The Life of Christopher
He spent a little more than half his life in a cage.
He grew up under conditions so bad that they haunted him the rest of his life. In his early life, he never learned how to play, he never felt love, he never had clean water or enough food or basic care. He never got to lie in the grass or take a walk. All he knew was fear. Of all the things he feared, human were the worst. They could be counted on to hurt and hurt and hurt.
There are many dogs in puppy mills and all of them live in poor conditions. But some live in the worst conditions of all. He was one of those dogs. He was lucky though, because the place where he was tortured was closed by the authorities and he went to a shelter.
He was withdrawn, almost catatonic, in his fear. The shelter recognized that he wasn’t a good candidate for adoption and he miraculously got transferred to a private rescue organization rather than being put to sleep.
It was a one-woman operation and she had around 40 dogs in her care. He needed more attention than she could give, but how do you find a home for a dog who is so terribly, terribly afraid of people even 9 months after leaving the puppy mill?
It had been a year since her soul-mate died. She was broken and the only thing keeping her going was her dog, Rusty. Her roommate had just moved out and took her dog with her, so Rusty was home alone all day. Initially she just wanted was a companion for him. He was a chihuahua/dachshund mix and her first thought was that she would adopt a little girl chihuahua to keep him company. Not for her, no she wasn’t ready to love again, but Rusty needed a friend.
She thought it best if she saved a life rather than buying a dog, so she went to the local shelter. There weren’t any small dogs available at that point in time, so she went looking elsewhere and one night, while surfing the Internet, she was mesmerized by a pair of dark brown eyes. She could see the hell he had gone through in those eyes. She recognized the look because she wore a version of it herself.
So the woman with the broken heart went to meet the dog with the broken spirit. She sat on the kitchen floor and talked to the rescue lady. Christopher was in the kitchen, too, but he stayed well away from both the stranger and the person he knew. The strange lady never tried to touch him and never looked at him directly. After a couple of hours he managed to get up enough courage to get about 8 feet away.
In the meantime, the two women talked. They talked about the other abused dogs the lady had lived with. They talked about the abuse she had gone through as a child. They talked about her grief and about how she adopted Rusty even though the shelter personnel thought he was mean, but he was really just scared. They talked for hours.
They talked about Christopher’s background a bit, but the rescue lady would only say it was the worst place his rescuers had ever seen. The lady knew then how horrific a place he had come from. And he had spent 6 years there with no care, no love, no hope. The lady had been in a place of no hope before, she knew what it felt like. They talked about how he had made almost no progress in the 9 months since his rescue. They talked about how it was possible he would never make progress.
She knew he needed someone to take him in as he was, broken and hopeless and afraid. She felt all the same emotions in her grief and thought, “Maybe I can’t save myself, but I can save this little guy.” The rescue lady knew the lady understood that he would never be a normal dog, she knew that the lady could accept him for what he was and just concentrate on giving him a good home. If he made progress, then that was a bonus. At least he would be cared for and safe and have another dog to be friends with. And then the rescue lady could take in another dog, keep another life from being thrown away.
So the lady adopted little Christopher and took him home. And they both started to heal. That lady was me. Four year later, Christopher died, one month shy of five years since his rescue.
The rescue lady had been right, Christopher never was a normal dog. But he certainly made progress and the time he was free of the cage was full of happiness. He loved the backyard. In his earlier days, there might be some tree branches that fell down in a storm and he would race around the yard jumping merrily over them. In his later days, he especially enjoyed lying out in the noonday sun, basking in the warmth.
It took more than 2 years before he could walk on a leash without a full panic attack. It took more months before he started to enjoy the walks and still more months until he made the connection that he couldn’t go for a walk unless he could be caught first. In the end though, he loved his walks.
He made more progress in the last nine months of his life than any time before. He was finally starting to trust at least a little. For years when he was patted, he held his muscles so stiff with fear that he could not grasp how good the pats themselves would feel. Bit by bit, he relaxed and he relaxed a bit more if soft music was playing. Eventually he enjoyed just a bit of patting and especially seemed to like it if I rubbed his ears. Still the only time he was ever fully relaxed was in death. But he had made miles of progress and at least he finally learned that it felt good to be patted.
At first he slept in the closet, then under the bed and finally, in his last year, he slept on the bed. He was gradually getting closer to me, but he never quite managed to cuddle. He wasn’t food oriented and the fear of people kept him from coming up for treats. Eventually he got so he would eat some treats if you put them in front of him, but only rarely would he take something from a human being’s hand.
It was almost as if he had post-traumatic stress syndrome. You never knew when something would throw him back to a bad place and all the progress he had made would disappear, sometimes taking months to get back to the same place.
At times he wanted to greet me when I came home. And he even occasionally succeeded in doing so. More often, especially in the first years, he would take a step to greet me and then you could see the fear flare up in his eyes and he would circle away, then step forward to try again and then circle away. Sometimes he managed to push through the fear and come up and, just for millisecond, he would gently bump my hand with his nose. Occasionally he would even manage to wag his tail before being overcome with fear and racing away.
When a dog like that touches you with his nose or wags his tail, it is an honor you will never forget.
When Christopher first came to live with me, he couldn’t go past a human being to go out the door to the yard. I would have to open the door and leave the room and in a few minutes, he would get up his courage and go through the door.
To get him to come back in, I would have to go stand in the yard behind him and patiently wait until he decided that it was no safe to go inside.
It took more than a year before he could go in and out of the door like a normal dog. Well, at least if there was only one human being in the room. All bets were off, if there were two.
Once I came home from work and my new roommate told me that she had lost him in the yard. She had put him out when she came home and she knew he was in the yard because there was no place he could have gotten out. But she had not seen him for several hours. After all, Chihuahuas are small, they can find many places to hide. He finally came up when I put his dinner out on the porch. Because I had also left the outside door open and we all had left that room, he finally came in after eating.
Another time, he licked me and scared himself so badly that he hid for 6 hours. He never tried to lick me again even though the only bad things that happened were in his mind. Well, bad things in your mind can seem as real as real life.
Sometime early in his final year, I connected with a rescue specializing in puppy mill rescues and their trainer helped me out with Christopher. He made much more progress after she helped us. Puppy mill rescues have unique training needs that most dog trainers are not familiar with and she taught me more effective techniques for helping him. So he enjoyed the last nine months of his life more than I could have imagined a few years earlier.
I felt like we were on the brink of a major breakthrough, but time ran out on us. While we waited for the vet to give him that final shot, his last conscious gesture was to lay his head on my chest. He finally understood what love was. He finally trusted a person. And then he was gone.
The best thing I ever did in my life was adopt that terrified little dog. Concentrating on his needs helped me heal my own wounded heart and there is no feeling better than knowing you made a difference, even if it is for only one life. If Christopher’s story touches you, please remember the price of that puppy in the pet store isn’t paid in dollars, it’s paid in pain and fear and hopelessness. If you want a dog, please adopt one from a rescue or a shelter.
The thing that strikes me most about Christopher was his courage. He had been deeply harmed and soul-scarred at a level that few of us could handle. How many of us would give up if we had known nothing but torture for over half our lives? But Christopher kept trying even though he was deeply afraid.
Every moment of his life with me was an act of courage. It took courage for him to eat his dinner. It took courage for him to go out into the yard or come back into the house. It took courage to go on a walk. It took courage to wag his tail or let someone pat him. It took courage for him to come out of his hiding places and be seen. Fear was there every moment of his life. Even when he was clearly enjoying something, the fear was there, too. It was never far away or forgotten. But still he persisted.
He wanted so badly to learn how to love and to accept love. He kept trying and often failed, but he never gave up trying. Every day, it broke my heart to see how much he was hurting and still he tried. And every day I was grateful that he had found a place where he was finally safe and loved. And in the end, if only for a few moments, he was able to tell me that he was grateful too.
So let that be the lesson that Christopher teaches us. No matter how horrific your life seems, keep striving for the light and love and never give up on yourself.