Sitting in a kennel, with only her head poking out of a box, was a dog that looked like she had stepped out of the Australian outback.  The shelter operators thought Brisbin was crazy for taking the untamed animal, but they were also glad to find a home for such a thoroughly unadoptable dog.  "So they go into the doghouse with a noose pole and drag her out screaming, spread-eagled, leaving claw marks through the kennel, and put her, urinating all over herself, into this cage in the back of my car.  And I was handed 'a card, which I have to this day." Bris shakes his head and laughs.  "It's got this little dog face, and it says, 'We are pleased you found room in your heart and your home to adopt this  "Little One"'-who was yelping in my cage, shaking like a leaf-'who comes fully guaranteed to love, protect and be loyal to you as long as it lives." "And you know, ironically, she has", he says.  Brisbin named the dog Marion, after Gen.  Francis Marion, the "Swamp Fox" of the Revolutionary War.  And while she has never become his "little one," she did learn to accept and tolerate him, the same way an aloof cat tolerates its owner, respectful but always distant, preserving her space and dignity.
  Today, Marion is a 14-year-old matriarch, her coat somewhat thread-bare, her muzzle gray and her eyes cloudy, her gait stiff and arthritic.  But she retains some of the wildness that marked her early life; even around Brisbin she is shy and at a remove.  A visitor who sits for a long time, pretending that he has no interest in her, may receive a careful sniff at his knee-but if he reaches to stroke her scarred muzzle she pulls back, not in alarm but maintaining distance.