Manifestations of Abandonment

I have always been a curator of stray pets. From the wee age of six, I kept bringing home every abandoned, lonely creature I found. Call it a compassionate heart, a love for animals, too, maybe. I think it was a symptom of what abandonment does to a person. You rescue what you identify with because you can’t stand for anything to feel as you have. So I brought home lonely creatures in need of love. Maybe I was rescuing myself from loneliness and despair.

This is why I rescued Tris. She was a shelter dog with a sad story. I had no choice. I needed to save her. I needed to love her. It was not hard; she was so sweet. But the tale is bittersweet.

Tris was a German Pointer. Her owner had taken her to the shelter. She had been trained as a hunting dog. The problem was that she was gun-shy. She would cower and whimper in fear at the sound of a gun. She was of no use to the hunter, but that was not why her owner relinquished and abandoned her. No. He wanted to keep her as a pet.

Tris was the sweetest dog. She was affectionate, even at the shelter. I fell for her immediately. I wondered why the hunter would give up such a loving dog, even if she was not a hunting dog.

He had not wanted to let her go. His wife forbade him from keeping her as a pet.

I need to pause for a moment to say this. “If you meet someone who does not understand or share your views on animals or pets, nip that relationship in the bud.” You are not compatible, not in my opinion, anyway.

There is no reason to cause an animal or any living being to suffer abandonment, especially at the hands of another human who understands feelings and emotions. Animals do not understand reason. They see the object of their undying love, their master, their life partner, leave them in a strange place and wait for them to return. They wait forever, without a concept of time. They mourn and grieve in ways we humans cannot understand.

So, I adopted Tris. I was given her records and sent away with her, along with a money-back guarantee, of all things. Animals are not a soup terrine. This was and still is my feeling on the matter, but my reality made me a hypocrite.

I had Tris for only three days, and she was already a beloved pet. As I said, she was sweet to a fault. But she had one distinct flaw I could not reconcile, which forced me to do what had been done to me. I had to take her back. I abandoned her as her owner had abandoned her, as I had been abandoned as a child. I still can’t think about it for too long without my heart hurting.

You see, I had cats. The tag on Tris’s cage said she was fine with other animals. I have no idea how they came to that conclusion, but I don’t think they spend much time analyzing it. She would naturally not have been tense around other animals. She was accustomed, after all, to being around a variety of them. But she was trained to hunt.

I bought her a home, and she did, in fact, react appropriately around the cats. The cats were apprehensive, and rightly so, since they had never been around dogs, let alone one her size. I had five cats back then. Sue me. I rescued everything that moved and was abandoned. Most of the cats ran off and hid. One did not. Kiwi, my orange tabby, was a character. He had no fear and loved everything and everyone. I think he was a dog in a cat’s body. He even barked like a dog. Well, not exactly, but it was a bark of sorts.

Anyway, Kiwi was curious and had no problem getting close to the dog. The dog, on the other hand, had other plans. Tris nipped at Kiwi.

I initially dismissed it and made sure to give her the no command. She was well-trained and listened. Everything was fine.

The following day, the other cats still had not become congenial, but Kiwi was not impressed by Tris and stayed front and center around the dog all day. Tris chased him a couple of times, and each time we gave the command no again, and she would immediately stop. They were adjusting.

The thing was, they weren’t. Kiwi was just stubborn and knew he was there first, so he wore the alpha hat. Tris, on the other hand, saw a job. Her job was to get prey for the hunter. And Kiwi was prey.

Throughout the day and night, it continued. When Tris tried to nip or chase Kiwi, we would reprimand her and put her in her kennel. It took a few tries, but she quickly learned to respond to the word “no.” Then the darnedest thing happened, and I had to make a decision.

First, my other cats were nowhere to be found for three days. They obviously came out when the dog was kenneled, because the litter would be used and the food would be consumed. That was going to be an ongoing issue. But that was not the determining factor.

While we were in the living room, my husband and I were having a conversation as he looked up the habits and trainability of hunting dogs and post-hunting careers. Kiwi came up to me and sat on the piano. The keys were covered by the lid, so he made himself comfortable there. Tris was seated right next to me, below the tabby. I was on the piano bench.

I got up to do something in the kitchen, within sight of the dog and cat. I saw Tris try to nip the cat. The cat hissed, and I once again reprimanded Tris and gave a stern “no” command.

Then Tris proved this would be a problem.

I kept an eye on them both, saying I was watching them, and the darnedest thing happened. While I was looking right at her and saying no in a long, drawn-out way, she side-eyed me. As she looked at me out of the corner of her eye, she twitched her lips toward Kiwi and nipped at his tail, then at his butt.

This was more than a problem. It was an ingrained behavior in dogs and an innate trait in a trained hunting dog. The internet results confirmed that it would be extremely difficult to break as a habit, and the shelter also acknowledged it could be problematic. I had no choice.

I had to do the one thing I hate most in life. I had to abandon a dog at a shelter. I had only done it once before, and the scars from that still have not healed. Here I was doing it again.

I know the anguish of love leaving you. I know the hurt in an animal's heart when their family suddenly vanishes. It makes me sick to think about it.

This may sound trite to most people, but I assure you it is a grieving process so deep it leaves welts on your makeup. I vowed never again to abandon an animal, at any cost. Irrational, maybe. But it is a direct response to being left by someone who should love you.

People don’t always understand or consider the repercussions of their actions. It is not only an immediate dam breaking open, flooding a person with pain. No. It is a constant, slow drip that fills a well of suffering over the course of a lifetime. Each lash of the whip adds a drop to the scarred soul that holds the memories of pain, though the outward vessel shows nothing, having healed to camouflage its abuse. It’s those tiny pieces of evidence that are always missed.

People don’t often equate the overly zealous way a person feels toward an issue or a thing, like an abandoned dog at a shelter. Sometimes, it is an underlying response to an infraction they themselves have suffered. In my case, it has always been, and always will be, my response to any level of the anguish of being left alone by anyone.

Think before you act.

(Published by Illumination on Medium, June 2026)

#family #writer #writing #essay #lifelessons

#mentalhealth #life #lifelessons #relationships #family

#psychology #selfawareness #selfcare #acceptance #abandonment