The pit’s silver eyes were fixed on me.
“What’s his story?”
“This is Brutus. A rescue.”
“A rescue from what?”
Her gaze slid to mine. “I’ll give you one guess.”
“He was a fight dog.”
She kneeled in front of the cage. While she’d coddled her other mutts like babies, she approached this one with caution. Slowly, with ease as one might approach a ticking bomb. Felt familiar.
Sunny flattened her hand against the cage and began speaking in a low, soft voice.
The dog’s eyes never left mine.
“I got him six weeks ago,” she said softly. “He’d been raised by a reputable breeder, who’d taken care of him. The bastard who bought him thought he could turn an adult dog into a fight dog overnight. Put him through absolute—” Her voice cracked. “He’s been through a lot. Literal torture. And now, because of that, he’s a bit of a loose cannon.” She stuck a finger inside the cage, then another, slowly rubbing the dog’s nose. “He has a neck and shoulder injury that didn’t heal correctly.” She glanced over her shoulder, angersparking in her eyes. “An injury he didn’t have when the breeder sold him.”
“Is that why he’s not moving around much?”
“Yes. He’s mobile and can do everything any other dog can do, but I think he’s in constant pain and he tires out easily.”
Ticking time bomb, loose cannon, chronic pain… a cage. Hell, it was like looking in the mirror.
She continued, “He’ll have to have surgery but not until I can break him. It’s slow moving with this guy. He moves at his own pace. Walks to the beat of his own drum, you could say.” She exhaled deeply. “But he’s going to be okay. We’ll get him taken care of. I’m not giving up on him. He’s going to be just fine. Aren’t you Brutus? You’re my good baby. That’s it, good boy.”
What would it be like to have someone have that much faith in you, I wondered. To have that kind of commitment.
“Why do you keep him caged?”
“He’s penned because he’s not fully trained yet. This is Brutus’s daytime home until I can break him. It’s for the safety of my other dogs—not mine. He wouldn’t hurt me, I’m sure of it.”
It made me nervous, how much blind faith she had in this broken dog.
“Hell of a gamble,” I said.
“Hell of an instinct. You of all people should understand the power of human instinct.”
I did and it was telling me there was more to this story. Kind of like all her stories.
“How exactly did you get Brutus from his abusive owner?”
“I … loaded him up in my truck.”
“With orwithoutthe owner’s help?”
She shot me another look, that strong defiance from the night before. “Without. I found out Brutus had been sold when I’d gone to the breeders a few months ago. In casual conversation the breeder shared her concern over his new owner. Guess she had an instinct about the guy too, but money talks. She felt guilty, I could tell. Anyway, I couldn’t get it off my mind. Literally, for a week I couldn’t sleep, thinking about it. So I did something about it. I tracked the bastard down, went to his house and saw the conditions Brutus was living in. The bastard had put Brutus in a cage not much bigger than his body. They’d put blades in the top and sides. If he moved, he’d get sliced. It was a tactic to break him mentally.”
It sounded a lot like what I’d been through in SERE training.
“He was muzzled, starved, dehydrated and in so much pain from his shoulder injury, which I can only assume is blunt force trauma…” She stopped talking, her face turning to granite. “When I saw him… Jagg, I’ll never forget it,” her voice was as soft as a whisper. “He spotted me in the woods where I had snuck up. We communicated nonverbally. Me and the dog. I have no doubt in mysoulthat Brutus knew I was there to save him. … I swear he cried when I released him.” She sniffed, then squared her shoulders, swallowing back the emotions. I got the feeling she did that a lot. I took a step back to give her a moment, and if I’m being honest, to give myself one, too. The story was real. The emotions were real. Her sadness was palpable and dammit if I didn’t feel something, too. I’d seen my fair share of animal abuse but imagining it happening to this pit, staring into my damn soul like my long lost brother, churned my stomach.
“And then what happened? You just walked up to thefront door and said, ‘hey, let me take that dog off your hands.’ And the drug addict said, ‘okay, here you go’?”
“More or less.”
“Less, as in, you stole Brutus from the guy in the middle of the night.”
