Vicki
It had already been a long night, and my husband, Charlie, wasn’t looking forward to the rest of it. His job of repossessing cars was usually something he enjoyed, but there were always repos he wished he didn’t have to do. He’d just had one of those. Knowing he was taking a necessity from someone was difficult, but those were the rules.
Charlie backed the truck up carefully. As he angled to make sure he was aligned with the back of the repossessed car to make loading easier, he saw a flash of white under the car in his side mirror. He finished pulling the truck in but decided he should check out what he had seen before going any further.
He leaned down and shined his flashlight under the car. There was an animal—too big to be a cat but not quite big enough to be a dog. He saw the eyes reflecting the light back at him, and in them he saw fear and uncertainty. He got down on his stomach to look closer and then realized it was a dog. And not a healthy one, judging by what he could see.
Charlie was unsure how to proceed. The dog looked like a pit bull, and this could wind up ending badly. He inched his hand forward, palm down, and started murmuring gently to the animal. Unsure, it started to retreat with something in its mouth. Charlie quietly asked his partner to grab his midnight snack of beef jerky out of the cab of the truck. Once Charlie had it opened in his hand, the dog caught the scent. It was obvious that the dog was struggling with the decision of whether to flee or to accept the offer. It crawled tentatively toward Charlie, the smell proving irresistible.
Charlie backed up slowly, trying to entice the dog out from under the vehicle. Eventually they met at the curb, the dog dropping the orange peel it had been eating and daintily taking the beef jerky from Charlie’s hand. He could see that the dog wasn’t well. She was a female and so skinny you could easily count her ribs just by sight. She was definitely a pit bull, and she was so emaciated she could have been an advertisement for animal abuse and neglect.
As Charlie gently petted her head, she made eye contact, and the sadness and fear were immediately visible. She nudged his hand again with her head, asking for more affection. She seemed to recognize his good intentions, and she decided to trust him. Charlie knew that if he dropped her off at a police station or animal control, she would be put down because of her breed. It was decision time.
The apartment Charlie and I rented with our two children didn’t allow pets; the landlord had been very clear on that issue. But maybe, Charlie figured, if he just brought the dog home and cleaned her up, he could find a home for her or a rescue organization that would keep her alive.
He turned his back to the dog and walked toward the truck. He was surprised to find her right behind him every step of the way. When he opened the door of his truck, she looked at him as if asking for permission. He nodded his head and said, “C’mon, girl, in the truck,” and she hopped in without question. Charlie wondered whether I would hug him or kill him, but he knew he had no choice. He could not leave the dog here, ill and struggling.
She curled up on the seat between Charlie and his partner, content to snooze while they finished their shift. After returning to the shop with them, she followed him without question to his own car and once again looked to Charlie for the okay to get in. She calmly sat down and waited to find out what was next.
When Charlie arrived home I was just getting up for the day, and he told me to come outside, that he had brought something home. Knowing my husband, I fully expected it to be a computer or some new toy for him to tinker with. Instead I found myself staring into eyes that held so much pain and fear it brought tears to my own. Charlie looked at me and said, “I couldn’t leave her there . . . she was so scared, and she looks so sick. I had to do something.”
I smiled at my husband and asked if she was friendly, important because of our two young children. Charlie said he’d seen nothing to indicate she wasn’t. So we opened the truck door. The dog jumped down gracefully and sat, apparently waiting for further instruction, unsure of what was expected of her. I said gently, “Okay, let’s go in the house,” and we started up the steps. The dog followed. She seemed to know she would be okay here.
We found a vet who could see her that morning. She weighed in at only seventeen pounds. With her being so malnourished, the best estimate the vet could give on her age was somewhere around one year old. Other than being underweight, she appeared to be healthy. We took her home and named her Vicki.
We knew we couldn’t keep her, but neither of us was ready to let go of her. There was just something about her personality that made you love her on sight. She was skittish, sudden noises made her tremble, new people made her nervous. She appeared to perk up some with our kids. We introduced her to David, our seven-year-old, and she curled up at his feet, content to be near a human.
Next was the most important meeting. Chris, our three-year-old disabled son, spent the majority of his time rolling around on the floor. Vicki gently sniffed his body and his face as if she knew she needed to be extremely careful. She found the edge of his blanket and lay there watching him. And then she refused to move. She quickly learned that an alarm coming from one of his monitors meant that a human was needed, and she took on the job of alerting us, just in case we missed it. She somehow taught herself to recognize when Chris was having a seizure, and she made sure that she got the attention of a human to handle the situation.
No leash was needed to walk her. Out the door, she would make her energy run around the yard, do what she needed to do, and return to the door immediately, despite there being no fence to keep her there. A month or two passed, and though we knew in theory that we couldn’t keep her, we didn’t make much effort to find her a home.
At her next visit to the vet, Vicki weighed in at a healthy forty-seven pounds. Had Charlie not found her that night, she probably would not have survived. She, along with the rest of us, had decided that she was home. We were her humans, and she was part of the family. When the landlord put his foot down and said she had to go, one of Chris’s nurses said she would take Vicki. Though it broke our hearts, we agreed, with one stipulation—if there ever came a time when they couldn’t keep her, for whatever reason, they would call us and we would take her back, no questions asked.
After three months, that phone call came. According to the nurse, Vicki was destructive, tearing up blankets and barking incessantly. They brought her back that afternoon, and that was when we found out why she was being such a “problem.” They had been keeping her in a cage in the basement for hours and hours each day. This dog, who had been abused and neglected from an early age, was given a taste of a real life with a real family, only to be thrown back into neglect.
The day she came back, we started looking for a new place to live, one that would be willing to accept our entire family, including Vicki. She is the protector of her family, of her humans. She will place herself in front of Chris’s wheelchair, and the decision of who can access him is hers. She recognizes how frail he is and that he needs her protection the most. Now Vicki is loved, treated like the princess she is, and given full run of acres of land. She is able to do what she perceives is her job—taking care of her pack.
