SOAP LAKE — There’s a technique for touching Hank.
“When you reach out to pet him, you have to do it with your palm up,” said owner Kim Schrag. “When you do it with your palm down, he thinks you’re going to hit him.”
Hank, a German short-hair pointer, was found in a Dumpster on Nov. 5 by workers at Soap Lake Elementary School.
“He was pretty scared and pretty traumatized,” said Glenn Quantz, the city’s director of public safety who gently scooped him out of the dumpster and took him to the Soap Lake animal shelter.
No one has come forward with information on Hank’s former life.
Publicity about the dog’s situation reached Schrag, who decided she wanted to adopt him. Slowly, dog and Schrag got know each other, then Hank and Schrag’s 10-year-old border collie got acquainted, and then there was a home visit where Schrag’s cats met the dog that Schrag named Hank.
By mid-November, Hank was living in Schrag’s home. Slowly, he’s put on weight and, as of late December, was a healthy 68 pounds. Schrag doesn’t know how much he weighed when he was found in the Dumpster but, she said, he was very emaciated. A veterinarian told Schrag that German short-hair pointers like Hank have a life expectancy of 15 years. “We went into this knowing that we probably wouldn’t have a lot of time with him,” she said of herself and her fiancé.
Schrag has been working with Hank on basic commands and he’s been picking them up quickly.
“I just lucked out and got a really smart dog,” she said.
Over the last few weeks, Hank has settled into life at Schrag’s house. The border collie, usually territorial by breed, sits back and lets Schrag spend time with Hank, The cats “come up and just rub back and forth against him,” she said. And “when I come home, he gets all excited and he wiggles and he can’t wait to sit down and get his treat.”
Sometimes, Hank gets frightened.
“He’s still scared of his own shadow,” she said. “He gets scared if he hears a car door slam or if the cats knock something over. He shrinks into a little ball, like he’s trying to make himself invisible.”
She is encouraged, though, because “those bad reactions are slowly getting farther and farther apart.”
The best of times is “every time he looks at me,” she said. “When he looks at me with those big, brown eyes, I know that he knows that he is safe. There are no words.”
Schrag said she thinks her future will include adopting additional older dogs.
“There are so many senior dogs out there,” she said. “When people pass away, families will take grandma’s antiques but nobody wants the dog.”
The whole experience with Hank, she said, “has just been fantastic. It just makes me feel so good to know that I’ve made a difference in his life because he is just an absolute loving soul.”
