Ruby's Story

This is Ruby. She's the third of the three dogs who complicate our lives with love (and filth). For the most part, she's a marvelous dog; her devotion to me, it seems, could serve as the very model of Christian fidelity.

Ruby came to live with us and our other two dogs about a year ago. My wife and I had gone to the local PetSmart one Saturday in search of some treat or other and stumbled into one of those afternoons when a local shelter had filled the aisles with the crates of adoptable dogs.

We had to look.

On first seeing my wife, that beagle--known to the shelter volunteers as "Teacup Beagle"--walked over to my wife and nuzzled against her lap. Teacup Beagle looked up, with tear-stained eyes, at my wife and leaned into her legs as if those legs were a stand of trees behind which the beagle could hide. Then, Teacup Beagle's ears were tattered with wear. Her ribs protruded through her pelt around her thin belly. When she panted, her tongue dangled over worn-down teeth. And she was only two years old.

We adopted her on the spot and took her home that afternoon.

I'd like to end the story here, with us carrying the beagle home, rechristening her "Ruby", and introducing her to our other two dogs who immediately adored her. I'd like to tell you that the newly named Ruby integrated seamlessly into our lives, slept beside us, walked with us, and jaunted about the minor expanse of our slanted backyard with the other household canines.

But, that's not what happened. Over the next few weeks, we discovered more and more about that weather-worn dog we'd brought into our midst. She turned over the kitchen trashcan. Several times. She was food possessive, snarling as if possessed by a tiny red eyed demon. She never, it seemed, listened. And worse, she had no fear. Regardless of how much my booming voice might have rattled the ceiling fans, Ruby was unperturbed.

You see, she'd been a stray. She'd survived on streets somewhere in Northern Kentucky by rooting through the refuse people had left behind. No voice could frighten her away from a few chicken bones or a scrap of cheeseburger. No length of time in her crate could keep her from snapping at dog treats given to the other dogs or clambering up toward the kitchen table as my wife and I attempted to eat dinner. She was surviving--just as she had for who knows how long.

It took months, including an awful afternoon when she scaled a nearby fence and vanished like a canine Houdini before she felt safe, before she began to look at my wife and me not as potential marks, but as providers, as people who could keep her fed and safe, as a sort of family. She, slowly, became part of the family, part of the pack and began hunting the small moles and birds that wandered into our yard. She slowly began to prance about the backyard, playing with me and the other two dogs.

Her belly slowly thickened with regular meals and the edges of ears grew smooth as any other beagle's. She still has those teeth though, and every once in a while, we see flashes of her past and can imagine her sniffing down alleys, scouring one dumpster or another. But for the most part, she's just Ruby. We try to take care of her. We adore her.

Just last week, we took her to the vet for her annual checkup and shots. No more fleas. No more issues with a long-standing eye infection--just the inevitable cost of keeping her healthy: shots for bordatella, rabies, parvo, etc.

And soon, we may not be able to afford even those small measures. Soon, there may be no sloped yard in which Ruby can gallivant with the other dogs as the May sun glows down on the opening peonies and thickening clover. Soon, there may be no fences from which to escape. And that, I suppose, is one of the many hidden costs of corporate downsizing, and one of the primary reasons I desperately want my wife and I to find employment enough to keep this rickety house.