Adriana + Frida = Best Buds

Adriana trying to win over Frida

For the majority of Frida’s fourteen months on this earth, she lived outside in a kennel, like an animal at a petting zoo that no one wanted to see or touch. She didn’t have a name because nobody gave her one.

Eventually, Frida, a thirty pound chow-mix, grew bored with her confinement and dug out of her pen, running loose in a rural agrarian town on the Tennessee-Kentucky border, staying close to the only home she had ever known.

You’ve met Frida’s family on this blog before. They are the same people that abused and neglected Buddy, the dog without a tail. Click here for a refresher. Since January, ICHBA has rescued four dogs from this family’s property, all littermates, and we’ve managed to have the mother fixed.

Unfortunately, there is nothing anyone can do to prevent this family from taking in another animal. So, the cycle will continue. I promise.

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On Frida’s first afternoon at the Farnival, she crawled under Mason’s broken down Honda Accord station wagon – parked in the fenced backyard – and wouldn’t come out, even when we kneeled on the gravel drive and tried coaxing her with a tasty morsel of grass-fed ground beef.

Over the next couple hours, most of our pack ignored Frida, keeping a wide berth, barely investigating the wagon or the area around it.

But Frida’s aloof behavior didn’t faze Adriana, our three-month-old puppy, because the moment Ade spotted Frida, she scurried under the wagon, snatched a lick and a sniff, then charged back out, floppy ears flapping every which way, as though she thought Frida would chase her.

Instead, Frida returned Ade’s affection with a nasty snarl. Ade cocked her head, paused, then, undeterred, scampered back under the car. Each time she visited Frida, she stayed a little longer until finally I got tired of standing in the ninety-plus degree heat and went inside to work.

From my office, I have a clear view of the wagon and after twenty minutes, when neither dog popped out their head, I checked on them.

They were still under the car, side-by-side, Frida peering out with an anxious, bewildered expression, which was in stark and almost comical opposition to Ade’s happy little face, pink tongue hanging out, tiny nose covered in dust from a hole she was digging. It struck me that Frida has never known anything but hardship, and Ade has never known anything but love.

It took a few hours, but eventually Ade managed to lure Frida out from under the Honda.

Now, they’re inseparable.