Pepie's dead

Pepie's dead.
I first met her in March of 2005 while walking my dog. I saw this sort of "rabbit hutch" off the ground and didn't quite understand what I was looking at so I went up to take a closer look and there was a dog inside. Pepie. What the hell? I went up to talk to her and she was friendly and quit barking after a few seconds. She looked so sad. So lonely.

The rest is a series of frustrations, tears, and setbacks because try as I might, I couldn't convince the owner or the authorities to get her out of there. It was legal, they said. He was a nice man, they said. They, the good 'ole boys.

Much has been written about her on the internet. Many knew of her plight but were as useless as I in making a difference in her pitiful life. We all tried, we all loved her and now we all feel sad and angry and confused.
Did she ever know love, kindness, comfort? Did she know so many cared? Did it even matter? She will haunt me the rest of my life because she had no life, she just waited to die.

JR

We picked up JR yesterday from Panama. I first saw him a couple months ago on Freecycle looking for a home, a forlorn creature alone and looking resigned to his fate.

He lived chained to a doghouse for a year and a half, all of his life. I haven't been able to get him off my mind so when I found out he was still chained to that doghouse, I had to go get him. How can anyone take such a loyal, social creature and isolate him this way?

We picked a blustery, 20 degree day after it had snowed a foot to drive out into the boonies for this boy. I'd never been to Panama, a small, out in the sticks kind of place. Luck was with us and between our google map and GPS, we didn't get lost or run into any icy roads.

This poor dog growled and barked at me for about 10 seconds until he decided I was a friend and started jumping up and licking me. He was so happy for attention. Knowing that he wouldn't bite me was all I needed to see and off we went. He was scared to get into the car and took quite a bit of convincing, pushing, and pulling but we got him in. He'd never been in a car, or a house or even to the vet in all this time.

JR's at a nearby boarding kennel for now until we can get him vetted and ready for adoption. He has an inside kennel and a huge fenced in yard to run in. He seems to get along with other dogs so he will have plenty of doggy company to play with. JR is so happy to have attention now, he seems to smile at me in thanks. How can these creatures be so forgiving and so grateful after all they've been through? I can't imagine.