The dog in the Shelter cage gazed up at my wife, Linda, and then at me. Linda turned to me, mouthing a silent, but firm, “No.” I nodded in agreement, and in disappointment. We’d expected this adoption to succeed. And we’d perhaps gone a bit overboard in our anticipation, even choosing a name for the potential adoptee—Lucy.
Our beloved rescue Lhasa Apso, Moose, had passed away six months earlier, and the Shelter’s website had proclaimed this dog a Lhasa as well. Based on her appearance, our confidence in that verdict was less than total. But that wasn’t the problem.
Our concern lay, not here at the Shelter with Lucy, but back at home with Axl—our 55-pound, seriously troubled rescue dog of indeterminate breed. Our daughter, Karen, had met Axl as a Shelter puppy, and concluded him to be a Peekapoo. Only when his weight crashed through the fifty-pound barrier did she reconsider that notion. The vet believed Axl’s troubles to be rooted in a separation from his mother at too early an age.
Now, years past puppyhood, Axl remained fragile, both in mind and in oversized body, and he seemed to be growing worse. The most harmless of events could launch him into a state of Chernobyl-level meltdown.
Just that morning, Axl had sauntered behind a sofa, and brushed against the throw which lay atop it. The throw had fluttered toward the carpet, caressing and startling Axl as it fell. The big guy had boomed forth a Woof! and his panic-filled eyes assumed the size of saucers. He’d bolted from the room as only he could bolt, with his oversized frame slipping and sliding toward the bedroom. He’d convalesced under the bed, until his trembling subsided.
We’d taken care to keep Axl well out of the range of smaller dogs and other people. His insecurities, we feared, could trigger an attack, at any opportunity. Moose’s demeanor had telegraphed his toughness to Axl, and we’d thus had no fear of Axl assailing Moose.
The key problems with Lucy, though, were her diminutive size and her build. She wasn’t at all solid and sturdy like Moose—she was bony and frail. That, thanks to Axl’s size, aggressiveness, and hair-trigger nervousness, would be a colossal problem.
Linda knelt and petted Lucy through the cage wire, as her Chihuahua roommate paced and nattered behind her. Linda extracted two morsels from her purse, and treated each dog.
“Goodbye, Lucy,” she said as she rose, dabbing at the moisture overrunning her eyes. “I hope things work out for you.” We turned and commenced our departure, trudging down the nearest aisle of dog cages.
If I ever rank the most extraordinary moments in my life, the instant which followed will be near the top. Within that instant, the interior of Lucy’s cage seemed to explode, into a supernova of rapidly moving black-and-white fur. And the air around us seemed to erupt into a sonic storm, with the loudest, most insistent barks I had ever heard. They drowned out even the barking from the cages between which we were walking. Those dogs, now suddenly silent, craned their necks to see what was happening.
Lucy was now trampolining into the air, over and over. During one leap, she almost fell atop the startled Chihuahua, who, so improbably, now seemed the more sedate of the two. As we turned back and approached her cage, she continued to bark to us, with riveted attentiveness. She clawed at the cage door, as though trying to get outside to be with us.
“She’s going to hurt herself,” said Linda. “We have to do something.” Linda knelt and opened the cage. The diminutive hurdler leaped through the door and into Linda’s arms, clinging to her and looking up at us.
Linda looked up at me. “We can’t leave her this way. And, even if we wanted to, she’d never let us.” Linda reached her toward me, and I took Lucy in my arms. She clung to me as we headed toward the front desk.
I glanced back at the Chihuahua, bidding him a silent farewell. He stood in silence, staring toward the receding image of us three, and seemingly straining to grasp whatever-the-heck had just happened.
He wasn’t the only one.
***
A black-and-white head swiveled from side to side. The eyes in that head were taking in the world outside the car and within. Linda held Lucy in her arms, conversing with her as I drove. The two were having a great time. My own head was only now clearing from the events at the Shelter. But the nearer we got to our home, the greater my concern became.
I’d never imagined that we’d adopt a dog of this sort—one whose tininess, coupled with her strong will, made her doubly vulnerable to the formidable being we called Axl. We had, in fact, decided that we wouldn’t. We’d made a spur-of-the-moment, impetuous dog adoption decision, of the very sort for which I’d half-kiddingly criticized Karen.
Ah, but No, I told myself, on second thought: You’re wrong. This wasn’t at all a choice we humans had made. Lucy herself had decided that we were to be her new family.
Axl would be roaming about the house when we walked in. The new chore of keeping him and Lucy separated would begin at once. But those were moot points now. Lucy was home. And so were we. I shuddered as I pressed the garage door opener.
***
I cracked open the door from the garage into the house, and glanced inside. Sure enough, Axl stood there to greet us, with his normal nervousness quotient evident in his eyes.
I held the door open, as Linda, carrying Lucy, stepped inside. Lucy looked down. Axl looked up. Lucy’s ears flipped outward in surprise. Startled, yet subdued, woofs were exchanged. We moved en masse into the living room. Linda and I looked at each other.
“Here goes nothin’,” she said. She set Lucy onto the carpet.
Lucy focused her attention on Axl, and, before we could stop her, she strutted off toward the big guy. A grin beamed from her face, her tail wagged, and her eyes peered into his. Axl’s head drew back. Terror flared in his eyes, and his growl rose in volume.
“No, Lucy!” we shouted in unison. I leaped forward and swooped her into my arms, just as the thoroughly spooked Axl lunged at her.
We supervised Axl and his new housemate for the rest of that Saturday, keeping them several feet apart until bedtime. It worked out well. Meal time and excursions into the backyard were completed without incident.
Lucy obeyed our directives to stay a safe distance from Axl. But, by every indication, she continued to be smitten by the big fellow, and determined that he be the same toward her. That was not good.
***
The weeks prior to Lucy’s adoption had brought a mixed bag of developments for Axl. His tumor surgery had succeeded. His broken rib was healing, although we had no idea how he might have suffered it. The bad news, per the vet, was that—with Axl’s large, clumsy body—additional bone breaks could occur at any time. And additional tumors seemed a certainty. Axl, unfortunately, had always been a distressingly poor patient. Because of his tendency to panic, Dr. McKrueger muzzled him during examinations.
“Don’t worry,” his colleague, Dr. Harston, had kidded us. “We have to muzzle Dr. McKrueger from time to time, too.”
Axl, by all indications, would be a patient on an increasingly frequent basis. His befuddlement seemed to be growing, as he continued to decline, physically and mentally.
We’d hoped all this might dampen Lucy’s fascination with Axl, but the opposite seemed to be happening. During periods of supervised dog socialization, we’d notice Lucy and Axl lying at opposite ends of the carpet. The next time we’d look, Lucy would seem, almost magically, to have skimmed across the carpet, and into the big fellow’s vicinity. He’d spot her, he’d panic, and he’d lunge. And I’d hustle to pluck Lucy, usually at the last second, up out of harm’s way.
But, thankfully, those moments of peril normally happened at night and on weekends, when Linda and I were both present to supervise. Linda spent the workday at her employer’s office. I worked at our company office during much of the morning, and then I wrote computer code in my home office for the remainder of the day.
We used a child-restraint gate during the workday, to keep Lucy upstairs, and Axl downstairs. Lucy, we were certain, was too tiny, and Axl too addled and awkward, to ever hurdle it. The gate had served our dog-separation needs well.
***
The morning’s business meetings had been trying, and I looked forward to a productive afternoon of distraction-free software writing at home. I pulled into the garage, and opened the door into the house.
“Hi, Axl. Hi, Lucy,” I said. Hi, Lucy? My overtaxed brain demanded to know what it was perceiving.
Axl stood nervously, glancing down every few seconds at the diminutive fellow-greeter beside him. Lucy grinned upward at me, as if this were a perfectly normal situation. I hoisted her up, and we headed upstairs.
What had gone wrong? Linda and I had always remembered to put the gate up before leaving. Today must have been an exception.
But it wasn’t. The gate was positioned perfectly.
***
“So Lucy, apparently, simply swooped over the gate,” I said to Linda that night. “I had no idea she could jump that high. If she keeps doing it, we’ll have to buy her a little red cape.”
“What are we going to do?” Linda said.
“I have it figured out,” I said. “I’ve brought up that old aerobic step we’d stored in the garage. I’m going to put it at the hallway entrance, and then place the gate on top of it. That’ll make the gate several inches higher. There’ll be no way Lucy can jump over it.”
The two-dog crew which greeted me the next morning indicated otherwise.
***
“Hmm, so Round Two goes to Lucy,” Linda said. “That makes the score two-to-zero, if memory serves me correctly. So, what’s your plan for Round Three?”
“You enjoy things like this way too much,” I told her. “I refuse to let myself be outsmarted by a ten-pound dog. I’ve got her covered this time. It’s a brilliant plan, if I say so myself.”
“And that would be what?” she asked, entering full chortle-suppression mode.
“I found a second child-restraint gate, exactly like the one we’ve been using,” I explained. “I’ll stack them, one on top of the other. That’ll make the gates almost as high as I’m tall. It’ll be impossible for her to get over them. That is, unless she has access to a ladder I don’t know about.”
***
I stood at the door into the house the next day, pondering the weighty question of how many dogs would be present there to greet me. One! shouted the logical areas of my brain. Nah, it’ll be two, the more glumly realistic clumps of brain cells predicted. I opened the door.
“Hi, Lucy. Hi, Axl,” I said as I stepped inside.
But how had she done it? A glance at the double-decker gates told the story. Lucy had used her head to push the bottom gate forward from the wall, until it gave her enough room to slip through.
What counter-measures might I try next? How does one admit to one’s wife that they’ve been outdone, for the third day in a row, by a tiny dog? I had no idea.
***
A bit later, I let the dogs out into the backyard to do their noonday business. A software issue, though, tugged for the attention of my thought-processing machinery, as I trod well behind them.
A massive bark snapped me to full alert. The scene unfolding in the far corner of the yard was nightmarish.
Lucy had strolled, with doubtless intention, into proximity to an unsuspecting Axl. Axl had turned, seen her, and panicked. His circuits had misfired, as they often did in such moments, and he attacked. I ran toward them, as rapidly as I could go, hollering all the way.
As I ran, Axl placed his muzzle under Lucy’s body, lifted her upward, and flipped her through the air like a furry pancake. She landed on her back, and a wild-eyed Axl clomped over to where she lay. He hovered over Lucy—snarling, snapping, and barking loudly.
The image which is seared into my memory, though, is that of Lucy under attack. She stared at Axl—intently, and yet seemingly at peace. She could have squirmed or snapped at him or barked, to protect herself. But she didn’t. She could have popped to her paws and scampered to safety. But she didn’t. The sight was at odds with what I would have expected any dog’s, or any person’s, behavior to have been in such a moment.
Axl retreated as I reached them. A glance convinced me that Lucy was ok. She hadn’t been bitten, nor, apparently, even shaken.
My fury exploded, and I berated Axl. He hung his head and trembled. Lucy, though, rolled over, stood up, and took command of the crime scene. She moved alongside Axl, and stood there, almost touching him. She looked up at me, wagged her tail, and commenced grinning.
She so discombobulated me that I stopped in mid-rant. Axl glanced nervously down at Lucy from the corner of his eye.
The two then turned and began walking toward the back door. Lucy walked alongside Axl, as if to give him comfort. And, as would be the case thereafter, she walked slightly ahead of him. Axl, for the first time, now had a pack leader—and a best friend.
And at that point, I decided to cease my efforts at separating the two. Lucy knew what she was doing, whatever that might prove to be. And she did not intend to be deterred, no matter how hard we humans—or Axl—might try.
***
Lucy lay on the carpet, mere inches from her would-be pal. At times, she’d raise her head and gaze at Axl. And at times, he’d warily raise his own head, notice her watching, and make a snapping motion toward her. She’d wrench her head backward if need-be, but she’d never avert 
her gaze from him, nor move from her resting place.
Sometimes, though, Axl would rise and leave for a visit to the kitchen-based water bowl. He’d return a bit later, and lie down near Lucy, but slightly farther away than he’d been before. Lucy would temporarily respect the new separation between the two. But, over time, she was assuring that the distance with which Axl was comfortable became shorter and shorter.
“Have you noticed,” Linda said several days later, “that Axl doesn’t lunge or snap at Lucy anymore? And he doesn’t seem to be moving away from her nearly as often.”
“I’m glad he’s doing better,” I said. “But it’ll take more to convince me that Lucy’s managed a real transformation of the Ax-man. I’ve seen him snap time and again, year after year. So color me unconvinced.”
***
I winced, as I saw a canine disaster prepare to unfold. Axl had walked behind the sofa, and he’d again brushed against the throw atop it. The throw began falling, and it stroked against Axl during its descent to the carpet. I’d seen this movie before, and I prepared for a classic, decorum-disrupting meltdown by the big guy.
Except that… nothing happened. Axl proceeded on his way, as if he and the throw had been pedestrians passing each other on the sidewalk.
So maybe I wasn’t yet convinced that a transformation had occurred. But my attention had definitely been captured.
***
Linda had taken Axl to the vet for his check-up. When I heard the garage door, I went downstairs for a report.
“Axl reached a milestone today,” she said. “Dr. McKrueger has been noticing that he’s mellower, happier, and less prone to freaking out. So, today, for the first time since he was a puppy, Dr. McKrueger didn’t muzzle him during the exam. I’m really proud of the big guy. And of Lucy, for helping him get to this point.”
“Bear in mind,” she said, “that we now have a professional opinion that Axl’s undergone a transformation. But I suppose you’re still skeptical.”
“I am,” I said. “But maybe, just maybe, I might be coming around.”
***
Axl and Lucy lay side-by-side at the top of the stairs. Linda decided she’d take an unusual approach, to see how they’d react. By the time she’d finished, I’d become a dyed-in-the-wool believer that Lucy’s work with Axl had been a rousing success.
Linda walked up several steps, aimed the video camera at the dogs, clicked it on, and stood there in silence. Lucy peered at Linda and the camera for 
several seconds. She determined the gadget to be nothing in which she’d be interested. She lowered her head and resumed her rest.
Axl, though, seemed bewildered as to what was happening and how he should proceed. He’d rise periodically and move down the hallway, just out of camera range. Then, his big head would slowly reappear around the corner, and he’d stare at Linda and her strange device. Finally, he’d again lie down by Lucy. Then, he’d repeat the sequence.
Axl then produced one of my all-time favorite canine video moments. He emerged from the hallway and walked to Lucy’s side. He stood there for several seconds, looking down at his friend and pack leader. Lucy looked up at him.
And then, wonder of wonders, Axl leaned down and nuzzled Lucy’s tiny nose with his nose.