The little dog beside me is curled into a ball, huddled against me. We are smooshed as closely as we can be without being one person.

She is a petite dog. A black and tan coonhound. Floppy ears. Loose skin. She is blind. There is a scar where her eye used to be.

There are other scars on her body, too. On her face. Her chest. We don’t know for certain where those come from.

What probably happened, is that she was purchased from a breeder, by a hunter. Coonhounds aren’t cheap. They cost more than some people’s trucks.

The purchaser was a terrible dog owner. He likely kept her in a cage with other hunting dogs. Likely, none of these dogs saw daylight until it was time to hunt—once every couple weeks. This is just how dogkeeping is practiced in less-than-respectable circles.

So the dogs sat in a cage. In their own waste. They weren’t fed regularly, as is the custom of the abusive sportsman, who keeps his dogs hungry so they’ll be mean.

Dogs aren’t meant to live in confinement. A dog was meant to run 30 mph. Thus, dogs in pens can be vicious. They learn to gang up on each other. Fight until bloodshed. Establish dominance. It really is a dog-eat-dog world.

That’s where her body scars come from.

Her missing eyes are a different story altogether. The veterinary doc told us her face had undergone blunt trauma. Her muzzle was fractured.

It was probably the butt of a rifle, the vet said. Or maybe a piece of rebar. No way to know. Either way, she was struck so hard she lost her vision.

The hunter probably took the pack running. He fired his weapon and figured out that she was gunshy. A gunshy dog is a waste of $700.

So he took out his frustration on her face. He probably didn’t mean to make her blind. But what did it matter to him? She was no use anymore.

When we adopted her, she had been seen chained behind a tire shop in rural Mississippi. She was starved until the organs beneath her ribs were showing. She had been sleeping in the rain. She broke free, and started wandering the highways. Bumping into everything.

She changed our lives when she joined our family. She came to us as a frightened animal. She could not navigate stairs. Couldn’t find her food bowl. Ran headfirst into every obstacle.

Afraid to leave our side, for fear of the unseen. Afraid to venture into unknown spaces. But now she can do all things. Fearlessly.

Above all, she knows how to love.

I have never known a dog who seeks affection this way. It is as though she is making up for lost time. And love her we do. We love her so much it hurts. She is the star of our family. Of our lives.

I believe there is forgiveness for the man who harmed her. I pray for his forgiveness. But more than anything, I pray he sees her picture someday. I pray he is scrolling social media, mindlessly screwing around on his phone, when he sees the image of the creature he tried to ruin.

I pray this image stops him in his tracks.

And I pray he understands that although God forgives abundantly, this does not mean He forgets.