Last Chance by Norah McClintock

Kathy said. “Not vicious.”
    â€œHave any of them attacked people?” I said.
    She looked directly at me.“Bitten, yes.Attacked, no.”
    I wasn’t sure I saw the difference.
    â€œSome dogs are really aggressive,” Kathy said. “You’ve probably read about dog attacks in the newspaper from time to time—a dog mauls a child or attacks and kills another dog. Sometimes we get animals like that. Sometimes we have to put them down.”
    â€œBut these dogs aren’t like that?”
    She shook her head again.
    â€œThe dogs in the RAD program have behavior problems that have made them unsuitable for adoption,” she said. “Most of them were never trained properly. Their owners may have disciplined them by hitting them with a rolled-up newspaper or some other object.”
    The very idea seemed to exasperate her. “That’s usually counterproductive. Instead of teaching the dog to behave, it teaches the dog that a hand coming toward it means punishment. It sees a hand reach out, and it bites. The dog owner may see that as an attack, but to the dog, it’s self-defense. We have one dog in the program that was bought as a puppy. The owner kept the dog in the house when it was little and cute but never bothered to train it properly. Because the dog was never trained, when it got bigger, it started jumping up on people and making a nuisance of itself—and ended up getting punished by the owner. Finally, the owner chained it out in his backyard. The dog spent two years out there. It was never let off the chain and never let inside.
    â€œDogs are pack animals,” she said. “They’re very social. They need to be around other creatures—dogs, human beings, it doesn’t matter. Imagine how you’d be if you were chained out in a yard all by yourself, winter and summer, night and day, for two years. Someone finally reported the owner. We seized the dog. If we can rehabilitate him, he has a chance to be adopted. If we can’t . . . ” She sighed. “Do you know what the leading cause of death is for dogs?”
    The first thing that came to mind was getting hit by a car. But I guessed that probably wasn’t the answer she was looking for. I shook my head.
    â€œThe leading cause of death for dogs is unwelcome behavior,” Kathy said.
    It took me a moment to digest this. “You mean, because the dog ends up being put down?”
    She nodded. “That’s what we’re trying to avoid with the RAD program,” she said. “It’s kind of a last chance program for these dogs. The kids each take responsibility for a dog. It’s up to them to work with the dogs to modify their behavior. At the same time, the program helps the kids. They learn that they can’t get the behavior they want by yelling at their dogs or trying to bully them. They have to stay calm. They have to be patient. By the end of the program, the kids have learned a lot about how to control their own anger. And if we’re lucky, most of the dogs are ready for adoption.”
    â€œMost?”
I said.
    â€œWith consistent training and lots of positive reinforcement, most dogs succeed,” she said.
    â€œAnd the ones that don’t?”
    â€œIf we can’t find a home for an animal, well, eventually we run out of options.”
    Oh. I glanced out the window again. Nick and the others, together with their dogs, were all heading back across the field toward a man and a woman. I had seen the man before—he was the stocky guy with the brush-cut hair who had called to Nick the first day I was at the shelter. I didn’t recognize the woman.
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    . . .
    For my break that afternoon I took a bottle of juice and a book from my bag, and went to sit at the picnic table to read. I had only been outside for a couple of minutes when the kids from the RAD program spilled out onto the field near the parking lot for their break. It