deaf dog

The second love of my life is curled on a down pillow, tucked into the crook of my left arm. This is what we do before bed: Betty sits on the stairs next to my old four poster, waiting while I fluff her pillow just so. I smooth the pillow and she steps daintily onto the bed, waiting for my hand signal to fall into the feathers. I pull the down comforter over the two of us, Betty snuggles in, making a soft puppy sigh, followed by a cooing sound, like a baby dove.

It is a ritual I adore and my little dog likes it to. Since she came to us almost three years ago, Betty has slept beside me every night.

She didn't look like much the first time I saw her. Thin, long bodied, scruffy, thin hair, with very pink, freckled skin beneath. She was billed as a Westie. That's dog rescue talk for "small white dog of unknown origin." We were looking for a companion for restless Bill, a grouchy Jack Russell, when we went to Yukon.

Anxious to make a match, the staff let us take her. We took both dogs around the corner from the rescue to the hayfield cum dog park and let them loose to run. It was hot that September and mosquitos cruised thick above the puddles in the pasture.

The dogs sniffed one another briefly, then Bill took off. Betty took off. They ran side by side, in tandem, interacting not one bit. There she was, a scruffy, funny looking small white dog who ignored us when we called, who watched balls fly and did not give chase, who ignored her potential sibling. I don't know why we decided to go ahead with the adoption. Something about her, her strangeness, the oddities in her behavior.

In the car on the way back to Tulsa, Betty paced the back seat looking out first one window, then another. It wasn't until we were 30 miles from Tulsa that she settled down and went to sleep.

Pulling in the driveway woke Billy as it always does. We parked, opened the doors, I got my purse off the floor in the back. Betty slept. I called to her, nothing. Finally, I reached in and stroked her head. She woke up looking sleepy and dazed, let me pick her up and carry her inside.

In those first few days, I would often lift her, hold her next to me on the sofa or in a chair. From my first touch, she would move not a muscle and once on my lap or next to me, she'd stare straight ahead. Thin, long bodied, scruffy dog statue. Not a blink, not a twitch, absolutely still.

I figured it out somewhere around the fifth day she was with us. Drinking coffee, reading a book early that morning, Betty was by my side on a pillow. She was looking away and I said something to her. No response. A glimmer of suspicion about this odd little dog, so I loudly said her name. Nothing. I yelled, clapped, "Betty!" Nothing.

"Mike! Betty's deaf, she's deaf!" and I gathered her into my arms to kiss her little head. It's so strange that I felt instant guilt over not having known. All the signs were there from the first day she didn't respond to our voices, when she slept so soundly on the way home.

Mike came to look at her, administered his own tests, agreed we had a deaf dog on our hands. Our thin, long bodied, scruffy, pink and freckled deaf girl. Knowing made me cry. I imagined how terrified she must have been living on the streets of Oklahoma City, at the construction site where she was found begging food. Without the ability to hear, she is at such risk, even now.

And then I thought of what she misses out on. Happy voices praising her, inciting her to play. She can't hear me when I tell her she's the best little dog in the world. She doesn't hear us laughing when she does something funny and she'll never hear my voice telling her I love her.

We called the rescue folks to tell them of our discovery. The director answered the phone, was a little cool as I related our news. When I told her we'd been reading up on sign language for dogs, she began to laugh, then expressed her relief that we were not bringing her back.

Take her back? My skinny, brown eyed, freckled, scruffy haired deaf girl? Not a chance. She is the child I never had. I'm not a mom, never will be, so I laugh when I tell friends that I couldn't love a child more than I love this dog. Mothers all, they laugh along with me, but I am serious. Do you have ~ have you had ~ an animal love, one you couldn't imagine living life without?