A lot going on

It’s been a wild time around here that last couple weeks.. We had a hurricane knocking on our door, a new long over due roof topping off our house, and Dani riding a wild roller coaster of anxiety and redemption.

Several days before Hurricane Sally crashed into the Gulf Coast – about 50 miles west of us – Dani had stopped going outside by herself, a milestone we thought she had already met. Oddly enough, the day after the storm passed, she was back to regular. Just trotted outside with Asta (our other Misfit rescue dog) like nothing had changed.

My Mister posited that perhaps Dani is an empath. That she can sense when terrible weather is about to descend and was afraid to go outside. I’ll go with that. It would be handy to have a pet who can predict hurricanes, thunderstorms, tornadoes and such.

Since the bad weather passed, Dani continues to make slow progress. She is still quite taken with Mister, will sleep at my feet at night while shying away from me during the day, and even shows signs of a playfulness that’s buried deep in her little broken puppy heart.

While the construction crew was tramping across our roof, Dani was not having it. I took all the pets back to our bedroom, the farthest room in the house, hoping to help keep them calm. Dani got up beside me and tried to burrow under the pillows. A throwback to when my children were young, I built a cushion fort for Dani. Having somewhere dark and cozy did help her be less tremulous.

For my birthday, this weekend, Mister, our kids and I went on a picnic. We took both Asta and Dani, an experiment in trust. Dani panics whenever we’ve tried to put a leash on her. We have a harness for her, thinking that would be less daunting that a traditional collar. I wouldn’t call the outing a failure, even though Dani managed to pull away from us a couple of times. She was finally able to relax when Mister or I held her in our laps, and she was able to ride in the car without trouble.

Again, baby steps.