Do Dogs Have Souls?
Mellie at twelve weeks; Mellie at ten months
Seven months ago Mason and I left Mellie at her new home; it was February, a cold, cloudless day with unfiltered sunshine glaring off car hoods, roofs, and windows. I’d like to blame the blaring sun on my bad choice that day, but I know better. It was an old wives’ tale, a long-held but untrue belief that got in the way of clarity.
Mellie had been twelve-weeks-old, a black, brown, and white border-collie mix with a perpetually happy disposition that we had fostered and trained for several weeks. She still had puppy breath, only a whiff, but it was there.
I distinctly recall the family: a pretty, youngish mom with four untamed toddlers springing off the couch like it was a trampoline, quiet dad, bible verses stenciled on walls.
I’d seen the home before, not exactly, but a similar house with similar characteristics. It had been over a year before at Laura’s, the woman that had adopted Bentley when he was a six-week-old adorable puppy and didn’t socialize him, calling me eight months later when her husband’s job couldn’t pay the bills, saying they couldn’t keep Bentley and had to move in with her mother.
By the time Bentley had returned to the Farnival, he was an un-socialized and aggressive fifty-pound pit-lab mix that tried to take a chunk out of my thigh every time he saw another animal and sometimes people, particularly if skateboards or bicycles were involved. Thankfully, in the end, we found Bentley a home with a dog trainer, but there had been a few excruciating weeks when we thought we’d have to euthanize him.
Laura had only had one out-of-control daughter instead of four, but she had the same stenciled bible quotes, same quiet husband. On both occasions, it was the male family figure that had the final say about adopting the dog. The wife, playing the submissive role the bible recommends, always deferred to her husband’s decision – even though she was the one responsible for the animal’s care.
As Mason and I rode back to the Farnival, I compared Bentley’s situation to Mellie’s, and all the fibers in my gut started to constrict like wool in water. For a while, I wrangled with my unease, telling myself that my instincts were wrong. I was just upset because I had to say goodbye to a puppy. Bentley had been a fluke. Religious people did the right thing. I recited these arguments like a vocabulary list, until the list became a clattering chant, and I couldn’t keep quiet a second longer.
“Those kids were out of control, Mason,” I said.
“They had a puppy in the house,” he answered.
“They also had John 3:16 painted on their walls,” I countered.
***
Autumn has arrived in Cedar Hill, Tennessee, cool evenings with even cooler mornings that reveal more and more color: like nightly someone takes out their paint gun and randomly shoots tree limbs and bushes with blotches of purple, yellow, brown, and red, color bombs among walls of greenery.
Right now, as I type, Mellie is wrestling with Meadow in the mosh pit under a sky as blue and clear as that day in February when I left her behind. She came back to us several weeks ago. Four-month-old Adriana tries to keep up with her buddies, but Mead and Mellie are as sleek and fast as racecars. Ade is still a bumbling puppy.
At the Farnival, surrounded by her foster pack, Mellie acts happy. Nothing like the dog her family described.
Seven months after I had said my goodbye, Mellie’s family called us, claiming she’d bit the children, nipped at a gardening neighbor through their chain link fence, and terrified an entire community after she’d gotten loose. When I inquired how often they took Mellie off the property, they had answered “maybe once a week.”
If I had listened to my intuition on that other clear afternoon many months ago, I wouldn’t have left Mellie behind. I wouldn’t have made a decision that has cost a handful of people, children, and an animal a whole lot of heartache, but I didn’t.
What got in the way of clarity was a superstition, an old wives’ tale, a belief that families who follow Jesus will be the kindest, most devoted families.
News flash: They aren’t.
It’s counter-intuitive and ironic, but over the past year of rescuing animals, I’ve come to realize that the most devout families – meaning people who follow a literal interpretation of the bible – nettle my unease more than any other person that adopts one of ICHBA’s dogs, which makes rescuing animals in rural Tennessee so unique.
I’m aware that people abuse animals in every part of the world, but I live smack dab in the middle of the Bible Belt. It’s a place where gargantuan churches dominate landscapes, businesses close on Wednesday evenings for worship, and literal interpretations of the bible are as common as pulled pork, but it’s also where authorities respond to the animal overpopulation problem by massacring homeless dogs with shotguns and families surrender their abused or neglected animals right after handing over their church’s business cards.
It’s the kind of place where people believe animals don’t have souls.
Since Mellie came back to us, I’ve been thinking about the link between biblical diehards and animal abuse. Is it because they think being soulless devalues worth? Does it make an animal undeserving of time and commitment? I ask because I don’t know. It’s a mystery to me.
So, how will I know if it’s the right fit next time I take Mellie to another home? How will I know when to tell an interested family no? That’s another mystery, but I can make one promise: If the next house Mellie and I walk into has bible quotes stenciled on the wall, we’re doing an about-face.
