Magdalena watched Jason bend down and jostle with Lia and laugh at her licks. She was encouraged by his enthusiasm. She had seen the power of dogs to transform and since the Lavernes agreed to call Magdalena for the training, she let the puppy go.
But they didn’t call.
Now Lia, whom they renamed Brunhilde, is back because the Lavernes have said they found her unmanageable. When she left Celestial Kennels at eight weeks, she was a twelve-pound, gregarious, curious puppy, with outsize, floppy paws and velvety ears. She has been returned as a gaunt, skittish, fearful animal with nicked ears who hides in corners and cowers and growls when approached. Magdalena suspects she has been abused and she is heartsick and enraged.
Yes, she has been abused. Magdalena can only imagine this scenario. Because Brunhilde was rambunctious and chewed the legs of tables and chairs, the corners of rugs and pillows, because she jumped on their white furniture, because she still peed everywhere, the Lavernes kept her in her wire crate except to take her out into their fenced backyard a couple of times a day. Whenever Jason went by he would run a large metal spoon back and forth across the side of the cage and poke it at the puppy. It was the same spoon they banged on the crate when Brunhilde yelped and whined from the confinement. When Jason was out in the yard with her, he chased her, raising his arms and yelling to get her to run. Or he’d hold out a toy and snatch it away if she went for it.
He was supposed to walk her morning and night, but he left it too late in the mornings and in the afternoons when he took her out, she pulled on the leash and he couldn’t control her. He would take a rolled-up newspaper and smack her nose over and over to get her to obey, but that only made her cower. Then she didn’t want to walk and he would have to drag her so he found a stick and beat her to make her follow, but she still refused. He gave up.
When the weather warmed up they had a doghouse built and simply kept her chained beside it, taking food out to her in the evenings although that was also Jason’s job and he often forgot. He neglected to fill her water bowl as well.
Jason constantly tormented Brunhilde with a large stick which she grabbed and pulled. He yanked back. They played tug, the dog growling and Jason mimicking her. When she wouldn’t give it up, he kicked her. Then he took the stick and shoved it at her again. After a while, Brunhilde wouldn’t take the stick and he hit her with it. Soon she was curling her lip when he approached her. So he whacked her. She retreated into the doghouse and snarled and leapt at him if he got too close. Twice she had bitten his hand.
He thought this was great. Just what he wanted. A fierce dog. He enticed the bullies to come and see her and they challenged Jason to let her fight their dog.
Clobber, a Lab/Staffordshire Terrier cross was an intact, squat black dog with a broad, square face, heavy jowls, and muscular chest. The two dogs faced each other, tails erect, hackles raised. Clobber was a scrapper. In a few seconds he was on Brunhilde. She screamed and tried to get away, but was restricted by the chain and Clobber grabbed her by the neck and pinned her on her back, shaking her. Her cries terrified Jason who had never seen a dog fight and he yelled, “Get her off! Get her off!”
The boys hesitated, then grabbed a resistant Clobber by his choke collar and yanked him away. He strained, gagging, trying to get back at the puppy. She lay cowering on the ground.
“Here’s what losers get,” they said and the three of them jabbed Brunhilde with their cigarettes. Then they left, laughing, shouting back, “Let’s do this again and watch him kill her!”
When Magdalena was called to retrieve Brunhilde, she had to muzzle her.
Now Magdalena sees the raw, red cigarette wounds. There are punctures in the flesh and a tear that bears the marks of stitches. But what causes Magdalena the most pain is Brunhilde’s eyes. Where they once were animated, trusting, and responsive, they now reflect terror, mistrust, and ferocity.
Magdalena feels as she did when her mother was dying of ovarian cancer: helpless, distraught, and so influenced by her suffering, she incorporates it into herself. As with her mother, Magdalena wants to lie alongside the dog, to stroke the bony body, scratch the damaged ears and whisper reassurances. “I promise no one will ever do anything like this to you again.” But Brunhilde is a shaking mass of frightened rage. She is dangerous.
Magdalena has been working for several weeks to gain the dog’s confidence and she is beginning to respond, but it is going to be a great challenge to turn her into a safe pet. Magdalena is very careful about matching puppies and owners and she is utterly disheartened and ashamed that she made such a mistake with this one. Not every match is as successful as the Warnes and Misty.
Misty was one of her best Danes. She had character and beauty. She was a “solid,” had no patches of white on her toes or her chest, as Brunhilde does. Of all the eleven puppies in the litter, Misty was the most outgoing and responsive when the family got down on the floor with them. She was all over Lizbett, but showed an almost instinctive gentleness with little Darcy, who was a teetering one-year-old at the time.
When Misty was six months old, Magdalena spent a week with the Warnes in their home to train her. Magdalena liked them and she liked their neighbourhood. It was a treed street of grand Victorians, but some of them were rooming houses and flats and since it was near the university, fraternities. The Warne family was a little like the street: privileged, but unpretentious, a bit haphazard even. The mother was loud, garrulous, the father taciturn, but to Magdalena, they had an innate, unerring, and affectionate sense of one another. They seemed mutually “plugged in.” As a pair, they were clever, stimulating, she playing off his reticence, he quick with understatement. They hugged and kissed frequently and called each other “lambie” and “lovey.” At least she did.
It was a family brimming with love and verve, with an unaffected sense of its charm, its comfort, a family where the children shrieked and jumped into their father’s arms when he got home. He lifted them in the air. They danced with him on his insteps. He made them laugh with silly antics and nonsensical jokes. And they sat snuggled into him when he read to them every night.
The mother roughhoused on the floor with them. She constructed huge tents with sheets and blankets and played inside with them. She got behind the sofa and did puppet shows. She was always singing.
Lizbett, the eldest girl, was high-spirited and demanding, but respectful and responsible, even at age five, taking charge of Misty’s food and water. The little one, Darcy, was placid, sweet-natured. Magdalena never heard her cry.
Even though Misty was imposing, with a noble forehead and a strong, square muzzle, she was obedient to the point where even Lizbett, with supervision, could handle her on the leash.
However, the Warnes broke a lot of Magdalena’s rules. Misty slept on the couple’s bed and curled up, as Great Danes do, on any couch or big armchair. She sat on laps. Magdalena decided she couldn’t discipline away that much love. It seemed like a match of a perfect dog to a perfect family. Then Misty died from cancer at only two.
And Lizbett has been missing for two days.
Magdalena believes there is no such thing as perfection and she hates the disillusionment when occasionally she does.
Certainly her own family couldn’t approach what she thought the Warnes had. It was that exuberant love that she had missed, a love without boundaries or expectations, where imperfections were accepted, overlooked, even. Magdalena’s father, Nicholas Ward, a large animal veterinarian, had loved his patients, but he was a stern, exacting man whose only channel for affection was attending to them. When he was alive, the farm was a working one with horses, a small herd of Charolais, a dozen sheep, and Horatio, a donkey, all of whom he talked to unreservedly. But to Magdalena he was unreachable and unreaching.
Magdalena longed to be as beloved by her father as his animals. She has found that devotion with her empathetic, responsive Danes.
It made sense that she became a veterinarian. She loved the farm and her father had an established practice she could join. But when he died in 1980 when he was seventy-four, after a cow kicked