Adopting Patience
When we first took Romeo out for a walk he refused to leave the car. We had been volunteering at his rescue centre for months. For most of our time there, Romeo had been to us just another dog that needed walking, feeding, and loving. We took turns sitting with him. He would fall asleep beside us with deep suspicion, waking at every rustle of our clothing. He found it difficult to trust men, he did not want to walk, any noise made him uneasy.
We did not meet Romeo at his worst. When he first came to the centre, he was placed in a kennel in the dark, far away from any dogs or people. If he heard anyone, he would cower in the corner. An ex-racing dog like all the dogs there, something must have happened to Romeo to make him this way. We’ll never know what that was.
On that first outing with him, we sat in our winter coats at the edge of the car’s boot, gently soothing a dog we thought we were helping. Instead, he shook with nerves and sank further into the fabric of the car. Why had we done this to him? So focused were we on the selflessness of bringing a dog out, we hadn’t thought of what would happen if that dog didn’t want to be in the world at all.
On that first visit he managed a small lap of a pond, and that felt herculean. He froze often, refusing to walk any further than a few timid steps. We stared at each other blankly. What do you do with a dog that doesn’t know how to be one?
Over the next few months, we persevered. We took him out again and again, and though his nerves never really went, his walking improved. We had glimpses of the dog he could be. Then, some invisible shutter would close, and he was gone again, viewing the world as one giant threat. We held his long face in our hands, we told him we had him, we told him he was safe.
We brought him home for day visits. I would play violent video games while he slept on a bed we had brought from the centre. He watched me for the first hour, but with the blanket slung across him, he would soon fall asleep. From the sofa I’d watch the muscles of his face relax, and I felt a kind of calm I’d long been searching for.
We fostered him on and off after that. Short sleepovers where he would remain glued to his bed, his long body shaking at the mention of a walk. In the garden he would walk in circles on the deck, a movement that gave him comfort even while it signalled to us his distress.
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So much of his first few months with us were spent trying to navigate how little this dog wanted to do dog things, how much the routine we had expected did not fit him.
In the mornings for a brief window, he would greet us with stomping feet, a waggy tail, and the huffs and snorts that we know now to be excitement. But then the world would arrive around him, and he would disappear back inside himself. I can’t blame him; it’s something I do too.
You enter certain relationships with an expectation of how it will be, of what that being will come to mean to you. You project onto them the expectation of how they will fit into your life, and of course, that’s never how these things truly work. The narratives of adopting dogs online are often focused on their gratitude, that this dog will be so grateful to you. But all they know is what’s immediately in front of them, and what’s gone before.
He raced because he was told to, a gunshot signalling his requirement to move. He was in a kennel and urged to be lovable, adoptable. Now he was in a warm home with two people looking furtively for signs of his love. All he had experienced were human demands and needs. We needed to give him space to just be, without them.
When he first asked us for food I could have wept. He looked between us and his food bowl with wordless pleading. We asked him of course, ‘are you hungry?’, ‘would you like some sausages?’, but his demeanour didn’t change. The polite swing of the head from bowl to our faces, a perfectly gentlemanly way to ask for more. I think I would give him anything if he asked for it, my heart spilling out my chest with urgency to do more.
He officially became ours a few months ago. The day we rang and paid the small fee I looked across at him sprawled across his bed and thought, he has no idea he’s mine. But of course, that’s stupid. He’s known for longer than I have.
Romeo the dog is still shy, still scared of so many things. He still treats the world like a structure that might crash down around him any moment. He may always be that way. But his bed will be there for him regardless, a blanket carefully slung across his eyes just as he likes it, only a long snout pointing through. We met him so late in his life, but it doesn’t really matter. Our love will wrap him up until he decides it’s time to go.
