Sabrina heard it over the TV. “Seven-year-old mixed breed free to good home. Come see her at a local vet clinic.” Well, Sabrina phoned the clinic for an appointment to go see the dog.
In the whole viewing area of that TV station, she was the only person who called. The handiwork of angels?
The dog was terrified of Sabrina. Her atrophied front right leg dangled uselessly; the left was in a splint. She’d been hit by a car and left to die; but a good Samaritan came along and reversed this naked villainy. Vets worked on the dog and saved her life. But for what? Who would want such a labor-expensive creature?
Every day for two weeks, Sabrina went to visit Ginger at the vet’s office in an isolated room set aside for the two of them to get acquainted. Sabrina bought her a bed, bones, and toys. Every day, Ginger cowered… but a little less each day.
Finally, Sabrina bought Ginger home. This is where pity ends and where the hard work of love begins. The vets guessed her age at maybe seven hard-lived years. Her behavior suggested prior abuse; her bottom teeth had a peculiar wear pattern that suggests she had languished for years in a cage with wire mesh and had tried to chew her way out. “Ginger will be lucky to live three more years. [With Sabrina’s love and attention, she lived seven more love-filled years.]
Eventually, Ginger gnawed the toes off her bad leg. Animals do that, no one knows why; time to remove the whole leg surgically before Ginger does it. Now, she’s three-legged; her remaining front leg in a cast which must be changed once or twice a day. Sabrina does this lovingly, without complaining, as with all her animals when they fall ill.
Ginger notices. When I walk into the house from work, I get restrained acknowledgment. When Sabrina gets home, Ginger literally howls with joy: a stand-up, head-up, bay-to-the-moon kind of joy. Sabrina, of course, bays back at her, adding to the pandemonium.
Then, each day, it became more obvious Ginger was watching for Sabrina to come home at the end of a work day. Sabrina leaves for work in the morning, Ginger immediately moves to the door to the garage steps waiting impatiently for her to come home. It’s an 8-10 hour wait, but it’s worth it. I return from the midnight shift about 8 AM, Ginger’s glad to see a human [she’s not alone any more]. I go to bed; she moves back to the door and waits for her Sabrina. There was – key word was – a cat entry in the door she lay next to. Ginger could only get her snout through it to catch the first sign or scent that her beloved Mommy had finally gotten back home.
One day she got a bit, let’s use the word ‘impatient’, and gnawed a hole through the hollow core door. A hole large enough she could pass through and wait for Sabrina near the garage. “Nice.” I thought as I replace the door. Sabrina just love-smiled at her and uttered words she would later regret, “Ginger loves me so much, if she couldn’t stand, she would crawl to me.”
First thing in the morning, the dogs must be let outside to do their business. Ginger will not leave her sleeping `mother’s’ side. When Sabrina wakes, then she will go. Until then, she’d sooner suffer kidney failure than be let outside by anyone else.
Dogs pay back kindly owners. Once, when she had grown old, Ginger and I were basking on a sun-drenched porch when I saw something on the front yard I’d never seen before: a full-grown Rotweiller. Then Ginger saw him, too. She tore out after him on her three arthritic legs and half-blind eyes.
She didn’t have a prayer against this dog. But Ginger was not in a religious mood; she was completely outraged that some creature had entered the domain she protected. The Rottie watched her come, never moved, didn’t see Ginger as a problem. But once she had T-boned him onto his back and gripped his throat in her teeth, he may have decided the time had come to re-assess her threat-potential.
Ginger looked hopefully up at me for permission to finish ‘taking out the trash.’ Well, of course, the lethal permission was not granted; Ginger freed him, and came back to me, her disappointment could not have been more obvious. We never saw the Rottie again.
As old age continued its tightening grasp on our baby, she had two strokes which she survived. Then, early one morning, Sabrina’s ever-surveilling sleep was interrupted by Ginger whining beside her bed. She found Ginger could not stand. Sabrina comforted her, got her back to sleep, and went back to lie down on a sofa next to the bedroom.
Within moments, she heard a noise of something being drug across the floor, and there was Ginger, unable to walk, pulling herself along to find Mommy. That day, we blessed Ginger with the ultimate fearsome mercy: we put our dear one to peaceful sleep; to go to a place where she would once again have four strong legs and no more strokes.
But this is how good dogs repay their owners’ love, biblically, with devotion, ‘…pressed down and running over.”
Through a quirk of fate, Ginger had come to a better place, with a better love, than she had ever known; adored by the crazy blond who played and bayed with her; loved by the only person on this end of Virginia to answer the TV ad – the only one.
There’s some spiritual embroidery to this story, wouldn’t you say?
