I hit a dog over the head with a frying pan once. Complete accident. I was rushing in the kitchen, hand held pan just at the hip, foster dog sprung up to say hello just as I was twisting around – WHAM! – they connected, and the pup hit the dirt. Thankfully the dog didn’t hold it against me – all-forgiving pit bulls. But my dog, my pit bull – she saw it, she was horrified. She looked at me as if I’d hit her on the head – lowered her body, looked back at me over her shoulder as she slunk away into another room. OMG! Those moments that you wish you could take back. But the moment was indelible: Sally suffered for that dog; she put that event into a context I never imagined a dog could do – ‘the other.’ Based on what she saw, mom wasn’t safe when frying pans were out and it took a long, long time – years – before she’d start to believe that they weren’t going to hit her in the kitchen, too. She remembered. A dog remembered a moment, a fearful event that telegraphed down to her bones and embedded into her psyche.

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