Enter Izzy

Sadie was two and a half.  In dog years.  If she were an athlete in training, or a Weight Watchers member, one would have described her as having "plateaued".  She'd worked very hard.  I'd worked very hard.  We were tired.

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Special needs dog.  Behavioural issues.  Catch-phrases that don't hide the truth, they fail to capture it:  the dog is a lump of soft clay in your hands.  Leave it to harden, or shape it into something better.

Sadie's baser proclivities were supposedly confined to "resource guarding", a term I'd never heard before the shelter worker gave it as the reason for the red heart on the card affixed to her cage.  She came with instructions on how to deal with the guarding.  In the shelter lobby I rolled her a tennis ball and then took it from her, a little test.  She didn't mind.  Neither did I.  And so we began.

We worked on the guarding.  And the handling issues.  And the fear of strangers.  And the tension around other dogs.  It took weeks to add a new street to our walks.    Scaffolding, orange cones, construction, any oddity could doom a block.  "You can do it", hope, prayer, and entreaty all in one, was my encouragement to her.  She would try, if she could.  She learned to trust.  I learned to wait.

A year passed and Sadie changed.  She no longer guarded food from me.  I could wipe her tush or touch her paw pads.  We developed a system for greeting strangers that allowed her to get away without the dreaded pat on the head.  She played nicely at the dog run, mostly.  And she would walk anywhere I would take her.  She particularly loved escalators.

We moved from Manhattan to the beach, and in that autumn encountered no one on our long off-leash walks.  No dogs, no people, no need to worry, to watch, to obsess.  Freedom for both of us.  And then we got lazy.  Dogs don't retain their skills without practice; it's a good thing they don't ride bikes.

What better way to move Sadie forward again than the example of another dog?  A happy, confident dog; a mentor and playmate; a teacher who spoke her language.  Enter Izzy.

Only 8 months old, with a medical file like the rap sheet of a career criminal.  And he'd spent nearly his whole life in the slammer.  Perfect.  We'll take him.

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And so we began.  Again.