Dogs are wondrous, wondering and wonderful beings and to share our lives with them is joy itself – but they aren’t easy. One dog can be a handful, two is a guarantee of a good night’s sleep and three is an exercise in exhaustion. Any number higher than that will, in all likelihood, stretch you to – and beyond – your limits. Can you even fathom, say, fifty – five oh – dogs occupying one property? Or, perhaps, a hundred dogs? 150? 200? More? What if I told you that Storm was one of two hundred and fifty dogs? Less a dog in a home than a single cell in an organism.

It is not within my means to describe the place to you (maybe it’s beyond anyone’s means), no amount of metaphor or simile could capture the degradation, the decay, the scoured-out hopelessness of it. Whatever the worst thing you can imagine is, it was something like that. But worse.

Perhaps then it is to be expected that Storm’s progress since being in our care has been – by necessity – gradual, occasionally punctuated with bold, unexpected steps forward. Like putting a shattered vase back together, delicacy, patience and care are required. To rush things is to, potentially, ruin them. But the slowness of the process means that every tentative, tremulous step Storm makes is celebrated and clung to. The mundane is granted a lustre all of its own.

The first time he showed interest in a human-being, following at their heel, until they turned around and he retreated like a shadow at sunrise. The first time he emerged unbidden from under the desk. The first time he playbowed, the first time he tossed a toy in the air, the first time he bounced out of sheer joy – and never stopped. The first time he bound himself to someone. And never let go. This dog – given everything he’s been through – deciding, of his own volition, to open his heart to a human. It’s bordering on the miraculous, yet here we are.

His social circle has broadened since (albeit remaining tight and select), as has his confidence and his perennial nosiness. This world that he never knew existed, of birdsong and brightness, of food and fondness, is slowly being revealed to him – and he is, to a degree, open to it. Open to wonder, open to hope. Maybe it’s ironic that a dog who was once one of two hundred and fifty is quite so unique. Remarkable. Nervous. Playful. Unique. Storm.

Written by Richard Grainger | Animal Care Assistant