One Mans Trash is another Mans Treasure

Meet Brutus, AKA Tobias as a registered name.  For all intents and purposes he appears to be a handsome, healthy, purebred Doberman.   But if you had seen his before picture, you might ask yourself what his former owners were thinking. 

 I met Brutus when he occasionally found his way to my front porch in his running escape from his family.  He would pause just long enough for a few pets or until he heard the familiar truck and yelling of his name, then he would scramble off to run again.  Other days I could hear him barking and see him one block over, tied with a six foot metal chain to the front porch.   100 degrees or minus 20 degrees, it mattered not, this dog was tied outside with no food, water, or shelter for many hours at a time.  The people who owned him made methamphetamine at their home and thought a protection dog was needed.  The summer he kept getting loose he whittled down to a mere 40 pounds, covered in fleas and collar falling off his neck.

A woman came by the house and asked if it was my Doberman who was laying in the street over there on one extremely hot day.  I hurried over in my car to find the poor thing laying on the hot pavement, middle of the road, under the shade of a tree.   He was dehydrated and close to death.  I picked him up and brought him home.  Bathed, flea treated, watered, fed, and set him up in a cool pen with a fan blowing on him, praying he would live.   Two days went by before the owners were searching the alleys and saw I had him.   Broke my heart to give this "property", as the police told me, back to these careless people.  Biding my time for what seemed an eternity and working with the local pound I finally got a call saying the drug dealers wanted to sell the dog.   Eagerly I implored a neighbor to pay for and retrieve Brutus on my behalf.   The price was not too steep to save this lovely animal.

Once set free into a home with loving people and renamed Brutus so he could forget that old way of living, he blossomed into a fine, handsome gentleman.  A few minor bad habits were broken and after that Brutus enjoyed many car rides, all the food he wanted, getting to be a lap dog, and sleeping under the covers in the bed with his head on the pillows.   Loyal and gentle, he was, to all  he met.   He shared his home with cats and dogs while enjoying the luxury of a doggie door.  Brutus lived to a ripe old age, and as it happens with some large breed dogs, his hips gave out and his suffering had to be ended.

If there is humor in this tail it would be in the times when the old owners saw who had purchased their dog.   I would laugh when they stood on their porch and saw Brutus standing at the back fenced in yard looking their way, and they would call to him.........   "Toby !   Toby  !"       To say he was smart is an understatement, for I swear he would look around the yard as if to say , "Who are they calling for"  then would turn on his paw and head into the house without so much as a backwards glance at the people who had raised him for the first years of his life.   I see a lesson in this story as well.  It shows that although dog may be mans best friend, he certainly knows who is cruel to him and holds them accountable for their actions.


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