Love Against All Odds

By Dannye Chase

Georgia was a literal rescue. Not a pudgy puppy raised in a foster home, not a stray dog fed by caring neighbors. Georgia was alone.

My brother was the one to find her on a wintry Minnesota afternoon. The fields were full of broken corn, left to hold the soil together, now covered in snow. There was nothing for a dog to eat, no shelter but the few evergreens at the edge of the road.

My brother, packing the car after a visit to a friend’s farm, was astonished to find a small black dog barreling across the fields toward him. Not a scared, angry dog. A hungry, sick, injured, desperate dog, but somehow still friendly. This was what would define Georgia her whole life: she had every reason to despise and fear humans. But instead, she loved.

Georgia was a black-and-white pointer mix with a sharp nose, spindly legs, and fur far too thin for Midwest winters. She let my brother pick her up and wrap her in his coat. When he brought her into the car, she refused to leave his lap.

Later, we pieced together a story of abuse and cruelty: Georgia, the only survivor of an unwanted litter of puppies, had been cast out into the cold. She had gone to neighbors for food and shelter and instead found a BB gun. She had three pellets in her head and one in her chest. She would carry them with her all her life.

It must be a heady thing to realize you are the first person to show kindness to a living creature. Ultimately, my brother couldn’t bear to take Georgia to a shelter. Instead, he gave her a collar, a name, and a home.

Georgia healed from what the first year of her life had done to her, but you could still see it on her, what she had survived. I once watched her nearly catch an adult bird standing on the ground, completely unaware of the advancing dog. When you let her out in the backyard to pee during a rainstorm, she somehow managed to come back in completely dry. And unlike other dogs, Georgia would let you pile blankets and pillows over her body until just her dark eyes and muzzle peeked out from her warm shelter.

Georgia lived with my brother and his girlfriend for several years, but they were out of the house most of the time, at school and work. I was a stay-at-home mom with three little kids who adored Georgia. So, she came to live with us.

Georgia was the pillow my children rested their heads on. She was the attentive audience for children’s books, the “black streak” that ran around the backyard while chubby child hands drew her in chalk. Georgia was the dog who would sit but never stay because stay meant the distressing thought of, I’m alone over here, while the people are over there! 

And then my children went to school. It was just Georgia and me at home every day. There was no one to run with in the backyard, no one to practice reading with. She visited her kids at school as a special guest, tangling her leash around child-sized chair legs in her eagerness to greet all the students at once. But those visits were few and far between. When I started volunteering at a hospital, Georgia got very, very lonely.

So, Georgia got a job, too. It wasn’t a job she should have had, a dog with four BB pellets in her, who’d known nothing but cruelty for the first year of her life. But it was perfect for her anyway: Georgia became a nursing home dog.

I took her to our local nursing home every Wednesday morning; a dog who craved attention visiting people who craved the touch of a pet. Some people thought she was their childhood dog. Some just stroked her and cried. Some told her wild, wandering stories that only made sense to them, but Georgia listened attentively. She didn’t mind when they bumped into her with a wheelchair and wasn’t afraid of a whole activity room full of people. She never shied away from the dying.

The nursing home gave Georgia her name tag, which she wore with pride for many years. She finally retired only when stiffness came to her legs and confusion to her mind.

Georgia spent her last spring on the couch. In a way, she resembled one of her beloved nursing home residents. We had to lift her onto the furniture, carry her to the backyard, and clean the couch when she lost control of her bowels. Those last months, we tried everything to get her to eat: soft food, watery food, long-coveted “people food,” treats. But for the first time in her life, the formerly starved dog wasn’t hungry.

We weren’t sure she would live long enough for my brother to say goodbye. He had moved to Oregon and returned to Iowa once a year to participate in a week-long summer bike ride. 

But by some miracle, Georgia waited for him all that spring and early summer. Georgia was tired and quiet then, even with family. But when my brother sat down by the couch, her tail wagged, her eyes opened wide, and she lurched into his arms exactly as she had on that bitterly cold winter afternoon so many years ago.

Georgia lived fifteen years, fourteen of them with a home. We never discovered how she had managed to be so loving. What, in those bitter, frozen fields, had taught her to trust a man she’d never met and every stranger she met after that? How had she come to forgive?

Perhaps Georgia was just that kind of soul—the kind made of love and strength. Humans had treated her like trash, but Georgia refused to be thrown away. We were all blessed to have loved her back.