stay in the shallow end

Speedy is the most tortured creature I’ve ever seen. I’m proud of how far she’s come along since we got her, but every now and then, she regresses to her old ways. As I was playing around with my new camera, I took this picture:

I really feel like this moment captures Speedy’s general emotional state. Her wrinkled brow expresses a constant state of worry. Her ears standing at attention scream paranoia. The lines on her face converge to a mouth in a perpetual frown. Finally, her eyes emote a deep dark sadness.

Of course, I’m making all of this up. She’s just a dog. I’m just glad she’s calmed down a bit. Hopefully someday I can look at her and feel like she’s at peace.

We were wrong.

When we got Speedy, you could not imagine a more skittish dog. Cars freaked her out, strangers freaked her out, certain foods freaked her out… pretty much anything even slightly novel freaked her out. It’s been nearly two years, and she’s much, much better now. The last couple of weeks, however, has seen a bit of a regression.

Before the last couple of weeks, walks have been fairly routine, but now she jumps away from the street with every passing car. She’s also become much more sensitive to us. She cringes if we raise our voice in the slightest or even glare at her, when previously she’d just ignore us. Most telling, though, is that she’s sleeping under the bed again.

We have a queen size platform bed. There’s only about seven inches of clearance between it and the ground. Speedy is not a big dog, but she’s definitely not a small dog. When we first got her, she would sleep under the bed, right in the middle of it. This involved her laying flat, and kicking off the floor slowly sliding herself to the middle. As she became less skittish, she moved closer to the edge. For awhile, it was just her head under the bed, and then eventually, she was completely out.

But the last few weeks, she began the trek back. The last few nights she had her head under the bed, and tonight I came into the bedroom to this:

Great. Hopefully I’m completely wrong, and her going under the bed has to do with the weather or something. Ugh, dogs are stupid.

After those picture posts I thought I’d give a new digital camera a whirl to see if it would stick. On the first day I scored this awesome picture of Blackjack.

Still can’t decide if the camera is a keeper or not. I’ll give it a few more days.