family

My brother Chris is a fel­low ani­mal lover and res­cue vol­un­teer, recently join­ing forces with Our Pal’s Place here in Mari­etta (I use the phrase “join­ing forces” advis­edly because my brother is a force to be reck­oned with!). Among the many tasks he takes on for them is being K9 coach, trainer, and friend of Lexie, a pit bull mix that many other res­cue groups, even “no-kill” ones, would have deemed “unadopt­able” and had euthanized.

Chris has been chron­i­cling his adven­tures with Lexie both at his own blog and on the Our Pal’s Place web­site and newslet­ter. I have fol­lowed the story with great inter­est, par­tic­u­larly when in chap­ter 2 a small, fear­less orange and white kit­ten intro­duced him­self to Lexie. Lenny, as the kit­ten was soon named, and Lexie have become the best of friends and live together in the Learn­ing Cen­ter at OPP.

On Sat­ur­day, Chris and I finally meshed our sched­ules and Gary and I trav­eled to OPP to meet the pair. I freely admit I am a cat per­son rather than a dog per­son, but both dog and cat won my heart imme­di­ately. In the hour we spent there, I saw exactly what my brother has accom­plished in the months he’s been work­ing with Lexie. It’s a facet I’d not seen before of the man I still think of as my “baby brother.” Her trust in him and love for him is so clear! I also got quite a nice lit­tle intro­duc­tion to the nuances of dog behav­ior, as well as my own share of slob­bery dog kisses (some­thing which I do NOT allow from just any dog). Of course Lenny was not omit­ted — he got as many rubs and ear scritches as he would permit.

Watch­ing the two of them inter­act was so cute! Lexie is a good-sized and rather ram­bunc­tious dog, while Lenny is a small-to-average sized cat; yet Lenny is clearly in charge but lets Lexie THINK she is. I’m used to see­ing very bonded cat pairs, but I’ve never seen a dog/cat pair quite like this.

I also could tell what a chal­lenge Lexie has been, and still is. Given the “hard cases,” med­ical and behav­ioral, we take in at Good Mews (includ­ing this year’s social­iz­ing of three com­pletely feral adult cats), I really applaud groups that don’t just con­cern them­selves with the easy res­cues, but are will­ing to work with the chal­leng­ing ani­mals as well. A dog like Lexie is well worth the effort!

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