Bobby's Story, Part 2

AT THE RIVER
We got to the river and I got everyone inside and everything unloaded from the truck that had to go inside. Once everything was put away and everyone settled in, I grabbed a towel and started to dry Bobby off. While I was drying him off, mom scrambled an egg for him. After the egg had cooled enough for him to eat, she fed it to him while I was still drying him off. That poor little thing practically inhaled that egg. After a while, when it looked like the egg wasn’t going to make him sick, we started to slowly give him dry dog food.
After he had eaten a little bit, I looped one of the dog’s leashes around his neck and took him outside to go to the bathroom. The rules down there are that all the dogs were supposed to be leashed when they were outside. And, I didn’t want the little guy to run into the street. He walked with me to the spot where I take the dogs to go, his tail just wagging away. He squatted down and went, and the poor little thing had diarrhea. When he was done he looked up at me with his tail still wagging, and we went back to the house. I know he couldn’t be feeling all that good, considering he had diarrhea, but that tail kept wagging. After I had taken him out a couple of more times, and he still had diarrhea, I gave him half a lomotil and that stopped the diarrhea.
After everyone was settled in and it looked like the dogs were going to get along, I told mom that I was going into town to get a collar for him. When I got back from town I had his collar, and a food dish, and a toy, and a cage, and a rug for his cage. I think mom got the idea that we were going to keep him.
That night we could hear the coyotes howling from around the general area where we found him. Luckily we got to him before the coyotes did.
We went to bed that evening, and about 10 minutes after we went to bed, he started crying. I didn’t know what it was at first, because he sounds just like a human baby when he cries. I took him out of his cage and held him just like a baby, his front paws on my right shoulder. He was shivering hard, like he was scared. It was warm in the trailer, so I knew it couldn’t be from the cold.
I held him and petted him, stroking him from his head to his tail. As I petted him, I thought of what it had to be like for him, all of a sudden being all alone with no food or shelter. He must have been terrified, and that’s probably why he was crying. He was afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone; afraid of what horrors might be out there.
I stood there for a good hour, petting him and talking softly to him. After that hour, I could feel him start to relax. He had stopped shivering, and I could feel his muscles relax. He curled his front paws underneath him, laid his head on my shoulder, and started to go to sleep. I let him sleep for a little while, and then I put him in his cage. I got on my hands and knees and petted him while he was in his cage until he went to sleep, and then I went to bed. Bright and early the next morning he started to cry, so I took him out and he went. So ended out first night together, neither one of us getting much sleep.
We spent the rest of the weekend letting him get used to us and his new surroundings. It took him a while to get use to everything. I got the impression that he was glad to have a new home, but he was being cautious about us, like he was a little afraid of us. I could see him watching how we treated the other dogs, and I think that put him at ease a little. Even though he might have been a little weary of us and the situation, he kept that little tail wagging.