Man's Best Friend, Forgotten.

Abby was a stray, and was no doubt born as one.
The ACO recieved a call of a dog running, and picked her up as a starving, flea-ridden, and fearful puppy. No more than six months old, she would crouch in fear and and growl when first approached. It was The Equuschick who named her Abby.
Had she been groomed, she would have been beautiful. Her appearance suggested a Husky/German Shepherd mix, and so did her intelligence.
After her first day or two, she began to calm down and be quiet. She was put up for adoption. The Equuschick brushed her and sprayed her for fleas. The Equuschick took her for walks, and got her used to the leash.
Time went on. Abby learned to heel and to sit, and Abby learned quickly and Abby loved to be close to people. All her insecurity gone with humans, she still retained some fear aggresion towards other dogs. At one point, a rescue became interested in her, but did not take her in their first transport because she would have had to be crated with another dogs. And then the rescue went home and "researched the breed" and called the shelter director to exlain that "huskies had high prey drives, and that you couldn't train it out of them" so the rescue could not take this 6 mos. old puppy because they "would have to worry about her preying on small children." The Equuschick was disgusted. For pity's sake, let us kill all Huskies then, if at 6 mos. old they will not respond to training and will prey on small children.
More time went on. No one came to look at Abby, and the shelter was full. And that was the end of Abby's story, and no one remembers her but The Equuschick, who has a picture of Abby in her bedroom and has now made herself cry.
The Equuschick understands euthanasia. Dogs do not fear it, they do not understand it enough to, to them it is only a lovely scratching of the ears and then nothing and only the humans are left missing them. But dogs understand life. They love it, they are intelligent enough to want to do something with it. They are not happy to be random and alone, any more than people are. To The Equuschick, this is the most horrible thing of all. A random stray, who randomly roamed alone, and who lived her last few weeks in a concrete kennel wanting to get out.
There are some, among them The Equuschick's county board, who would say that the time The Equuschick spent teaching Abby to sit and to heel was wasted, because she never went to a home. But it wasn't, because to Abby, it was what kept her sane. For the few hours that The Equuschick could give her, Abby had a Companion and a Job, and it fulfilled her basic drives to be useful and sociable. Do not tell The Equuschick that this means nothing to an animal. It does. God did not give animals the potential to be domesticated so that they could run starving on the streets, without a productive occupation and without a master. To be without these is to be random, and The Equuschick does not understand the random. She despises it. Abby was random. She was always homeless, she never had a family, a "pack." You may say what you like, but The Equuschick knows that dogs like families. They don't know the word, they don't know what it means, but they like to have them. Abby never had one. Abby never learned tricks. You may say what you like, but The Equuschick knows dogs love to learn tricks. That's what they're FOR. To do these things with people. That's what they want to do, and Abby never got to do them. Her life was a wasted six months of space and oxygen on planet earth.
There is nothing worse than the death of a good dog, than a good dog who died after never having really learned what it is like to live as Man's Best Friend.


The Equuschick realizes she is nuts, and that most people don't get worked up over this. But she does. She can't help it. She apologizes to those who don't have any idea what she's talking about.