LOVING OUR PETS
I Saved Her From a Life of Abuse and She Stole My Heart
I had to wait to experience Puppy Love
I always wanted a pet growing up. Many of my friends had dogs or cats. We had a blue budgie named Peter who could talk a little. He would always greet us with “pretty bird, pretty bird.” I also had turtles and fish (not together).
My dad was allergic to dogs and cats and would end up with an asthma attack if he was around them for any length of time. So four-legged pets were out of the question. I would have to cuddle up to my goldfish or my friends’ pets.
So it wasn’t until I was in my forties that I finally got my own dog. I was the producer of an animal show each week at the TV station I worked at. “Animal House Calls” was a hit, one of our most popular shows. Each week we would have a veterinarian answer viewer questions and we would also feature a wildlife segment on the show.
But my favorite part was the pet segment where we would feature a different rescue group each week. They would bring in a few animals that were looking for their forever homes. It was tough not to want to bring them all home with me.
A couple of months into the show I fell in love. The local SPCA brought in a couple of dogs, one about the size of a Jack Russell Terrier but we couldn’t figure out what breed it was. The dog was extremely nervous so we did all we could to make the experience as calming as possible.
When the show started, the SPCA officer introduced the dog to the audience but as her story began to unfold I felt my heart breaking.
Gizmo had been rescued from a fly-by-night pet store that had been busted before on animal cruelty charges. She was about a year old when she was found in a glass showcase that was not much bigger than a large aquarium and that’s where she had lived her entire life.
I asked to hold her…
Her hair had been shaved because her fur was so badly matted and caked with excrement. Her nails were so long when she was found that she could barely walk. The SPCA officer said she had probably never been taken out of her glass cage and had been living in her own filth.
By the time the story was over, the host was in tears and I was struggling to hold back my own emotions. We still had the rest of the show to do. After the show, we sat with the rep and talked more about poor Gizmo.
Then I did something that I should have known better not to do. I asked to hold her.
She was shaking like a leaf and wouldn’t look anyone in the eye. I caught her eye for just a moment and in that instant she reached in and grabbed my heart and soul. I wanted to protect her, to make sure that the home she ended up in was the right one so she would never have to suffer again. I decided I would try to adopt her.
It wasn’t quite that easy. I had to fill out forms to prove that I would be a good fit for Gizmo and provide the right kind of nurturing home. Within a week I was told I could come out to the shelter north of Toronto to pick her up. So I rented a car and drove out to get her.
She was huddled in the back of her cage, scared and confused. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her next. I wrapped her up in a blanket and brought her out to the car.
When we got home, I put her on the kitchen floor and she stood there shaking, barely looking around with her big sad eyes. She wouldn’t move. I tried to call her to come to me but she remained frozen on the spot, shaking. And then she threw up. She looked absolutely terrified. I spoke calmly and quietly to her, telling her it was okay and that she was safe now, as I cleaned up the mess.
It was clear she wasn’t going to move but her eyes were getting heavy and she was starting to wobble on her feet. The poor thing was exhausted after a stressful day and looked like she was going to fall over. So I picked her up and brought her to the couch where I laid down and put her on my chest. After just a couple of minutes, she relaxed into me and fell asleep. That was how we spent our first night together.
It was a perfect bonding experience for both of us. She was able to relax a bit the next day. I gave her some food and water and took her to the back patio for some fresh air and to do her business. Everything she did was tentative like she wasn’t sure how she was supposed to act. At first, she just stood there but I got her to follow me around and she eventually did her thing. Over time she relaxed enough to go for walks and to be around other people and other dogs.
One big concern though was her pink skin. Underneath her fur, around her mouth, and on her paws she was pink. It turned out she was allergic to just about everything. I tried feeding her different foods but nothing worked. The vet kept suggesting different things and we tried them all. Finally she recommended a food that the dog could tolerate. The protein molecules had been manipulated to make them hypoallergenic but it cost about $4 per can. It was the only thing she could eat. I even had to start baking her treats with the canned food and some water. She seemed to think they were something special (even though they smelled like a garbage dump) so I gave them to her to help with training.
I struggled to come up with a name for her. I hated the name Gizmo because it was a reminder of her past, so I never called her that. She hadn’t really gotten used to it anyway. I would just call her “my sweet little pumpkin” and of course, she started to respond. After a couple of weeks, I gave up and decided she would be called Pumpkin. Friends and family laughed saying, “You’ve gotta be kidding?” But I liked it and she responded so it stuck.
Pumpkin loved to chew on her toys, especially rope toys. She would spend hours gnawing away at them. She never ate them but treated them like a puzzle. Once she managed to unravel them and tear them to shreds she would look at me with her big sad eyes. She knew how to work me by now. So of course I would get her another toy from the stash I kept hidden.
Because of her chewing, she had the whitest teeth I had ever seen, especially on a dog. Her vet kept asking if I was brushing her teeth regularly. No, just the rope toys.
She didn’t like going for walks. She really didn’t like strangers and would pull away or stop walking if anyone came near us. She barked and backed away if anyone tried to pay her any attention. One time at the park, she got off her leash and finally had the freedom to do what she wanted. So she started running back home with me racing after her.
For a little dog that could barely walk a few months earlier, that girl could run.
Pumpkin had an empathetic heart. She would stare up at me with those big brown eyes and if she saw that I was upset about something, she would put her paw on my leg. Sometimes she even offered to give me her precious rope toy. I would bury my face in her fur and it would make all the stresses of life disappear, if only for a few moments.
Sometimes I wonder who rescued who.
