Chicagoland's Jill Dunbar and Rino Liberatore tell the story of how they helped to turn around one dog's bad memories of homelife with lots of love and patience, and share with all of us the results of their efforts.

When we first laid eyes on Lucy, the White Australian with speckled ears, she was upstairs at the shelter in a room with six or eight other dogs. She was in her cage shaking and shuddering almost uncontrollably. My wife and I went home that evening and could not stop talking or thinking about an animal that seemed so pained with fear. Her image was vividly burned into our brains.

Jill and I had wandered into the Lakeshore facility purely by accident although we had been thinking of adopting a new dog. We had one older dog at home and had lost our other dog three years earlier. It was as though we were meant to meet Lucy and we decided that if any dog needed rescuing surely it was she.

We returned the following day to see Lucy and attempt to get into her life. As she was brought out to meet us she was extremely timid. I made a move to have physical contact with her to try to relieve her fear and show her that there would be kind and reassuring touches from us. We stayed with her for almost an hour to see if there would be a fit. It was certainly hard to tell as she had been extremely guarded with every move. We decided to give a trial period in hopes of finding out more about her and her about us. We knew that we would need to reach inside and muster up a lot of understanding and patience.

We didn’t know much about Lucy. We were told she came from a broken home where she had a smaller dog as a companion. We knew she was about 3 years old. We saw from her demeanor that she was anxiety ridden around most people. We both believed she needed our best effort. Lucy rode home with us that day. We were told to let her find her own comfort spot in our home and she chose a corner of our basement-somewhat dark and cold. As hard as we tried for 3 days we could not coax her out of hiding. We wondered what had been in this poor animal’s past that made her this way. On day 4 there were signs of curiosity about us and the rest of our household which included the other dog and three cats. She would duck in and out of the kitchen and dining room to see what was going on and if it was safe. She would eat a little food if she could have it in the privacy of her dark corner.

From there on each day she was a little more courageous. She would come out of hiding to see what was going on around the house. And once she felt okay with the kitchen and dining room she would check out the living room. I called it baby steps. It actually took her about two weeks to come up to our bedroom.

I suppose we could have made her do things at our pace but we really did realize that it wasn’t about us. It was about her and trust. So in order to gain her trust we let her take things as slow as she liked.

Eventually we did gain that trust. And now we have this beautiful and happy dog that has discovered swimming, chasing balls, cats and long car rides. She is the apple of our eye and I’m sure that we are hers. She sleeps by our bedside and she waits in the front windows and watches for us to come home. We know we rescued a dog that needs a lot of our patience. We know it is an ongoing process for Lucy to gain confidence about other people, activities and places but we’re thrilled with her progress and she has already brought us tremendous joy.

Lucy's story is one of many to be told in the lives of the wonderful dogs and cats to be found at Lake Shore Animal Shelter. And it's the people who come to shelters to adopt that make a real and lasting difference in the lives of animals waiting to be loved again.

Do you have a story to tell? Join our new interactive photo gallery. There's room for your story under each picture you choose to share. If you don't have a story yet, grab your coat and stop by--we're at 1535 N Dayton. Who knows, you too may lose your heart to one of the deserving dogs at Lake Shore!