Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge: Day 2…Girls just want to have fun!

Welcome to Day 2 of the Five Photos, Five Stories Challenge. Emilio Pasquale at “Photos by Emilio” invited me to take part. The challenge is  to “post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge”.

Today, my nominee is Sandra Crook at https://castelsarrasin.wordpress.com/. Sandra, I know you’re cruising the waterways of France, with iffy internet connections at best, and busy besides, and of course, you have no obligation to participate.  But Sandra’s a wonderful writer and I want to introduce those of you who don’t know her to her work.

Janie, our first rescue dog

“I’m going to come home at night and she’s going to bite me in the butt,” my husband insisted.

“She’ll be in crate in Megan’s bedroom,” I responded.  “You’ll be safe.”

Everybody knows that pit bulls are vicious, that their jaws lock, that they can’t be redeemed.  Everybody’s wrong.

Janie had been left chained outside an abandoned house in the inner city before she was rescued; neglected, not abused, in the sense a dog in a dog fighting ring is abused or the way many pit bulls are abused:  shot and left for dead, beaten and left for dead, taken by cities who don’t care whether they’re vicious or not and put down.  But certainly not loved and cared for the way most people treat their dogs.  Although she didn’t want to attack other dogs, when they went by outside, she rushed to the window to bark at them.  I imagine while chained, other dogs had come up to her and bothered her.  She joined our family as a foster dog at Christmas.  Fortunately for her, I was out of the house when she vaulted to the top of the sideboard in the living room to bark at some dogs on the sidewalk, knocking the needle pointed, Christmas houses my mom had made to the floor.  Otherwise, it would have been a short visit.

Far from being an angry dog, Janie loved people and was filled with joy.  Her back legs had been injured somehow, enough that when she walked, she walked slightly sideways, looking the way cars that are out of alignment look when you drive behind them.  But she could leap over the snow piles pushed up by the man clearing the driveway with no problem.  Her two favorite toys were a KONG filled with peanut butter bread and a small, hard tire.  The appearance of the former reduced her to slavish love, the second to an orgy of chewing.

Janie made up games.  Her favorite was to crouch on one of our rugs and wait for me to approach.  When I got close, she’d race to another rug, crouch with her butt in the air and wait again.  I didn’t need an exercise program with her around.  Next, she added a race around the dining room table to the course and, finally, a charge up the stairs to one of the bedrooms.  On her way back down, she would be going so fast she could barely stop before reaching the front door.

Most of all, Janie wanted what we all want–love.  She not only wanted it, she was eager to give it.  Far from wanting to live up to the erroneous stereotype of pit bulls, she wanted to sit on your lap and either lick you or fall asleep.  She was a stereotype-breaker and a total love dog.

Janie has had a forever home for some years now, but she’ll always have a place in my heart.  She’s proof that stereotypes, although often based on some truth, are not universally true, that you should give everyone a chance and that often, if you do, you’ll find love.