Molly on Sunday

I walk out of the adoption room with a nice young Lab and Shannon tells me it's just been adopted and points to the couple filling out the application form so I bring the dog back to its kennel and it's disappointed but I know it won't be for long and this way I can spend more time with Molly.

Molly is the only dog in adoption at Toronto Animal Services South at the moment (at least once the Lab's been taken home) and she's been in adoption for weeks now. As soon as people hear she's not housebroken and on top of that, is a bit mouthy, they move on. This is understandable. Not many people have the time or energy to correct these puppy-like behaviours, especially in a grown-up dog. We make allowances for pups, not so much for the adults.

I'm always surprised by how well Molly walks on a leash. It seems half the time she's heeling and the other half, she's walking ahead, sniffing, but not really pulling. This tells me she's got a good sense of where I am, that she's paying attention to me even when she's got her nose stuck in the snow deciphering some secret scent in the frozen earth beneath the white.

Every so often, as we walk, she nudges my hand. I'm not sure why she does this. An invitation to play? An urging to hurry up, that there are adventures ahead and I'm walking too slow? I'm tempted to respond but I ignore this behaviour from her. She's using her muzzle to touch my hand and I don't want to encourage this placing of her mouth on me by rewarding it with a response. She stops nudging my hand each time after about three or four touches when she realizes it's not getting a reaction from me. She learns.

We walk for about an hour. I can feel her easing up, not that she was tense to start with, but now she's, I don't know, skippier. There's more of a spring in her step. I know she wants to play but she's not sure how to initiate so she does some play bows, she does some zoomies around me and I want to play but again I hold back because she's on leash. She needs to learn and each time when I don't respond, after a while she stops trying. I know she's thinking I'm a killjoy and I wish I could let her off her leash and let her run and get her ya yas out but of course I don't.

When we stop to take some new photos of her, I'm reminded again of how attentive she is. I'm tempting her with treats and her eyes are glued to every move my hand makes: as it goes into my pocket, as it comes out with a tasty morsel, as it holds the treat up waiting for her to sit, as it gets closer to her mouth and she's just about bursting to snap it up but I say, "Gentle" and she waits and finally I say, "Okay" and she takes it from my fingers - not gently, like a well-practiced dog but not bad. Not bad at all.

With a dog like Molly, a person's gotta kinda sorta fall in love with her a little bit even before she's taken home in order to have the willingness to work out her kinks and that's a hard person to find. And there has to be some faith in her, that she will learn, that she will become an "easier" dog.

I don't think house-training her would be difficult, maybe a week of concerted effort, but still, it's a week and many people don't have a week and don't want to come home to a pile of poop in the kitchen at the end of a work day. That's understandable. And the mouthiness - that might take a bit longer because I don't know what's at the root of that behaviour - whether it's anxiety-based or just inappropriate behaviour which was never trained out of her from puppyhood. The mouthiness is not terrible, no biting but there are teeth. This too, however, is behaviour which can be extinguished with positive reinforcement training. Again, not everyone has the time to fix the problems someone else created or ignored.

So, what Molly needs is not just anyone. We need to find a sorta kinda hero for her. Someone who will sorta kinda fall in love with her before having ever taken her home. Someone who can see the spark in her and understand that her unwanted behaviours are just a small and changeable part of her otherwise warm personality, intelligence and beauty.

Instinctually, as with most dogs, Molly knows that people can be good but no one ever has been good to her. No person ever has been her friend or her companion. Molly wants to be someone's friend. She wants to be someone's lifelong companion, just as much as any other dog. You can see that in her face the first time you look at her. Molly needs someone to show her how.

The best way to check on the adoption status of Molly (and other dogs and cats and other small domestic animals) is to visit Toronto Animal Services adoption website or call 416 338 6668 for the Toronto Animal Services South shelter. If Molly is no longer on the TAS adoption website, it's probably because she's been adopted already.