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EVERY WEEK, WE bring you a round-up of the best longreads of the past seven days in Sitdown Sunday.
And now, every weeknight, we bring you an evening longread to enjoy which will help you to escape the news cycle.
We’ll be keeping an eye on new longreads and digging back into the archives for some classics.
Anna Heyward writes about caring for a ‘bad dog’ named Jack, and the complicated feelings it brought up in her.
(The New Yorker, approx 29 mins reading time)
I’d been told that Jack was “tricky,” but he seemed lower maintenance than other dogs I’d fostered. A champion sleeper, he was ornery if he didn’t get his eighteen hours a day. In the evenings, while I sat on the couch drinking a beer, he shook his toy sheep and threw it across the room, watched it land, and raced after it again. Each time, it was as though he were encountering a brand-new sheep. At dinnertime, I would “send him a letter”: take a business envelope with a plastic window, place a handful of kibble inside, seal it up, and give it to him. He would spend the next twenty minutes in methodical focus, holding the envelope in his mouth and shaking it, plucking at the corners with his teeth, pawing at it to investigate potential openings, until his prize spilled out.
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This is a very sad story. I was in tears at the end. If you have lost a pet recently or are having a tough lockdown do not read this story. It is not uplifting or heartwarming. It shows how careless animal shelters can be when dealing with troubled and abused animals.
@Em Gee:
I found it very sad too. Clearly Jack was mistreated during his initial adoption, under the guise of training, maybe.
My sister in law, adopted a border collie who, while she was fine with humans, could not be near any other animals. Eventually, she took the very difficult decision to have her put to sleep too, as she could not even take her for a walk outside in the end.
As I write this, my own dog is in the vet hospital in UCD, having suffered a spinal stroke last Saturday morning. He is paralysed from the shoulders down with some feeling in his paws. The vets expect an eventual recovery of maybe 60%, but it’s a long road ahead.
I have a Siberian Husky, I am loving the envelope idea, she can be very hard work, which doesnt bother me, but I am always looking for tips and tricks like this to let myself have a break ;)
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