My brother has two rescue dogs that are siblings. Max is the older of the two, while Ruby the slower and wiser. She has a look on her face that teeters between dumb-founded and all-knowing, and I’d place my bet that both are occurring within her at the same time. These two haven’t had it that easy — born to a four-legged mama along side siblings, only to leave her and them ten weeks later for a new home, with new walls and new floors and new two-legged humans to find home in. Several years later, one of those humans became ill and the well human couldn’t look after the ill human along with Max and Ruby, so they were sent to live in a new house with a new walls and new floors, with other dogs and other four-legged humans they didn’t know. My brother drove half-way down the country to meet them, knowing his walls and his floor would be far warmer and more loving than the metal cages and concrete ground they found themselves on. When they got to his home, it was clear they were bonded, not only as brother and sister but best friends in battle; the comfort of knowing someone in a world where they know not many. I love watching them rest together, the naturalness of how they lay with their limbs intertwined. It’s a beautiful reminder of how the heart knows what it knows, even if triggered by trauma and a sordid past.

In the early days, there were also bonded in their neurosis; other cars, delivery people, small leering children, a squirrel. As they mellowed, Ruby at a pace faster than her brother, anxieties of the past still plagued Max; a loud noise, a bad dream, an odd visitor. When he woke up from a nap enraged with his teeth on the side of his sister’s neck, it was clear his demons may be older in age but aren’t calmer in intensity. The ever so slight difference between something being dormant versus the same thing dead. After weeks of solo healing for Ruby and the same weeks of muzzling for Max, they lay together again, paw in paw. I can still see the comfort in their togetherness. Whether they “know” what has happened, we can’t know, but it seems it matters not. As their humans, we can’t understand how a brother could harm a sister he seems to adore, yet it is easy rather easy to understand how she can still love him. Isn’t this how we “let” those we love get away with things we swore we would never excuse? If my brother attacked me in the same way, I’d have a hard time being in his presence, let alone laying with him in solace. If my partner did something similar, I’d like to believe I’d be out the door as soon as I could open it. But would I? How much of Ruby and Max’s togetherness is driven by love versus driven by survival, and how much difference is there between the two? As humans, we have a lot of stories about what it means to stay or go, what a healthy response to a traumatic event is versus a traumatic response to a traumatic event, and how cognition and choice factor into the whole mess of the equation. Yet, when I see Ruby and Max together, I see two beings who are crazy for the other, no matter how they came to the circumstances of this craziness. Perhaps that makes them stupid, or perhaps that makes them open-hearted in a way that humans strive to be but simply can’t.