The Pavlovian Response

I've been thinking this week about a dog I used to know in my childhood. Actually, to be perfectly honest, I was thinking about myself and I noticed a correlation between myself and the dog.
I was about fifteen. I was so shy and afraid of people. I remember when I would be in a position to meet new people I would never make eye contact and I determinedly walked always with my head pointed to the ground. Except for my family there were very few people who ever heard me put more than three words together. I was shell- shocked I'm sure. I guess these days I would have been labled as having Post Traumatic Stress Dissorder, back then it was just simply called recovery. When I was fifteen I left my mother's house to live with my Dad. It was literally the first stable home life I had ever known. One with out violence or mind games or abandonment. It was steady and safe and quiet.
The day I remember meeting Navajo was a summer day right before my junior year of high school. My Dad came rolling up the driveway in his Ford truck after a hard day's work and I had been in the habit of waiting for him to come home outside on the porch. When I think back now, I'm sure part of me thought that if I was there waiting for him I could somehow by force of will, make him show up on time. The fact that it never occured to my Dad to NOT come home didn't sink in to my consciousness untill much later in my life. Anyway, he comes driving up with a beautiful black german shepard mix in the back of his truck. I was so excited I ran up to the tailgate to jump in and see our new family member, only to have him jump right out and bolt through the front yard. I was perplexed. Navajo, I learned later had been beaten by his previous owners and then abandoned. As soon as anyone would come near him he would run away. This dog had a personal space bubble of like eight feet. And forget trying to take him to the vet, or get him bathed or even give him a treat from your hand. He would look with those sweet brown eyes and circle you in a trot, always ready to bolt at the slightest sign of movement or what he percieved as danger. I spent hours outside in the backyard just sitting in the grass watching him watch me. We would stare at eachother for hours. We were blessed to have Navajo in our lives for about seven years before he died. In all that time I only got to pet him a handful of times. My Dad said then that once a dog has grown up being beaten it sort of ruins them, they just don't really get over it. It then becomes their nature to be afraid and skittish and untrusting. The thing I guess I remember about Navajo is that he wanted love. I mean you could see it in his eyes, they were a little sad when they looked out at you. He wanted to be petted, he just couldn't make himself get close enough to do it. He was indeed reacting in the Pavolvian way he had been raised. So, we let him be. We let him make his boundries and we let him decide how much attention and affection he could accept. The first time he let me pet him it was just the breifest moment, my hand on his back just slightly. I could feel him shaking, and then he bounded away. I sat down in the grass and I cried. I cried for a while.
So, I got to thinking this week about when people grow up mistreated, abused, raped and abandoned. And how sometimes culture thinks they can force their love and affection on these wounded souls. If we can make allowances for abused animals and say "Poor thing. Let's just let him be." Why is it we have less compassion for our fellow human beings. The cruelty of the statement, "Aw... just get over it already." it astounds me. I have boundry issues. I have trust issues. Just like Navajo I want to be in controll of who I love, and more importantly who loves me. So why is that considered by some selfish? I have been told that I'm "not letting go" or that I'm "holding myself back". The idea being, that because I have a higher sense reasoning and more cognitive ability I myself, should not act in the way my circumstances have trained me to. Excuse me... that's bullshit. I will become the person I am destined to be, but only because I choose it. Those of us who have grown into adulthood by suffering at the hands of another, and there are many of us, have the right to deal with ourselves, our past and our future in anyway we are capable. If in fact I am a square peg, why must I try to fit into a round hole. All I'm saying is that as a fellow created thing, don't we all deserve at least the same allowances we make for dogs?