My Weblog: Who are you, Mr. Steele?

by Kris Neri at the Femmes Fatales

Sometime back I wrote about our new rescue dog, Rosie, and her alter-ego Kevin. It’s Kevin, named for the little boy in the Home Alone movie series, who does the naughty things around our house, Joe concluded, not his beloved Rosie. Well, I’m happy to report that Kevin doesn’t make too many appearances in our household anymore. Oh, sure, someone still empties the bathroom wastebaskets regularly. I don’t think it’s our sixteen year-old cat, Philly, since that had never interested him, though he is still frisky enough to steal the dog’s toys and sleep in her bed. But the more destructive of Kevin’s behaviors simply aren’t happening anymore.

I believe that Rosie just needed to know who we were, and a thorough investigation of our entire environment felt necessary. After all, she’d been dumped once by people she must have loved. Would it happen again? she had to wonder.

When you rescue a pet, particularly one who has lived some time with other people, you can’t help but wonder about that prior life. I do anyway — maybe it’s the writer in me, always creating scenarios. But I suspect we all want to know.

Some aspects are easy to figure. For instance, Rosie didn’t know how to do her business in the backyard, and expected walks in the street after her meals. That told us she probably lived in an apartment or condo, with little outdoor space. Okay, so we figured out which kind of home she lived in, not the kind of people she lived with.

A better clue emerged once when Joe and I were having quite a serious discussion about something. No, that’s not a euphemism for a fight. We really were just talking about something important. But the seriousness of our manners must have brought up bad feelings or memories in Rosie because she suddenly began frantically licking her paws. Did they give away this precious dog because they got a divorce and neither could keep her thereafter? Or were their serious discussions about getting rid of her. We know they had bred her, and when she was still quite young, because the vet confirmed that. Did they decide they liked one of the puppies more? We’ll never know.

A better alter-ego name for rescue pets would be Mr. Steele. Remember the charming P.I. TV show, with a character with a mysterious past, who used that name? When you adopt a rescue pet, they’re all Mr. Steele, because you never get more than snipers and little clues to put the past together.

Sometimes you can conclude something about the circumstances of their being handled over. With our late dog Annabelle, the shelter employees concluded that she and an older dog had been dumped at night. Some people are too embarrassed to turn a pet in during the day, when they’ll have to talk to shelter workers. Our shelter leaves cages outside during off hours, which nighttime dumpers can use to keep the pets safe. However, too often, we were told, they don’t. When dogs are left loose there, they usually try to follow the cars. Of course, cars drive faster than dogs can run, and apparently, they usually end up lost behind stores on our main shopping road. The local Walgreens parking lot, which happens to be right next to where those cars would drive, is often where they end up.

In Annabelle’s case, the Walgreen’s manager called the shelter to report that another two dogs had found their way to their parking lot, so a shelter worker could come and collect them. At least Annabelle and the dog she was dumped with managed to stay together. I don’t know what happens when people dump cats at night and leave them loose. That thought scares me; we have a lot of wildlife here.

The obvious answer to the question of past lives might be to question the shelter workers. But here they seem to have a policy of giving vague, non-specific answers. Sedona is a small town — maybe they don’t want to embarrass anyone. Or maybe Rosie also got left at night. Maybe they always make up comfortable lies to fill in rescue pet’s backgrounds.

Perhaps it’s the people we should call Mr. Steele because their identities are also mysterious and unknown. I don’t know why I care. I’ve always said that the first owners of rescue pets are just place-holders, until the time is right for pets and their rightful companions to connect. But I also know the pets always suffer from the effects of those first homes. Annabelle had separation anxiety all of her life.

Despite that, I don’t believe either dog was abused. We did adopt a dog once who had proven to be abused, and we took possession of him directly from the monsters who must have done terrible things to puppies, judging by our dog’s lifetime fears.

I don’t put Annabelle’s and Rosie’s prior owners in that category. I also don’t want to judge them too harshly. Maybe they genuinely had no choice. People do suffer from bad financial or health or other impossible situations. And I’m grateful that we had the chance to welcome both of these wonderful animals into our lives, and that couldn’t have happened if someone hadn’t turned them in.

But still…I wonder.

Have you ever rescued pets? Do you long for answers, too? Did you ever get them?

Comments

Rosie/Kevin sure is lucky to have landed at your house! I'm glad she's getting more and more comfortable.

Our current cat is the only one we've ever brought home. All the previous ones just sauntered over and stayed. One exception though, years ago, our big male cat Holmes found a tiny little kitten, covered in dirt, grass and fleas, obviously dumped. He brought it home, carried it inside, put it on his rug. So that was his baby and he was its rescue hero daddy. :)

Posted by: Mary Saums | September 02, 2016 at 05:25 PM

When our last 16 year old throwaway dog died we weren't going to get another dog. However we went to hike in Shawnee Forest in Il on July 5 3 years ago and there was this nasty little dog with matted hair full of ticks and fleas in the parking lot at the trail head miles from anywhere. I cut a wastebasket full of dirty fur off her before we drove 2 hours to our vet. She is blind in one eye. She is very anxious if left alone but is amazingly well trained. She has no problem with cats. We named her Swamp Fox and she's a red pomeranian mix. My husband thinks she belonged to an older person who died leaving her with people who didn't want her

Posted by: Susan Neace | September 03, 2016 at 06:27 PM