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| She's here! |
This morning I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of a foster
dog, whom is coming to me from several states away. While she is here she will be having her leg
amputated due to an old injury that was not repaired, and by the look in her
eyes, she will be learning to trust, love and just be a dog again.
As I was on the phone this morning scurrying to find a crate
for this girl, one of my kind and well-meaning friends said: “Oh, that poor dog! I am glad she has been rescued, and now she
will be loved as a rescued dog!” I know
that my friend means well, seriously, she is one of the kindest people I know,
but can I just say I hate the term “rescued”?
The term “rescued” in my mind deems a dog “less than”. Do adoptive parents walk around introducing
their children as: “This is my
biological son, Michael, and my adopted son, Joseph.”? No!
To think of a dog as a “rescue” dog automatically labels it
and puts you in the frame of mind to feel sorrow, or excuse it’s behaviour, and
that label holds the dog back from moving forward in life. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard an owner say: "Oh, he bites because he was a rescue dog." or "We don't make her do that because she was abused in her last home." I have some advise for you: Get over it! The dog has! And if the dog hasn't it's because of the emotional baggage you have now placed on the dog by trying to "save" it from it's past life.
When this girl gets here, she will be greeted by a group of
semi-well behaved (Chihuahuas are never well behaved…) dogs who will lay a lot
of my ground work. These dogs make it
easy for me to rehabilitate dog after dog because they were once her and I “chose”
to invest in them. She will be treated
like every other dog that has ever come through this house. She will be expected to not fight or bite, to
potty outside, and as soon as she is well enough, she will be given a job. (Nosework, obedience, etc…)
To a dog that has never been given a chance, or had someone
to love it, the best gift you can give it, is to be allowed to move forward
with life. Dogs live in the moment, and don’t
dwell on the past, so why would we hold them back?
I agree with you with one exception. We rescues a dog as an adult (7-10+) and he is now well over 15+. I think my dog is senile. When you say "sit" he looks at you like he knows you want something, he's just not sure what it is. So he will do a whole bunch of different commands like "heel", "shake". "fetch" and look at you to see if any of those were the right one. He is a wonderful, sweet dog but he just seems to be confused as he ages. So when we are in public and he "forgets" what we are asking and does something random we just tell people he's a rescue so they don't judge him.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, we have taken him to the vet and the vet does not have a solution either.