We drove in nervous anticipation. ”Maybe she won’t be there, like the last time we had tried to meet up? Maybe he won’t fit our family? I don’t want my heart broken again like last time.” The thoughts rumbled through my head as I looked back our youngest daughter in the van. ”I hope this is going to work, but please be flexible if it doesn’t,” I muttered to her as we pulled into a parking space.
We all scampered into the building to meet our new member of the family. His head was nestled in a tight tuck against the plump arm of the older woman with stray white hairs sticking out from around her glasses. They were the only ones standing there, so I put on my pretend confidence and introduced us.
As we made all the proper exchanges, I kept repeating in my mind “He seems skittish. I don’t know what to do with a dog. What if we are all allergic to him, like the last one? Oh, what if he barks constantly?”
My husband’s hand landed in a comforting position on my shoulder with a “It’s going to be OK, hon” feeling.
”His name is Dante. He’s a rescue dog and came to us from a breeder. When their dogs aren’t perfect for selling, the unwanted ones come to us.”
”Unwanted. A reject. Poor Baby.” I looked into his terrified eyes.
An uncomfortable flash of my best friend growing up, an Alaskan Malamute that my family had owned came across the screen of my mind. When I was ten, my poor baby had been poisoned by neighborhood kids. I just couldn’t bear to lose another dog. I remember vowing that I’d never open my heart to loving like that again. The pain would be too great.
An old friend just happened to be working at the pet store as a dog trainer, so she reassured me that all would be fine. My husband went to go get the car, while my youngest stayed behind with me holding the dog uncertainly. ”Here let me take him,” I said, and she quickly unloaded him haphazardly into my arms.
Dante’s entire body shook as his back feet pushed snuggly in the bend of my arm so that when we went through the sliding doors of the pet store to exit, he made his grand dash. With both legs he sprung like a wound-up spring, shooting into the air. My saving grace was that I had twisted his leash several times on my wrist, just in case. Flashes of him jetting through the parking lot and getting hit by a car shot through my mind, as I instantly reached down to grab him back up again as he fought hard against the leash.
In his state of terror, he bit down on my fingers, drawing a small amount of blood and bruising my fingernail. Yet, he could have done far, far worse, and I knew that immediately. ”So, he at least is a gentle boy,” I mused. I managed to scoop him back up into my arms with us both shaking and ran back into the store until I knew I could safely transport him across the lot to our awaiting car.
When we got him home, he quickly scampered into our laundry room and sat huddled in a corner next to our dryer trembling, where he also would insistently bark at the beep of the dryer when it finished its cycle. Any hand motion towards him would send him running and cowering. He wouldn’t touch any food for the first week, and then slowly we began to coax him out little by little to where he would at least run and hide in his crate, which we covered with a blanket. Any time we held him for the next month, he shook violently. On walks, anytime anyone would pass, he would just sit down and shake, refusing to move.
Early one morning, my husband’s voice shouted from the open front for help. Dante had slipped off the collar and stood helpless in the middle of our front yard in the pitch dark. My husband and I crawled on the ground with him for an hour trying to gain a little of his trust. He was more afraid of the dark than he was of us, but he would not come anywhere near us for us to grab him. Finally, after a desperate prayer, I realized that his crate was the best option because it was the only place he felt was safe. So, after corralling him towards the door opening, he finally ran in, and we locked the door behind him and toted him inside.
Dante was the name he had been given, but it didn’t seem to fit him. He just didn’t seem the Inferno, moody type. He was as gentle and frightened as a little lamb. He was about the size of a lamb too, with curly white hair.
Each day, we loved on him, held him, reassured him, fed him, tried to play with him, (though he didn’t really understand what play was), and our hearts wrapped tight around this little, shy guy.
My middle daughter came home from college for Christmas break, and we still had not decided upon a name. After she spent a little time with him, she finally just looked at me and said, “Mom, he really reminds me of Noah, the lamb we helped take care of in 4H.” And surely, I had thought the same thing. ”Mom, his name has got to be Noah.”
Noah means “rest”.
Over this past year, our little, rescue, trauma pup has become Noah, the dapper dude, a chill little ball of mini-poodle love. He did finally come out of the laundry room. He loves to eat all the scraps from the table instead of his dog food, loves to take walks and meet new friends, and even loves to play and get snuggles. He’s become a part of our family that we can’t live without.
Dante, the scared little trauma pup transformed into Noah the dog at rest, because he found a family that loved him.
That’s kind of a recap of my year this past year. You see, I’ve been a lot like Noah was when he first came: very afraid, traumatized, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, huddled in a corner trembling many times. I’ve been through many years of Jesus loving me, calling me by a new name, and being gentle and kind to me. He put me in a loving family where I can learn to trust that He’s good. Yet, this year, more than ever He has shown me what it means to love someone or some puppy, and in my heart opening more than ever, I’ve found a resting place in the safety of His love and acceptance. I’ve found that I can let go of the trauma, of the past a little more, and I can come into a place of peace, even though I still have more to process through.
In redeeming Dante, maybe there was redemption found for me too.
[…] Open the full article on the kingdomwinds.com site […]