4:26pm
Introducing Tinkerbell...
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Today we brought home a terrified, 13 lb. white mini schnauzer. She spent her first six years in a puppy mill in Missouri, where she was one of roughly 20 dogs kept in an outdoor pen, 24/7, filthy and matted and stinking, in the rain and snow and ice and summer heat. There were many other dogs there, too, in other nearby pens.
The rescuers took her, along with 5 other schnauzers, and she's spent the past 3 weeks with them, learning how to be an indoor pet and not a breeding machine. When one rescuer developed serious health problems, I offered to foster one of their dogs. They chose Tinkerbell to come here.
The first thing I did was take her into the backyard to relieve herself. She was too scared to move, too scared to pee. When I introduced Phoebe, she peed all over herself. Then I let Atlas come out and say hi. She was overwhelmed by these overgrown Schnauzers and screamed at them when they got too close. She was too scared to move more than a couple of feet hesitantly.
I brought her indoors and she was still petrified and shaking, unwilling to move for fear of being attacked. She crouched down where I had put her, until I picked her up and put her on her snuggly bed on the couch. She looked out of her snuggly bed and I could see she was resting up for whatever horrible things would happen next.
Surprisingly, as terrified as she was, she tolerated my husband, myself, and my two little boys moving up close to her (one at a time) and petting her gently. She didn't growl, she just waited patiently for whatever horrible thing was going to happen. It was pretty clear how she survived these past 6 years. It's going to be a difficult adjustment...
