The Dog Who Was Raised By Cats
A test of nature versus nurture: Was Toni a cat or was she a dog?
She slinked languidly towards me, yawning. She looked into my eyes, hunkered down, peed, then went back to her bed and curled up into a cozy ball.
For my 32nd birthday I decided to give myself the gift of a dog. I went up to the Dublin SPCA which, at the time, was being run from an old, disused pony club in the foothills of the Dublin mountains. It consisted of five stables and about 10 caged areas housing a number of dogs. There were a sprinkling of cats elsewhere on the grounds, and a few sad looking horses and donkeys.
I walked down the path that led to the dog’s enclosure and looked at the dogs one by one, reading the information about each of them attached to the gates. I got to the end and looked at a young Rottweiler with a necklace of Frankenstein stitches that looked like they were the only things holding her big head onto her scrawny shoulders. I can’t imagine what had happened to her to require such surgery... but her status said “Reserved.” Every single dog there had been reserved. Each dog was more mange-ridden, toothless and pitiful than the next and yet people had fallen for them. I found it hugely inspiring.
But it meant that there was no dog available for me.
