I felt a little stab of guilt that she may have suffered because we passed her over. (I know one can’t take in every dog, and if we’d taken Dublin’s sister, then our Dublin would have been left behind. Yet the inability to reconcile what you know is correct with what you feel is true is a fundamental human trait.) I emailed the photo of Lizzy to Karen and she agreed; it could be one of the left-behind sisters.
And while we were wondering about and remarking on the far-fetched possibility of having discovered a relative, our neighbor was busy doing the difficult stuff. When we went out for our walk that evening, she had fetched Lizzy from the vet. We saw them on the street, and stopped for a while to talk.
It was obvious that Lizzy was not a close relation to our girls. Though she resembled them, she was at least a couple of years younger, and quite a bit smaller, and her coat was sparser and more coarse. (Though after a week of good nutrition and attention, she looks much glossier. And a lot feistier than she was that first afternoon; when we first met her she seemed listless and scared, and probably a little hung over from whatever drugs had been administered at the vet.)
It takes a special kind of person to confront someone who is mistreating an animal in a passive way. I have seen dogs chained in yards without access to water and said nothing. I have walked past cars with dogs locked inside in hot weather and told myself the owner would be back in just a minute. I lack whatever skills, whatever courage, it takes to tell someone I believe it would be best if I took their dog away. But I am glad that there are people willing to volunteer to do this sort of thing. I am glad people felt moved to act on Lizzy’s behalf. I do not foster dogs; I am content with encouraging those who do. Audi was supposed to be a temporary dog. We found her a home, and then another, but she is ours now, and forever, or at least for as long as we have together. I don’t think I could bear the inevitable partings that are inherent in the foster process. When we used to wash dogs at the Humane Society, some of the big black mutts who’d been there for years—the lifers too large and ordinary to be meet the public’s criterion for cuteness—would break my heart. We had to stop. Instead, we donate blankets.
Maybe that’s convenient. Maybe it’s just easier for me to write a check and to tell you to support these people. I know there are lots of worthy groups asking for your money and your time, and that few of us can afford to answer more than a few calls. But this is personal for me, for I have benefited much from the work of animal welfare groups like Out of the Woods, CARE for Animals, the Humane Society and others. (There’s a fundraiser for OOTW next weekend; you can find out about it on their website. I’ll be there. It will be fun.)
They say that animals are innocent because they lack imagination. There is another line of thought that dogs do not love their masters, they’ve just evolved strategies for conning human beings into taking care of them. Maybe so. But I don’t believe that. It may be wrong to anthropomorphize, but I know they have emotional lives, that they know heartbreak and disappointment. I know they take pleasure in anticipation, they have friends and they fret for us. I believe that a dog is something like an angel, a creature composed largely of love, designed to help us cope with this rough life.
I believe they complement our humanity, that they improve and elevate us. And they forgive us our transgressions. At least I hope they do.