Focus on the Feet

What I learned from my dog about trust

He only weighs six pounds so his survival depends on vigilance. That’s why he watches feet.

My smallest chihuahua Andy is a plucky little guy who loudly defends our property, but feet are his focus. When we walk to the mailbox every day — quite a hike for Andy since our house is a quarter-mile from the road — the other three dogs wander around the property, letting every new scent carry them to the next clump of grass. But Andy follows me, four feet behind, watching my feet as I lead him to the mailbox, then back to our front door.

Andy formed this habit in response to an event that occurred years ago when he was very young.

Back then he only weighed three pounds, and we knew within an hour that he was gone. He didn’t come in from the backyard with the other dogs, and then we saw it — a small strip of the fence where it didn’t reach quite all the way to the ground, just high enough for a rat or a small rabbit — or Andy — to slip under.

We went door-to-door. We called his name. We looked under every bush. No Andy.

By the time it got dark, I was getting frantic. We had to stop looking because it was too dark to see anything.

I made flyers that night and printed a hundred of them. Early the next morning, I went door-to-door, handing them out or attaching them to door handles.

I took the day off from work and passed out flyers all day, going to every house within a two-mile radius. As I walked, I eyed the hawks circling overhead and tried not to think about how much Andy looked like a gray rat.

That night around 9 p.m. my melancholy mood was interrupted by a phone call. It was a neighbor who lived about two miles away. He’d seen our flyer and he’d just seen Andy! He was at a pond — really more of a swamp — near the man’s house. He tried calling to him, but Andy got frightened and ran away.

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