The New Dog That Wasn't

Do I know how to set up a cliffhanger or what? Not intentionally, though. I just got busy with our wild spring break at Blackrock* and never sat down to tell you about the dog.

Now I will.

A. took all three boys for a walk on Friday after dinner while I was doing the dishes, and when they came home, Cubby burst in to announce that a brown dog had followed them home. The brown dog was shortly thereafter in my house, because Charlie let it in.

Woah there, cowboys. What just happened here?

What just happened was that this lab/pit bull-ish mutt more or less moved into the family.

We assumed it was a stray. It wasn't wearing a collar. It had been running on a road near us literally on the Canadian border that's pretty unpopulated. We thought it had been dumped.

The dog certainly was happy to be part of our crew. It played with the kids as long as they were outside before bed, so we had the opportunity to note that it wasn't aggressive in the least, which was good. When the kids came in for bed, it sat on our front steps for a couple of hours, then started scratching at the door.

A. felt sorry for it--"it" was actually a female, so "she"--and gave her some dinner. When it was time for us to go to bed, A. decided to put her in his garage/office, because it was going to be near freezing and the dog didn't have much of a coat.

The next morning, I let her out hoping it would find her way home, if home was nearby.

She didn't.

I made up some "Found Dog" signs and posted them at the dump, the post office, and the general store. We knocked on a few doors on the road the dog had been on, but there was no one home anywhere. When it was time for us to leave at 3 p.m. for Blackrock, no one had called, the dog seemed unwilling to go anywhere, and A. didn't want to leave her to fend for itself.

So we brought her along to Blackrock. By this time, the children had named her Friday. Because she was found on Good Friday. Also, like Robinson Crusoe, though they didn't get the literary reference. What are they teaching kids in school these days?

Friday the dog seemed quite happy at Blackrock, as all dogs are. She and Sky became fast friends and played non-stop. She found some ancient deer bones to gnaw on and sniffed out some rabbits in the hollow.

And then, on Monday, her owner called.

Turns out he lives on the road she was found on. He said the dog runs off a lot (which begs the question of why the hell he doesn't put a collar with tags on her). And then A. had to tell him that yes, we still have your dog, but, uh, we're 250 miles away. And we took her with us.

Kind of embarrassing.

Anyway. Friday's name was really Emma. The children were sad to hear that Emma-Friday would not be a permanent member of our family. I was not too sad when her owner came to pick her up after we got home today. I really don't feel the need for another dog at this moment. Although I'm afraid this whole episode may have accelerated our timeframe for getting another dog.

But at the moment, I'm enjoying the peace of having only one old dog to deal with. And the old dog is pretty happy about that, too.

* It really was wild. One night A. and I left the kids with the MiL and went to dinner at a Turkish restaurant. At this stage of our lives, that's equivalent to tequila shots in Rocky Point.