Our dog was abused also. Cool story though, I'm long winded as pretty much anyone on the board can attest to, so I apologize in advance. About five years ago my wife and our son, he was about 5 years old at the time, wore me down till I agreed to get a dog. I'm the stoic one in the family. Anyway, we pick a Saturday and head to the local animal shelter. We walked out into the dog shelter area, the first thing that hits you is the noise. There are lots of dogs barking and I'm sure they are all riled up being around so many other dogs. We're proceeding from one holding area to another looking at all the dogs. I'm starting to feel like a jerk because I want to take them ALL home at this point, picking one seems to be impossible. In one particular holding area, there were three or four medium sized dogs all jumping around and barking, but over to the side, not making any noise at all was this thin, scared looking dog who looked, and I'm not kidding here, her eyes looked older than she appeared. She looked scared but at the same time, resigned. My son walked right up to the cage, and put his hand up to her, she licked his hand then just sat down and looked at all three of us. My son made the decision right then and there. He turned around and told us he wanted this dog. We asked him if he wanted to keep looking around, he was resolute, this was going to be his dog. We asked the shelter attendant to bring the dog into the side room to see what her temperament was. The shelter has an area where you can play with the animal and just how what its temperament is like. They took us into the room then the shelter attendant brought her in. She walked over to Daniel, laid down on her side and started licking his face like she'd just been waiting on him to get there. That was that. They told us she was about a year old and had been found wandering in one of the neighborhoods in the middle of the city. We got the paperwork all done, $35.00 for shots and neutering, can't beat that. We went and picked her up about three days later once they were done with her. We asked my son what he wanted to name her when we picked her up. "Bailey" he said without any hesitation. He told us he'd been thinking about that name ever since he played with her at the shelter. I asked him why "Bailey", he said he didn't know, he just liked that name...weird....anyway, five years later and I'll be completely honest, Bailey is the fourth member of our family, make no mistake about it. She follows Daniel to and from his room, the kitchen, outside, inside, wherever. She's never acted up, or tore up anything in our house. My wife taught her how to ring the string of small bells we have tied to the back door when she wants to go out. She's a very smart dog and her temperament is like nothing I've ever seen. She's calm and having a home seems to have been all she ever wanted. She's gained some weight, we could see all of her ribs when we brought her home...not so much now
One day a few years back I was getting one of my belts out of the closet while cleaning it out. Bailey was on the bed behind me watching, I turned around and tossed the belt onto the bed. I heard her yelp like she'd fell or been hit. By the time I turned around, she had crawled under the bed and was shivering. At first I thought she had fallen or had been injured. Turned out....it was the belt. At some point she must have been hit by some a$$hat with a belt. She's terrified of them. I felt terrible about it but since then I've gone out of my way to make sure she doesn't see any belts. I just wish I could pay a visit to the person who hit her with one. Some people are just terrible.
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