You Can Call Her Sally

Our Neighborhood Ambassador

I put my dog Daisy down in November of 2015. It was the humane thing to do because a tumor was making it nigh impossible for her to walk. I buried her underneath one of the corkscrew willows out front that she loved to lay under to watch over her part of the neighborhood.

Daisy Duke was the third furry companion of my adult life. The only dog I had raised from a puppy. Gretchen, Winnie and Daisy. Their common thread was they were all females and those were their “given” names. (When the two tow-headed cherubs handed me the wiggling, eight-week old puppy up on the Methow River, one of them said, “We call her Daisy. But you can call her anything you want!” I never gave it a second’s thought.)

I mourned and missed Daisy just under a year and somewhere during my mourning I ran across a meme that spoke to me and pulled every heartstring imaginable:

I wrote a while back about crying over Budweiser commercials. You know, the holiday-themed ones with the Dalmatian and the horses? And all their variations. Well, I can’t read this sentimental meme without getting choked up either.

So, in August of 2016, prior to back-to-back weeklong river trips on the Deschutes, I attended a Humane Society fair in Kent, Washington. Humane Societies from all over the state had pop-up tent booths with dogs that had been featured on their websites.

I made my way to the Wenatchee Humane Society pop up shelter in search of a specific dog I had seen online. She was gone. The ladies in charge of the booth told me someone just rescued her a half hour earlier. I started my reconnoiter of the remaining available dogs. There were two.

Both pit bull mixes. Both about the same size as Daisy had been - too big for a lap, small enough to not dominate any space they occupied. One appeared to be filled with exuberance and was ecstatic at my presence, the other lay in sphinx like repose indifferent almost to the point of being morose. One was jet black. The other was the spitting image of Daisy - auburn coat, white bib and white socks.

I went to ask the ladies about them.

The black, Tigger-like one was Brandy, the Daisy lookalike was Sally. Brandy had been at the shelter for over a year, while Sally had only just arrived from a Texas kill shelter where she had been slated to be euthanized at the end of July. They told me, despite Brandy’s cheerful disposition and fun-loving attitude, black dogs often take a long time to re-home. As for Sally, they said a group of ladies in Texas, known for their last-minute rescues from kill shelters, scooped her up and shipped her to Washington.

I was headed to the river for two weeks. With kids. In a very small bus. I had no business looking at rescue dogs at that moment. I asked if I could put a deposit down and pick my choice up at the Wenatchee shelter when I returned home but that wasn’t an option.

I left empty-handed.

Once back from the river and home in Leavenworth, I drove to the Wenatchee shelter intent to rescue Brandy because I felt she was in the most need of being rescued. Incredibly, and thankfully, she had found her ‘forever’ home, but Sally remained. In fact, Sally was ‘rescued’ for 48 hours and then returned.

I admit I loved she was Daisy’s body double and she had Texas roots. I was skeptical however because of her insouciance at the Kent fair. The workers at the shelter informed me she loved walks and was beloved by all the other dogs at the shelter.

She did love to be walked, but her behavior toward me was the same indifference I had observed at Kent. I decided to adopt her anyway.

Sally’s my first rescue dog. Raising Daisy from eight weeks old, through her puppy years, was a challenge. The challenge with Sally was different.

She appeared “normal” at first glance but we soon learned she had a very low tolerance of people getting in the airspace near her snout. Her defensive response was to snap at the person. Friends had a difficult time adjusting to a dog that looked just like Daisy, except, unlike Daisy (who could be aloof and never sought affection), Sally wanted your attention and love, but on her own terms. And those terms could include a response that would make you fear for your well-being.

It certainly made those who had been “snapped” at wary.

I called it her “Tourette’s” reaction. She’d snap and jump away and then moments later sidle back up to you, sweet as can be, expecting you to pet her. As if nothing had happened. It was tough to trust her. Neither I, or my partner, Molly, fully trusted her for the first year.

And then. . . she turned a corner.

She learned to trust us. And, I am supposing, because she learned to trust us, she learned to trust everyone else. Since that time, she has not encountered anyone threatening her, or kicking her, or yelling at her which I can only assume was what she’d come to expect from humans.

Now, I call her the ambassador of our neighborhood. I could never call Daisy an ambassador, because that wasn’t her style. Sally, on the other hand, greets all the neighbors on our walks. People, even kids, rub noses with her and I don’t cringe, or have to yell out as I once did when I let her off leash at the Sleeping Lady Resort and she went wriggling up to a couple a hundred yards away, and as they bent to greet her,

“Her name is Sally!

She’s friendly!

Don’t TOUCH her!”

During Sally’s first week home with me, Molly came over to meet her. We were on the deck, barbecuing chicken, enjoying the last of the sunlight, trying to teach our 3, or possibly 5, year old rescue to “sit”. It was hopeless. Sally just looked at us nonplussed and didn’t seem in the least bit grateful when we’d give her a bit of the chicken anyway. After several spectacular failures, in a fit of pique and exasperation, I hurled the piece of chicken into the yard and stormed into the house exclaiming, “No one’s ever loved this dog!”

Or something to that effect.

That’s no longer true.

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Faithful reader, Pauline Kao, shared this with me the other day, and in light of yesterday’s rant I thought I’d share it:

What do you call a gathering of covidiots? Covfefe.

Also, this parody of Lola shared by another faithful reader, Steve Ell, is clever. Enjoy!