It’d been a week since we’d moved her trailer over to the back property behind my house, and in that week she’d made almost zero progress with Neo.
He was out of his kennel, sure.
He wasn’t staying in her RV—that I made sure of when I gave her the ‘you can stay here but you have to be safe about this’ speech when she moved in. He was mainly in the backyard for now, refusing to go into his home we’d built him out of an old shed.
He refused to acknowledge her or me or anyone.
It was fairly heartbreaking to see Sage trying so hard and not getting anything out of it.
He wasn’t snarling, though, so I was counting that as a positive.
Anytime either one of us came near him, his ears pinned to the back of his head and he watched us as if we were about to harm him.
He ate. He drank. He laid out in the sun.
But he did not look like he was enjoying life like I’d once seen him do.
Seeing the defeated look on Sage’s face when she tried to lure him to her with his favorite treats, I headed for the back porch and whistled.
Both dog and woman looked up, but only the woman headed my way.
“Looking kind of sad,” I admitted as she came to within ten feet of me.
“I know that he’s doing better here,” she said as she came to a stop on my porch. “Can I have some of that?”
I handed her my cup of coffee.
She took it with a small smile before taking a healthy swallow.
“He looks better now that he’s not in the kennel twenty-four-seven,” I admitted. “But he still looks like we’re getting ready to beat him at any second.”
She took another swallow, not saying anything.
“He likes lying out in the sun, too,” I pointed out. “I noticed that he ate all of his food today.”
“He did,” she nodded. “Do you think he hates the muzzle?”
I studied the muzzle for a long time before admitting, “I think he actually looks rather comfortable in it.”
“I do, too,” she confirmed, still looking at the dog like she’d lost her best friend. And maybe she had.
I’d given her the dog for a reason.
She’d always looked so dang lonely every time I’d seen her.
I’d hated seeing the look on her face.
She’d come to every single day of my trial.
She’d written me every single day—even though by the guard’s admissions, I’d never seen a single one of them.
She’d looked so lost in that moment that I knew I’d do anything necessary to get the dog healed to put a smile back on her face.
Did they make dog therapists?
I picked up a ball off the picnic table and started to bounce it almost absentmindedly.
It was the dog’s, of course.
