Please consider making a time or monetary donation to one of the organizations listed below.

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Trust me



So despite the cold, I went for a walk with Rudolph tonight. The staff at One of A Kind saw me on the way in and said, "we figured that you would want to walk with Rudolph tonight. He has his sweater on and is ready to go."
Rudy is getting baths to help him get past mange. His hair is growing back. His skin is healing up. With all of that going on, he is "scratchy dog". We had to stop a few times on our walk for itches and scratches. I'd do my best to help out and try to scratch the right spots. Once we got going though......this dog just wanted to run and play and run some more. We had an absolute blast together. I did learn that carhartt overalls and work boots are not the best running combination. That didn't matter though. We were having an absolute treat fed riot. (He ate the treats......not me).
About 20 minutes later, I noticed that the tail wasn't wagging as much. Turns out, Rudolph was cold. Can't blame the guy either. In addition, his paws really started hurting from the cold/parking lot salt combination. The other bad part? We were about 1/3 of a mile from the clinic. So here I stood, thinking, "this is a stray/shelter dog that's a bit rambunctious. Can I pick him up without him chomping on me?" As I'm thinking this, he sits on my foot and leans against my legs while looking up at me like "hey man. I need some help here. Maybe we overdid our walk? I hope you know how we can get back because I can't really walk". At that moment, I knew that we'd be good.
As soon as I picked him up, he was shivering a bit still, but once we started going, he was totally relaxed. It wasn't but a few steps before he rested his head on my shoulder. Moments before, we were both a little worried. As we went back to the clinic, we were both totally relaxed. Except for my arms.....my arms were screaming as I was carrying 45 lbs of shivering dog 1/3 of a mile.
No one at the shelter knows his back-story. I hope it's not a bad one. I hope it's just some dumb bad luck. I really hope that Rudy finds a loving forever family once he is out of the clinic and up for adoption. Whenever we walk, I try to do some training with him so he is as adoptable as possible. We do good on the proper way to walk, sit, stay, and "let's go". Shake and lay down still need some work though. 

Tonight, Rudy taught me "no matter what your past is, sometimes, you just need to trust each other."

No comments:

Post a Comment