“Her name was Bramble, and she was just as quiet as could be.”

We had signed up to volunteer in the expansion to Dogtown, Dogtown Heights (A gated community) in the afternoon, so after lunch we headed over to The Fairway, a neighborhood right next to The Garden, which we had seen on the tour the day before. The Fairway was set up in the same way as The Garden, and we were eager to get to know some more dogs.

One of the reasons we wanted to work at The Fairway in particular is because there were two Siberian Huskies housed there; Bandito and Sarsaparilla (or Sassy for short). I had seen them on the Best Friends web site, and I wanted to see them in person. The caregiver there told us

that they were both very shy though, and Sassy had moved up to The Garden. He said we could go out into the run with Bandito but not to expect much because he runs away from nearly everybody, including most of his caregivers.

We went out into Bandito's run, and as soon as he saw us he began to trot in circles around the run. When he ran down the side near where we were sitting, he just ran faster to make sure we couldn't grab him or anything. We learned later that he and Sassy were siblings rescued at the same time from a burned down building in Arizona when they were just a year old. Best Friends doesn't know what happened to them to make them so scared of people, but they really are frightened of people and will not go anywhere near them.

Both Bandito and Sassy are so, so pretty. Gorgeous, healthy dogs. They've been like this, scared of people and living at Best Friends for seven years. There is only one person that I know of that can get close to them at all, one of the volunteers that comes by on a regular basis. But Bandito wasn't slowing down for us. I was a little disappointed, but we left the run and asked what we could do to help. All the dogs had been walked already by that time, so they suggested maybe we could take one of the dogs on an outing. That sounded like a good idea to us, so they asked which dog we'd like to take and we just offered to take whichever dog needed an outing the most.

Bramble is calm for the car ride

They showed us a few dogs, but one caught our eye in particular. She was in the same run as another dog we were looking at. She was quiet and shy, but still approachable. We were told she doesn't get to go on outings too often, so we decided to take her. Her name was Bramble, and she was just as quiet as could be. She seemed happy enough with us but was very calm about it. We put her in the car and drove back to Dogtown HQ to check her out, then got on the road back to Kanab. We weren't sure what we were going to do but we figured we'd find a park or something.

She was completely quiet and calm on the drive. She just sat in the back, cool as a cucumber. After some trial and error we found a nice park, and we brought her out to walk around. She had varying reactions to different forms of stimuli. Sometimes she would lay down and refuse to move, other times she seemed fine with walking around. When it was just the three of us she seemed fine. If there were kids around she would try to back away. We walked her past some kids flying kites, and she wanted to go the opposite direction.

Bramble strikes a pose for the camera

We ended up walking around the surrounding neighborhood, and she was fine. We looked at houses for sale, and wondered what we would have to give up and how we could make a living out here near Best Friends. After walking for the better part of an hour, we decided to go back into town and get some ice cream. We drove to the local ice cream place and got a couple cones, and sat outside with Bramble. We fed her some dog treats, and she sat contentedly with us outside as we petted her.

Then it was almost 3:30, and time to bring her back to The Fairway. So we all got back in the car and drove back to Dogtown HQ to sign Bramble back in, then we took her back home to The Fairway. We were sad to give her back, but it had been nice spending time with her.

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