No New Dog Today

I think today was the first non-holiday weekday where I haven’t worked since we went to New York City in August. That means that the errands and chores had built up for all of the places that aren’t open on Sundays. (I am, of course, either at a Saturday work event or at the CAF hangar every Saturday.)

I had replaced the battery on the van over the weekend to get it mobile again. With that accomplished, first thing this morning I had it loaded up with aluminum cans and plastic bottles for the recycling center.

Once I was done at the recycling center I realized that the back of the van still had two or three boxes of dog food, treats, bones, and various dishes and dog toys. I had gathered them up for donation somewhere but hadn’t ever gotten around to it. But the recycling center is only two blocks from the LA County Animal Shelter, the same one where twenty years ago (HOLY GUACAMOLE, BATMAN, TWENTY FREAKIN’ YEARS??!!) we got the legendary “Lucky Puppy.”

They were more than happy to take the donation. When I walked back out to the van to start bringing the boxes in, a pickup truck had pulled up next to my van. The driver had gone in but in the truck bed was a gorgeous yellow lab.

He was friendly, wanted attention, a good dog. He seemed healthy, not too old, maybe five or six years, and was just a vision of the typical “I just want to be friends with everyone and everything – do you have a ball?!” yellow lab.

And this was the place where people drop off animals that they found wandering around lost or the ones that they can’t keep any more.

THAT DOG WAS NOT GOING INTO THAT BUILDING!

Now, mind you, I had absolutely zero factual reasons to believe that was going to happen. I had zero facts at all other than that this friendly dog was there sitting in the pickup truck outside of the shelter. This was not an intellectual decision of any sort at all. Pure emotion, pure gut feeling.

See, this whole election kerfuffle has us all just a bit off balance emotionally. I blame Trump! (That’s my new mantra for the next four years, by the way.)

I know that The Long-Suffering Wife and I had agreed that there wouldn’t be any more dogs for a while. We have changes in our housing situation coming up and a dog would be a serious complication. We have plans for travel and other activities now that we’re empty nesters and a dog would be a serious complication. I need a break from scooping dog poop from all over the yard and a dog would be a serious complication.

But I would have figured out something and I’m sure TLSW would have gone along with it.

Fortunately for our plans, the driver came out at that point with another dog, causing the yellow lab to go nuts with joy, as only a lab can. It seems that the other dog in the house was an escape artist (been there, done that, with both Lucky and Jessie) and had gotten picked up and turned in again.

A happy ending for all. But there’s no new dog here today.

Which is a good thing. A very good thing.

Yeah, that’s it – a very good thing. (Repeat as necessary.)