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Bragg sets the stage with his opening sentence: “Her name was perfect.”
A “broke-down dog” found its way onto Bragg’s mother’s yard. She was “more than half-dead, starved down to the bones, her hair completely eaten away by mange”.
When Bragg’s mother and brother found the almost unrecognizable dog, they did not call the vet because they knew what the vet would say; and, they are of the mind that “there is always a little use, a little good, a little life left in anything, and who are they to decide when something is done for good.”
Her perfect name is revealed as Bragg tells us that his brother, Mark, looked onto her “tragic face” and named her “Pretty Girl” as if “he could see beyond the ruin, or maybe into it.”
Bragg’s mother and brother gave Pretty Girl water and food, and cured the mange to a point when they felt it was safe to take her to the vet without worry of a suggestion that she be put down. The vet found heartworms, but Mark and his mother took her home and within a month, they had Pretty Girl standing on her own feet looking like the beautiful white German shepherd she was intended to be. She lived three years after she was found, but eventually Pretty Girl began to fail and died.
Bragg brings us to the point at the end of his story “There are things we cannot explain, things beyond science, like how a man could name a ravaged and dying dog, and have her rise inside that, somehow to make it true.”
Pretty Girl’s recovery started the minute Bragg’s brother, Mark, named her. Her name became the intention that healed the “broke-down dog” who otherwise may not have made it past her walk onto the yard.
And, remember … Feed Your Good Dog so your good dog always wins!
Rick Braggis a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and author of several best-selling books, including All Over But the Shoutin’ and Ava’s Man.
