In his wonderful book on dogs, “Domestic Dogs,” James Serpell writes about the great dichotomy facing dogs in our world.

At the same time, they are the most loved animals and the most abused, neglected, and mistreated.

I think donkeys also have a similar place in the world, perhaps because donkeys and dogs have been the closest animals to humans for many thousands of years and endure many human beings’ contradictions.

Maybe it’s the ingenious animals that stay away from us.

Maria and I have devoted a good chunk of our lives towards treating dogs and donkeys well, perhaps out of empathy for their conflicted history.

Bud is the most abused and damaged dog I have ever owned. Humans insisted on believing that they know what the dogs are feeling when the only thing we have many clues about is what they are thinking.

We can read the visible emotions — anger, affection, curiosity, eagerness – but we can’t know their feelings, according to the biologists I respect, because we can see the one, but we can’t see the other.

I can never understand why anyone would get a dog and treat him the way Bud was treated. They say that serial killers were almost always sociopathic children who tortured animals without remorse or regret.

The first two years of Bud’s life were, I am told, were a horror. He was left outside in a small pen with several other small dogs, all of whom died alongside him from starvation, exposure, dehydration, and disease.

Bud was saved by a kind neighbor who alerted a devoted rescue group that swooped down and bought him and took him straight to a vet which kept him for months to save him from heartworms and another acute sickness.

I paid more than $1,000 to get him released, and the vet never charged his full price.

Bud, who is fearless about taking on sheep, donkeys, other dogs, rats, and raccoons, lives in terror of men who live their arms or feet anywhere near him.

He and I have become close and easy with one another, but Bud will dissolve in a trembling and paralyzed mass of jelly if I shout or move quickly. Or if something stumbles or drops something or holds a broom or a stick or turns on a vacuum cleaner.

He gets better all the time, but he will never be fully well, perhaps any more than I will be.

We have a good bond; Bud is content now – it took two years – to jump into my lap to be scratched, to nap alongside of me on the couch. He is overjoyed when I come home from even the shortest trip.

Sometimes he looks very sad to me, but I understand that to be a projection.

And he follows me everywhere I go in the house. Bud is one of the sweetest dogs I have ever had.

The other day, I saw him zero in on some handymen who came to cut a tree down. He looked fierce and ever alerted in the window.

Then a gun went off somewhere in the distance, and he panicked, clawing desperately at the door and then to the fence to get away.  I never saw so much uncontrollable fear in a dog.’

I ran out to put him into the house, where he ran to his crate and shook for half an hour.

I would love for him to trust me enough to be calm around me when things trigger his fear. But I don’t think he can do that, no matter how long he lives with me. And I don’t know how to breakthrough.

After a few minutes, he let me scratch his head and pick him. There is go much going on in there that I can’t see and don’t know, I thought. I will never know exactly what happened to him, and he can never tell me.

There are man triggers that bring out this fear in Bud.

I accept this about Bud. I know what I can, but I can’t know what I can’t see. I don’t know what he feels, how much he suffered, or if he can ever fully recover.

That is the thing about dogs like this, I think, you have to learn to love them for what they are, not for what you would like them to be.