Member-only story
To the Truck Driver who Saved My Dog
Thank you.
Her name is Venus now. I was told you called her Lady. I read in the adoption paperwork that she is seven years old, and that you got her when she was a puppy at a truck stop. As a short-haul trucker you work long days, logging hundreds of thousands of miles on I-75 from Detroit to Dayton and on I-70 from Pittsburgh to Indianapolis. Ohio is in the middle, where the two of you once lived.
California, Los Angeles more specifically, a junkyard exactly was Pippin’s place of origin. For nine years, he was my dog. I had named him Leroy until my family objected. Renamed Pippin, this dog matched his Tolkien namesake — full of good intentions with a skillset equally aspirational. Pippin’s ignorance of all things home and family was cute. When routine and repetition did not clue him in, we invented commands like “cha-cha.” Cha-cha means, “move out of the way; I’m trying to walk down this very narrow hallway carrying this huge basket of laundry.” We should have known that Pippin’s propensity, to stick closer to me than a shadow, was a face of anxiety. We should have known that a rescued junkyard dog could have PTSD.
We learned that one Sunday afternoon when Pippin launched himself at my teen son, who 30 minutes earlier had been sitting on the floor with Pippin stroking his side before going upstairs to do homework. What changed…
