Faith, who’s a Rottweiler/Lab mix, came into our lives in early October of 2007.
Faith’s Background
We believe her original “caretakers” severely abused Faith during her first two months as a pup. We think maybe they wanted to make her into a fighting dog. (Yes, people still fight dogs here in Tennessee, even though it’s illegal.) But Faith doesn’t have a mean temperament, and probably nothing those people did to her could turn her mean. So they dumped her in the woods near our house.
We found out later that Faith spent a month in the woods. Apparently she hung out near a new housing development that’s being built up the hill behind our house by the same contractor, Galen Champion, who built our house. Galen told us that while his crew was working on the first house in the development, Faith would come out of the woods and approach him and his workers. It was obvious she wanted to be with them. And some of Galen’s men wanted to take her home with them. But whenever anyone started toward Faith, she’d back away and not let him near her.
Galen hoped Faith would wander toward our house and we’d adopt her.
That’s how things worked out, as I describe in my post about how Faith came into our lives as a three-month-old pup.
We weren’t particularly interested in becoming guardians of a dog at the time. But the alternative was having the animal control officer take Faith to the municipal pound, which puts down animals if they haven’t been found or adopted after three days. We considered Faith an innocent victim who didn’t deserve that fate. So we adopted her.
We also named her Faith, because she had the faith to come to our house.
Faith, the Fearful Dog
When she came to us, Faith was skittish. It took a couple of weeks before she would take food from Lisa’s hand. We thought Faith would get over her skittishness once she came to trust us. She did come to trust us — but, as it turned out, skittishness wasn’t the problem.
Faith was a fearful dog who is afraid of every new experience or every new thing she encounters. Lisa and I think that the abuse she received and her lack of socialization as a puppy helped make her into a fearful dog.
At first, Faith lived on our front porch. And it took us four months to coax her from the porch into the garage and then into the basement and finally into the living room. Once in the living room, Faith refused to leave for over a year.
Fortunately, we’d fenced off the backyard for her and the door that leads to it is in the living room. Last May I finally succeeded in coaxing Faith into the dining room by using Merrick canned dog food. Now she goes into part of the dining room, the bedroom, part of the basement, and the entire second floor.
Faith has made great progress. Maybe the 50mg of Prozac she takes each day helps. But we still can’t get a leash on her or entice her through the front door onto the front porch. And we can’t persuade her that the gas fire in our living room fireplace isn’t something to be afraid of. (The sound of the starter and the flicker of the flames make her tremble and grind her teeth. So we don’t have fires anymore.)
The two times we’ve taken Faith to the vet’s, we’ve had to heavily drug her, put her in a large kennel, and carry the kennel to the van. At Taylor Animal Hospital, we lug the kennel through the back door and our wonderful vet, Bart Bain, sedates her so they can give her her annual exam, give her a bath, trim her nails, and so on. (Faith won’t let us — or anyone else — near her if we have a cloth or a nail trimmer or anything else in our hands or concealed behind our backs.)
Some people think we’re crazy to be guardians for a dog like Faith. Maybe they’re right. But we love her and have made a difference in her life. With us, Faith is happy and carefree — in an “up tight” sort of way.
