The first few weeks with us Riley wasn’t able to walk in a straight line. He would take a few steps and freeze. He hadn’t taken consecutive steps in the same direction for years and we think he was overwhelmed by how big his world had suddenly become. We noticed when he started holding his head up more, and when he started lifting his leg to pee. His world was expanding and so was he.
Still, after 6+ months with us, when Riley is inside and feels like he needs to run, either from fear or excitement, he spins in place. That is the only way you can run in a small cage and that seems to have become hard-wired for him.
There are a few other things that we thought were hard-wired, but we were wrong. It seems like Riley is really beginning to forget about the time he lived in a cage. A few weeks ago I noticed that he had started stretching. Really reaching out with his front legs and stretching out his back with a satisfied moan. He hasn’t added the part where the back legs get stuck straight out and stretched one at a time, but I hope that is coming next.
But what happened yesterday morning was the most beautiful thing of all. Riley asked me to play with him, in the universal position of dog-speak for “Let’s Play!” This is a body posture you can’t do in a cage, and one that we thought we would never see. The combination of Riley stretching out like this AND feeling the joy to do it seemed like too much to hope for.
But here he is. Goofy and happy, and teaching me that no matter how awful our pasts might be, and few pasts were as bad as his, recovery is there for us. He has every reason in the world to never trust a human again, but here he is sharing his joy and asking me to play with him. His courage moves me beyond words.