Raising Daisy
When I was young, I somehow pictured bringing home a dog as
a happy puppy in a cardboard box. Daisy wouldn’t fit nor sit in a cardboard
box. She’s almost four, not used to a living environment outside a cage, and certainly
not used to love and affection from humans – those intimidating creatures that
tower over her.
A beagle rescued from a laboratory, the little miss came
with an incomprehensible past. She’d spent a few months living with her batch
mates released from the lab and a few weeks with a foster family during her
rehabilitation – neither of which brought her distinctly closer to being happy
and carefree, as most of us prefer our dogs to be.
The day we brought her home. If our respective mornings
could be played parallel: she woke up with no notion that she was going to be
uprooted from yet another space she was getting accustomed to, and I woke up
bright-eyed and full of wonderment about the being who was going to fill a
piece of my heart.
With all of that in my mind, the magnitude of her fear was
one I least expected. As she watched, petrified, her world move away from her
as we drove away from her foster family, I learnt what heartbreak looks like in
gentle, brown eyes. Looking at her quivering form, I had to swallow a lump in
my throat.
Amid a turmoil of emotions, I set about the task of settling
her in. The next few days were filled with constant concern over Daisy’s
incessant shivering and cowering. Not to mention her refusal to eat and scurrying
into a corner at the faintest noise. I tried to give her her space – but that
only meant she would sit in the farthest corner of the house, sometimes for
even an hour with ants scurrying over her.
She held her pee and poop, only to relieve herself somewhere
in the house with a worried I-can’t-help-it expression. Except for the
occasional pitter-patter of her paws, or
rather their swift scurrying, we never heard a peep out of her. I would never admit it to anyone, but I often wondered if I'd bitten off more than I could chew with Daisy. Could I ever really help her blossom into a happy girl?
And then there’s now. A month later. Our little girl has
been sharp as a tack, picking up what she can and cannot do in the house,
telling us what she can and cannot do, but above all, a bundle of energy
launching herself right into our hearts. Welcome home, Daisy girl!
