Everyone's skittish at my house - not only our own dog and cats, but the kids, myself, and my fiancee as well. It's been stressful, and it shows in all of us.

Aleuk has been largely neglected his whole life. In their old house he ran on a wire lead until the ground underneath was bare of grass. His water "bowl" was a metal washtub - often green with algae in summer, frozen over in winter. He is a huge dog - weighing nearly as much as an adult male human. It's because of his size that he's long been viewed as a threat to my friend's kids; they're afraid the dog would crush them accidentally.

My dog - a slightly undersized black lab mix - has been visibly nervous. These are new surroundings, and he's not sure he likes it. He seeks attention constantly now - perhaps he's worried that he'll be abandoned. He's not alone in this; Fizzy, the more standoffish of our cats, has taken to cuddling with us - something unheard of a few weeks ago.

The malamute is currently in a square pen roughly twice as long as he is, with a doghouse taking up a full quarter of the pen. He's paced it so much that it has become a mudpile. The mud has mixed with his feces - what little that has been collected has been thrown into a hole he dug; "It stopped him from digging," my friend says. He howls whenever he sees someone (never to play with him, never to walk him, never to pet him), and whines all night from the discomfort of his mud-saturated paws.

My animals are not the only skittish ones; our children are clingy, seeking our attention and approval more than normal. Old behaviors we thought were gone - sleepwalking, bedwetting, hiding food - have resurfaced. Yet they know they're okay - we've told them. They know this is our family's new home, that we're not leaving it or them. They aren't dumb animals - they are thinking, reasoning creatures.

When my friend's daughter visited, she went to see the dog. I wasn't there; I can't vouch for specifics. Apparently Aleuk snapped at her. Maybe it was fear. Maybe anger. I can't know. He is always kept in that cage now. His contact with humans is even less than before.

My fiancee and I have had some of our worst fights recently. Normally we communicate clearly; in ways that make Dr. Gray (of "Men Are From Mars...") jealous. Recently, though, we've been snippy, reacting instead of reasoning, condemning instead of considering.

We bomb them. We carve them into settlements. We imprison a third of their male population sometime during their lives. We overrun their country. We condemn their poverty. We exploit them, vilify them, isolate them. We execute them. We keep all the "them" in their cages where we don't have to deal with them.

It's been rough adjusting to the affect a new house has had on my family. We've had to be extraordinarily understanding - especially when we didn't want to be. We learned to take the extra, precious, scarce time - despite the chorus of tasks unfinished - to pay attention to the rest of our family. To pet the dog, to cuddle the cats, to care for the children. Slowly - sometimes excruciatingly so - it's gotten better. It's not perfect, and probably never will be. But it is better, and we know we've helped make it that way.

Aleuk is to be sold to whomever will take him - though my friend now says that it must be someone who will give him somewhere nice to live and take care of him. He says it with a straight face as we stand beside the mudpit the dog lives in.

His howling reminds me of air-raid sirens in Baghdad.