I wrote this story three years ago about my crazy, sweet dog Lizzie, who has wound up being the most terrific pooch. Sure, she's got her issues, just like most any dog that's been through something as traumatic as Hurricane Katrina. But I wouldn't have her any other way. She's the most affectionate, cuddly, sweet-hearted dog I've ever known. She's the best.
This is Lizzie. And this is the story of how she came to live with me.
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Lizzie: My Buddy Valentine
February 14, 2007
A year ago, I spent the day of love and kisses driving across the vast, taupe state of Texas, stopping for the night at a dingy motel about 250 miles east of El Paso. My significant others? Two dogs: Hurricane Katrina survivors, en route to their new homes via me and my rented Nissan Altima. Lizzie was coming to live with me in Seattle, and I was dropping Wild Child off at her new home along the way.I wasn’t exactly feeling the love, except maybe
from the tree with the big heart-shaped scar outside my room. But that
was probably meant for the noisy, amorous couple in the room right
above me, anyway.
Wild Child, the young German Shepherd mix
usually confined to her crate and sedative-induced state (trust me, her name was an understatement), somehow
managed to use the very center of the motel bed as her own personal
toilet while I assembled her nighttime cage. I shifted the bedding as
well as I could to get away from the huge potty spot and lay clinging
dangerously to the edge of the bed, trying to drift, when I realized my
other companion and future best friend, Lizzie, was leaving me a nice
little doggy doo-doo present by the door.
Not exactly starry-eyed romance. But then last Valentine’s Day wasn’t about me. And really, that's just fine — I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’d met Lizzie five weeks earlier at the Best Friends sanctuary assembled in Tylertown, Mississippi, after Hurricane Katrina blew through. I had the wonderful opportunity to help care for some of the hundreds of dogs still living there five months after the disaster. I fell head over heels for the sad little rust-and-white girl who looked like a giant Jack Russell terrier with a little Pit Bull thrown in. She was adorable and irresistible with those pleading, scared eyes and cautious but constant tail wags.
Lizzie had arrived at the sanctuary a month earlier, a stray wandering one of many abandoned, toppled New Orleans neighborhoods. She was so wild and scared, she had to be trapped by the Best Friends folks.
When I met her, she'd been in Tylertown for about a month. She was so happy, almost relieved, when she would find it in herself to inch close enough to get a few delicious chin and chest scratches. All she wanted was love. Well, and food, but mostly love. And so the day I was scheduled to leave, I found myself filling out adoption papers. No transport options panned out, so I headed back down a month later to fetch my Valentine.
It was a looooong drive home. I guiltily tranqed the oh-so wild Wild Child with the sedatives the Best Friends crew gave me "just in case." Lizzie was sometimes so scared that she’d refuse to leave the car for potty breaks. Eerily, she would not let me out of her sight. I could feel her constant, suspicious gaze on me from wherever she was stationed in the car or in various motel rooms. But sometimes at night, I’d stir in my sleep and she’d trot over and cuddle with me for a just few seconds. So I hoped that meant that maybe was starting to dig me okay, too.
Wild Child went to her new people in Southern California first. She'd never met them, so I was a little concerned about how it would go—she'd spent much of the drive growling at Lizzie and barking at any human who came within 10 feet of the car. But when I opened the car door, she trotted over to her new people and rolled over on her back. Tongue lolling, tail wagging, happy as a clam that she'd found her people. It's funny how sometimes dogs just know.
And as soon as I got Lizzie home, I think she, too, knew it was all going to be okay. Though she still wanted the protection of her crate.
(See those suspicious eyes?!)
She became fast friends with her new sister, Angelyne, relying on the wise, calm old Golden Retriever to help her get through. She immediately became more comfortable with getting loves from me. Just one day after she arrived, she was up on the couch (ahem, sorry, her couch) with a tennis ball—and within a few more days, she was tearing gleeful circles around the house. Since then, the only thing that slowed her down, temporarily, was a grueling heartworm treatment.
As
rewarding as it was to deliver Wild Child to her new family in Pasadena, and to bring Lizzie home, I must say I’m glad I’ll be spending this
Valentine's Day in the comfort of my own home. A nice, clean, dog
pee-free bed is certainly preferable. Best of all, I'll have Lizzie: My
sweet, tail-wagging package full of unconditional love and hugs and
kisses. And I’m pretty sure she's just as thrilled to have me.
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And because I just can't help but share a few more pics of the little squirt over the past four years...
(Making friends with the new addition to the family: The dude who ended up being my guy [or *our* guy as Liz would say. She's big time into him.])
