Canter Bridge

This is Day Two in the story of a rescued Rhodesian Ridgeback who came to us Saturday afternoon under the name ‘Simba’. Day One was too busy for words.

Nobody knows if Simba is truly the name of this emaciated, scared dog brought to us in response to several phone calls by a caring rescuer volunteer.

In fact, nobody knows anything about Simba except this one thing. Simba is blind.

His left eye bulges in eery resemblance to an unfocused telescope. His right eye, more normal in appearance but still milky white in the way cataracts are, simply doesn’t see. Simba cowered at first from my male voice, finding the alto tones of my wife’s words more welcoming.

Like the mysterious biblical figure named Melchizedek, Simba comes to us with neither beginning nor end. We can only guess at his antecedents, piece together clues, wonder who could have allowed this dog to fall into such a state before dropping him off with a coward’s limp at the door of the humane society.

Perhaps malnutrition took Simba’s vision. Perhaps an accident, since a scuff on his hip hints at some such violence. Maybe his initial fear of me comes from mistreatment at the hands of a man working out his all too common fear and trembling by beating the sight out of an animal that might have become his most comprehending friend.

We played with Simba for an hour in the front yard, as though not allowing him through the door would bar entry into our hearts, still tender after putting down our Labrador Retriever just two months ago. There will never be another Tucker, all black affection and joie de vivre.

Yet when it came time for Karen, the Rhodesian Ridgeback rescuer, to move along her hapless journey to the next family in the improbable hope that they would take Simba in, we relented. ‘Can we have him for the afternoon?’, we asked, rolling the dice on the improbable bet that I’d really load him into our pickup and drive him to south Indy in a pair of hours. Before long, we were making another phone call to Karen, this time to declare ourselves ready to foster this luckless canine.

The name given to him at the dog pound—’Simba’—went out faster than rotten cabbage. For the moment, he is ‘Sammy’. He begins already to become a member of the family.

Rosie, our robust, energetic female Rhodesian is not amused. Still basking in the extra space and affection that is hers after Tucker’s demise, she has not warmed quickly to this stumbling intruder who bumps into walls and invades her personal space. Snarls all around are due as territory is marked, yet Rosie would never bite. Already this morning, the growls begin to come well accompanied by discernible wagging of the tale and Sammy responds with a bit of his own, unseeing, assertiveness. Together they seem to hold a common secret: ‘We’re going to work this out after we put up a good show.’