i want to write

something powerful and moving.  or inspirational.  or funny but i'm feeling none of those things.

there were many adoptions over the weekend besides our dear Felicia.  there were many empty kennels out front today and i dunno, it made me so sad.  it's wonderful for the dogs and cats who were adopted and for the ones who got to move up front where they can work their charms on the shoppers....  it's good for the staff, that there's suddenly room at the inn cause they've been on overload, running on adrenalin for months and this was the first day in a long time without the vague scent of panic.  still, i feel sad because last week was tragic.

so i was thinkin', in totally unrelated business, about the year that my ex took me and our two twenty-something daughters to driving school.  we were searching for the antidote to grief, which of course we never found but as distractions go, this one was effective.  in Phoenix, city of the risen dead, right?  ironical.

we did some book learnin'.  we suited up in fire proof gear and got fitted for helmets and then, because we were lookin' so insanely cool, posed together for a photo op in front of a race car.  as far as i was concerned, the day was complete.  i was ready to go back to the air conditioning and my big box of kleenex but there was still actual driving to be done. to be honest, my heart wasn't in it.

the girls and i got into a car with an instructor who, when you were going fast enough would hit a button and one or more of the wheels would lose traction. zip! like that, you'd skid. you'd go again and he'd hit different buttons and you'd slide this way and that - eventually going into a full spinning rotation across the blacktop, sand flying, as he took the traction off all four wheels at once.  of course we'd been instructed what to do to pull out of a skid, but it's a challenge in the moment to translate words into action and i sat glued to the back seat, dreading my turn, as first one and then the other of my daughters took the wheel.  

dreading it but at the same time, strangely enjoying the safely out of control wheeee kind of freedom of it all.

when i finally had to drive, here's what happened...i rocked.  seriously!  dude, i learned to drive on ice.  i'd skidded a quarter mile down it on the Dan Ryan expressway and done a couple 360's on the entrance ramp at Cermak Road and miraculously never put a mark on a car.  and here i was in the heat shimmering desert, getting to use those skills i didn't know i had but which had become automatic over 15 bitter winters of driving in the midwest.  I was feeling pretty pleased.  I was wheeein' out loud.  We moved on to other skills and some scary challenges and though i wasn't breakin' any records, i was at least feeling competent and able to be fully present for the rest of the experience.  

Several years later, it saved two lives - mine and my best friend's.  because i'd hung in there, back in Phoenix,  i was able to thread the needle - put my car into the seemingly impossible, invisible space between a thundering construction dump truck and a concrete bridge abutment where Vicki and i had both expected to die.  

as usual, i don't know why i'm telling you this or even what brought it to mind last night.  gimme a minute.  let me think.

ok.  got it.  

it has to do with moving through grief how ever painful or scary it is.  skidding.  spinning.  out of control, but moving through.  the loss of all those lovely creatures last week is wrenching and i'd like to stay home...dab my eyes and have another nap.  but then, there is the work.  then, there are the living.

if i can acknowledge my grief but still set it down for a moment and show up for them...for the living...maybe i can be fully present for yet another life experience...  

and who knows what the hidden gift in that might be.

ready for some good news?

Felicia was adopted yesterday!  Yay Felicia!!                

Best part is i really liked the woman who chose her.  It felt as if this was what it was all about...the reason i had to bring Felicia home...the reason she couldn't be left to be "taken out of adoptions"...cause this person was coming for her.

There are some things about it that actually give me chills as i consider them - but that i can't disclose without compromising her privacy.  you'll just have to trust me...it's pretty cool.  the woman, henceforth to be known as Charlotte, had asked some questions on line after seeing Felicia's picture and though her trip to the shelter was for the specific purpose of meeting our 'licia, she interviewed several other dogs before finally taking her out.  I have this feeling that she promised someone she would look at more dogs than just the one, rather than rushing through the door waving a check.  Smart.  So she walked with several, asking questions about each of them, appreciating their sweetness or their silliness or in the case of Cutie, the way she looks just like orphan annie's dog.

Things changed somehow when we took Felicia out the door.  Strange to say, but there was some new gravity to the conversation, some "now we're gettin' down to it" feeling, though many of her questions were the same as they had been with the others.  it became clear that she already knew...that she'd been going through the motions with the others...that this was the dog for her...

She needed a one-woman dog who would look out for her and Felicia needed someone to love and to protect.

While her application was being processed, the smiling Charlotte walked back to Felicia's kennel, bent and kissed her lightly on the head.

Sigh.

        tears of joy.

she veers

left, right...whoa, she's hit some bumps...she's catchin' air....

there have been some grumblings about how i started out writing about my experience at the animal shelter and now i'm talkin about the wizard of oz forgodsake and gypsies and the web of life and at least one of my three readers would like to know where i'm headed with this whole thing.

fair question.

i dunno.

there was some irrepressible thing about hope and faith going on.  something about believing in a better future.  but today i'm back to sad reality.  Brice was euthanized yesterday.  Brice whom i loved but couldn't help. They call it "taken out of adoptions" or "no longer available."  He was in foster care for a month or so and then he was returned and his number was up.  according to the fates, he'd had his chance (you couldn't prove it by me) and so, also, had some of the adolescent puppies...too big, too uncivilized, too much challenge compared with the wee, cuddly, adorable ones that haven't yet gotten frantic with inactivity.  the fawn-like little clown, Vaugh; sweetheart Cody, with the pleading eyes and galumphy Boone, of the ironically tiny ears...they and many more like them, no longer available.

they took in 150 animals in 3 days this week and the shelter becomes a death machine when that happens and if you aren't pedigreed or lucky or little, you get chewed up.  that's not to say the folks at the shelter prefer the pedigrees or even the little dogs.  it's to say that the people adopting prefer them.  we had a shitzu (gawd i hope i spelled that right) a week ago and it flew back out the door trailing a waiting list of applicants who got there too late but who, nonetheless, threw their names into the pot, just in case.  people still come in asking for him.

everybody's got a breed preference, i guess.  somebody at the shelter loves beagles.  at one point there must have been 7 or 8 purebred and an additional couple mixes, some of them difficult placements (behavior and medical issues) that were there for a surprisingly long time.  they never got taken out of adoptions.  the hard cases hung around till a space opened up at a breed rescue, "no-kill" agency. it's weird, how you come to resent their obvious immunity when you're fighting to save your own favorites and if you were in charge the place would be thick with big, ugly workin' dogs or little shivery shy dogs or pits and rotties and labs.

me, i like a nice mutt.  something untidy and not entirely tamed...like me.
(which makes it all the more confounding how i ended up with the adorable, fluffy rottencockers.  i must have been having heat stroke or something cause to this day i look at them and shake my head and wonder what was i thinkin?  i love them but they are foreign to me.)

as i left the shelter yesterday a woman got out of her car, opened the back seat door and i knew. it's a telltale sign, the pull up/get out/open the back door sequence cause it's almost always followed by the reach in and the voila!

and sure'nuff, large black adolescent puppy.  the kind that's already too big, too uncivilized, too much of a challenge in a dog eat dog world.

i am descended from gypsies...

also from the famine starved irish and the equally hungry cherokee, all of whom thought they'd struck it rich when they came to west virginia to work in the dark a mile underground, cause it meant they could eat.  but for today's purposes, let's just say i've got gypsy blood.

what do you think of when you hear the word gypsy?  maybe esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  she's quintessential, right? you got your mass of unruly black curls, your smoldering eyes, bracelet sized earrings, layers of scarves and skirts, bare shoulders and a heaving white blouse.  yeah, that pretty much describes me.  maybe not the heaving smoldering. certainly not the curls or the earrings.  but i do wear white shirts and often, to ward off a chill, i will go unruly and throw on a shawl.  pretty crazy, i know, how these things get passed down through the generations.

gypsies might also make you think of fortune tellers, firey music and fierce, sexy dancing.  but for sure you think of thieves.  that's just the truth of the matter - that some gypsies, like some members of congress, are thieves.  they're passing through town in their colorful caravans, making noise and distracting you with their slight of hand and their silver songs and you go home and realize your chicken's gone missing from the pot.  pretty soon you start to dread election years and travelin' shows.  pretty soon those folks are viewed with suspicion and over time, they develop a reputation that affects them all, regardless of whether they're dishonest or just standin' downwind.

in europe, gypsies are called "travelers" and they're unwelcome just about anywhere.  which brings me to my point.  on the way to the shelter each day i pass the Shiloh Lutheran Church, in good ole deep south, USA.  there's a sign in the grass out front - just a tin frame and a plastic coated board, like realtors use. it's been there a couple months and it says, "travelers welcome".  i shocked myself by sobbing the first time i saw it, even though i knew they didn't mean "travelers" like gypsies but rather "travelers" like people stopping for gas on their way to Disneyworld.  But it hit my heart in an unexpected way...just the suggestion that somewhere that feeling might exist...that somewhere my kinfolk might not be reviled but actually embraced.  i didn't realize it would mean so much to me.  i didn't know i was carrying some sort of ethnic wound - some deep shame not because i've personally been shunned but because i know in my heart that i'm one of the despised...that i have been passing...that i am not one of you.

and then i get to thinking about all that interconnection stuff.  that string theory.  that web of life.  all the science that's piling up to say hey, guess what...we're all connected...we're related and we're interdependent, like it or not.

and i start thinking, well, maybe this ethnic wound stuff is out of date.  maybe that's sooo last millennium.  maybe it's time for me be what i believe - to take conscious control of how i'm defining myself.  it means i'll have to pack up a lot of souvenirs...put away the scrap book and the 45's, so to speak.  but it also means i get to set down some baggage.

how's that gonna feel, i wonder, to give up all those labels?  to say i'm not a gypsy or a cherokee, a Hatfield or McCoy.  no matter what's happened in the past, between others, i am here representing just one person.

i know a woman who recently lost all of her material possessions in a fire.  she's had a tremendous amount of grief over having her past so completely erased in that way but she describes also a feeling of freedom, at first fleeting but with time becoming familiar.  holding on to that feeling is a move beyond just realizing that all evidence of the past is gone to appreciating what that means to the spirit. she is unburdened of both the good and the not good that clings to us in our familiar places and which we use to define ourselves...to tell our story to ourselves.

her most obvious challenge now is to build a new house.  less obvious is the opportunity she has to meet herself without a material identity from the past.  it's being reborn, in a sense, but with a consciousness that allows her to weigh, evaluate and choose what her truth, going forward, will be.

i'd like to set down my mama's story and much of mine.  i'd like to acknowledge the story of my grandparents' experience without making it my own. and i'd like to see you without that big sack you've been dragging of painful stuff you've been told about yourself and your people.

imagine our great web of life - how beautifully it would sing - how blindingly light it would be - if we tenderly washed away the tears of the past and faced each other new and clean, heart to heart.

imagine, then, how welcome we might feel.

my first dog

was a little yellow mutt named Penny.  sad to say i don't remember her - as a person i was going to say...oops...did i just show my cards?

in the two photos of us together, we are on a weedy hillside. i have just learned to sit up (hence the moment's being captured, i guess) and Penny has slid across my lap and is lying still.  we both have our eyes closed.  in one picture, my arms are outstretched above her as if measuring her length or, in my preferred interpretation, as if commanding heaven's attention.  in the next, i have leaned forward and my hands are on her side in a perfect baby-as-healer pose.

those of us who have raised children or have ever taken care of one that age realize that if there had been a third photo it would likely have been of my doing a face-plant onto the dog.  i'm not so crazy, yet, that i don't realize i'm an old craggyface making up a story about being a healer-baby. but this is a particular delusion that i simply love.  oh, i wish it had been true.  i wish those pictures had been more than coincidental...captured some essence of me...some enduring quality that i could hold up against reality as my proof...my shield of redemption.  see!  it would shout...i know what i'm doing!   i always have!


so i'll continue to enjoy that fantasy even as i offer this...


that if you look at those photos in reverse, i have placed my hands together on little Penny and then whoa!!  the energy is so strong it blows my arms wide apart and opens me to heaven.  i like that interpretation even more and it's probably closer to the truth cause i have found, always, that my connection with the creatures of the earth is my gateway to transcendence.

my vision is renewed, my understanding expanded by the owl, hawk and creatures of the air;

my spirit is tenderly exposed and uplifted by the turtle, the frog, the sailfish, the whale...warm and cool blooded of the sea;

i accept their grace and i am forgiven by the field mouse, coyote, the feline and canine, who walk beside me.

i mean these things literally.  i am changed at each encounter as they reach out to me, continuously.

it is no accident that they're in our lives.

they are the healers.

maggie, felicia and baby girl

were all spayed this week and i have to say the experience has made me feel baaad.  you're supposed to be loving and protecting them and regardless of how much sense it makes to you and everyone else in the whole entire universe, there is just no way to explain to those trusting eyes that you've handed them over to some rubber gloved stranger with a knife because you love them.

baby girl came through it, at least initially, with about the same amount of trauma she suffered the other day when she took a blow to her nose in a play-fight.  she needed a few seconds to figure out she was ok, that this wasn't part of any ongoing attack, and then she started bouncing around wanting to play some more.  felicia, on the other hand, was having a hard time.  like maggie, she didn't want to move.  she stood, head hung, all the way home from the vet but would not take a step when i lifted her out of the car.

this morning they're all looking amazingly well, energetic and dog-like and the challenge becomes keeping them relatively quiet for a few more days, to give their bodies time to heal.

preparing them for surgery, explaining to them that they were going to the vet to be "fixed",  i could barely make the words come out of my mouth cause i could hear the question they would inevitably have to ask, "are we broken?"

no, my loves, you are not.  you are perfect and innocent, as you were created.
it is this world that's broken.

it feels like

i've written myself into a corner here...

that last entry crossing the line between entertaining (is that what it was?) to challenging.  can i go back to making word pictures about maggie's amazing behaviors when i've basically just ripped back the curtain and exposed the wizard?

the Great and Powerful Oz (in this case, the concept of animal shelters) is just an illusion. it's just some guy who, because he is actually unable to fix the problem, cannot let himself be seen.  once the truth is known, all the poor fuddy can offer is symbology...awards and certificates and heart shaped clocks and dorothy (that would be you) is outa luck till Glynda bubbles down and reminds her that the power to get what she wants (to change the situation) is hers and has been all along.  then there's all that stuff about believing....

i'd feel better if i knew where i was going with this.

ok first i was Toto, destroyer of illusion.  now i'll be Glynda, hope in a hoop skirt. and here's what i want to say to you, Dorothy...

first of all, sorry about those illusions.  they were workin', i know.  and i know it felt so nice to not have to think about this particular stuff cause, mysteriously, someone else was in control and come on...life is already hard enough to figure out and you never know when the flying monkeys are gonna start droppin out of the sky and good lord isn't that in itself enough for one little innocent to have to deal with?  and honey, the answer is yes.  it's enough.  and i hate to have to lay this particular mess in front of your sparkly little shoes with all that other stuff... but there's no more waitin' on the wizard once you've seen that he's a big flaming hologram.

i don't know about you but i'm getting tired of this metaphor.

here's the point.  it's all about empowerment...
                                                  which you can't get till you know the truth.

once you've got it...
                           once you're empowered you are welcome to figure out the answer and fix things for all of us.  but know this....you absolutely don't have to solve the problem...all you have to do is make some noise...call attention...and things will start to shift.  

the lovely part about believing that we're all connected, all part of some vast web, some great glob of life that we create and maintain together, is that you never again have to face a problem alone.  you simply have to start a vibration and the stronger you feel, the more it gets passed on and the more connections that are made, the more the web sings, the more energy is generated...the more things change.

the power has been with you all along.

make some noise.

click your heels.

believe.

that's what i'm doin'.

my friends'

primary objection to my working at the shelter is that going in, you know your heart's going to be broken and, bless them, they want to protect me.  they've nursed me through some losses.  they want me to feel good, to enjoy life.  they think that if i have to do this dog thing, i should volunteer at the no-kill Humane Society shelter.   and on the right day, they might come close to convincing me... like last week when 52 animals came through the shelter doors in 9 hours.  by the end of that day, they were far past maximum capacity.  at the Humane Society they would have said, "we don't have room" or "we don't take dogs off the street" or "we have a waiting list".

they get to say those things and still claim they're no-kill cause nobody dies on site.  cause the animals they turn away are going somewhere else for that to happen.  they'll be abandoned and picked up as strays or they'll be turned in with 51 others like them at a place that doesn't have the luxury of saying, sorry, we're full up.  they'll go to the county shelter cause it has to take them.   and then someone has to figure out what to do in a situation when there are already more dogs than places to put them.  and the genuinely awful, heartsickening truth is that most of them will have to be put down cause there's just no choice.

i'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that there's no such thing as a no-kill shelter.   there're just shelters where the actual killing is handed off.

this is not meant as an indictment of the Humane Society and other rescue organizations that are out there doing a wonderful job and dedicating themselves to saving every single critter they've committed to.  thank God for them.  love and support them.  but recognize that they're spitting in the ocean, folks.  every one of them has a limit and sadly, when they hit that number, other animals have to be turned away.  i'm not faulting them...but i am saying that nobody is blameless.  we are ALL responsible.  we've gotten comfortable with a nightmare situation right here in our own town cause we don't have to look at it.  and we don't have to look at it cause shelters in this state are not required to publish their kill numbers.  if we have this rosy illusion that there's any kind of balance between the number of dogs being saved and the number being sacrificed, it takes the burden off us to ask why is this happening? and what can i do about it?


i'm not suggesting you work at the shelter.  though you might.  but the real problem starts way before anybody drags their family pet through those doors, pretending to themselves that Snowball has a chance in hell of survival.  It's a very lucky, very small percentage who ever walk back out.   Nobody's saying that.  Nobody's waving the flag of truth.  Everybody's being polite.  The assumption at the county shelter has to be that surrender is the best option for most of these animals.  abandoned dogs and cats may be starving out there, but they're also procreating and the problems keep expanding.  so the intake staff is friendly, regardless of the situation and they always say they're doing their best to find homes for all the critters.  and that part is true.  they are doing their best.  but they're spitting in the ocean, too.

today as i returned to the building with funny little Iris - one of those lucky few who made it to a place in adoptions - i stopped to talk with a couple of kids with a sweet mutt they were holding with a piece of rope.  i spoke first to the dog and gave her a treat.  she seemed a happy girl.  then the little boy pointed me to a plastic storage bin by the door.  it was full of pups.  8 fat, sleepy babies.  they pointed out their favorites, telling me which ones played all the time and which just slept.  when i asked where they got these dogs they answered, "our yard".

shelters, at least in this state, are not required to publish their kill numbers.

seems to me it might be a good first step in the educational process to show us the truth - maybe we'd start making better choices.

Boots

has gone to a new home where he will have kid friends as well as a puppy friend!  yay!

it was so sweet, having him back for a bit and i was really tempted to adopt him myself - but it would have closed the door for other, more desperate, less adoptable but just as deserving dogs that i might foster here, until they find a home.


so yesterday i came home with two.

Baby Girl

Felicia 

it was a grim, "dead dog walking" day at the shelter.  they were critically over crowded, staff was dangerously over loaded and some painful, soul wounding choices were being made.  there were people reaching out, looking for foster homes for some of the dogs on the euthanasia list and a few got lucky.  most did not. hearts were torn.  tears were shed.

so yeah, i  came home with only two...Felicia, a total sweetheart of a dog, calm, cooperative, mature but who, some suggest, bears an unfortunate resemblance to the hounds of hell depicted in early versions of Dante's Inferno, and Baby Girl, who, though she's just a big 7 month old pup and soft as a bunny, also has the less desirable gift of vertical elevation.  it's a common behavior of shelter dogs but baby girl has made it into an art form. sometimes she goes with the standard bouncing on back legs with front legs reaching toward heaven, but often she will take it to the next level and simply pop from a solid four on the floor to a four in the air hover, with her back totally horizontal.  apparently this makes it hard for folks to imagine enjoying her company on a long term basis.

i didn't mean to come home with two.

it just happened.

i have a friend, Joey, who has taken on the thankless task of worrying about me. some others of my friends have done that for me in the past but time has taught them that i'm headstrong and determined.  once i've set a course they can form a union and bla bla all they want and make the best absolute argument in the world against it and i'll listen thoughtfully and give them hugs and sincerely thank them for caring and walk them to their cars and say bye.  and then i'll go back to doing what i was doing in the first place.  once i've chosen, once i've committed, i'm on a learning curve - i'm tracking like a blood hound to see what will happen, what i can accomplish, how i will be changed.  once my passion is engaged it's like trying to stop a rocket launch after the count down...nope.  no way.  and it's not that i'm unaware of various risks involved...it's that there's something of overriding value to be gained...there's some potential to be unlocked in me.

my dear friends are challenged to love me, in spite of who i am.

but Joey hasn't given up yet and he will, from time to time, try to talk sense into me.  it's kind of pitiful.  i can see in his eyes how much he wants to help and how hopeless its starting to feel.   i really don't think he expects me to change my crazy ways just cause he's calling me out on them, but maybe it makes him feel better to know he's at least tried to save me from myself.  my daughter crossed paths with him this week and he immediately wanted to talk about "this whole dog thing with your mom".  maybe he thought she didn't know.  more likely, he thought she was a rational human being and would want to join him in some sort of intervention.

i know this latest turn of events in the whole dog thing might put him over the edge so i need to speak directly to him:


Joey, i'm deeply grateful that you care so much...and i'm really sorry to deny you the joy of saving my loony ass from destruction.   but even though you make perfect sense and have my best interests at heart, even though its not a logical thing to do, i have to keep going.  i have to follow through cause while it's clearly not safe or relaxing or peaceful or sane, it is what's best for my soul.    thank you for caring....b

little choc

was adopted the morning after his return so i had to go through the whole goodbye thing again...but at least this time i got to say goodbye.

a day later, Boots was returned to the shelter.
he was apparently "too much responsibility."  the folks who had him only took 3 days to figure out that it wasn't going to work and on the one hand you want to say what??  and then you want to say what did you expect?  he's 9 weeks old!  and then you think about it and what you really say is

thank you for bringing him back so soon.


thank you for not keeping him in a situation where neither of you would be happy.


thank you for not giving him to someone else or selling him at a flea market.  


thank you for not waiting until the situation becomes unbearable and you end up returning a dog who is wildly out of control or else cowered and afraid.  


thank you for returning him while he is still a confident and adorable little guy and while his chances of finding another home are so much better than they're going to be a few months from now.


thank you.  i appreciate your acting responsibly.

the folks at the shelter agreed to let me take him home with me at night and return him for display each day till he's adopted again.  he's a gorgeous little guy (not just the foster mom's opinion) and chances are he'll be chosen soon.  meantime, he's been reintroduced to the pack here at rottencocker house.  reviews were mixed from ellie and max, but maggie was so pleased to see him.  they ran off touching side by side toward their old yard, she with her head turned back to him most of the way.  it was a totally disney moment...mother and child reunited...trotting off through green pastures into the golden light of the setting sun.  no kidding.  beautifully scripted.

it strikes me that she's had the experience twice now, of being reunited with her lost son.

it strikes me with terrible longing.

late the next morning

i was stumbling around, trying to attend to the needs of the dogs and cats still present in my life when i heard children.  then i didn't.  did.  didn't.

at the garage door, the sound of a big wheel and a kid voice.  briefly.   out in the driveway, nothing.  no one.  i assumed i was hearing noise from next door so walked in that direction, stopping, listening.  nothing.  the neighborhood was still and eerily quiet in every direction.  oh dear God, i said to myself.  i'm hallucinating.  i stood, frozen, waiting for some apocalyptic vision. i stood because i was afraid to move...afraid i'd disturb whatever it was in the universe that was playing with me and start it happening again.  so that's what i was doing, standing catatonically still, when a young woman came around the corner from my front door.  a second later she was followed by two little boys, mounted up on big wheels.  and she was carrying in her arms a little brown dog.

i don't know how long it took me to figure out that they were real, that i needed to speak, that a miracle was happening right there in front of me, but eventually i came back to life - folded over and cried, some more, before i could actually speak.

from the door of his kennel to the place where he was found this morning is a very long way for a puppy to go...a quarter mile or more.  it's also a strangely straight line from here to there.  you'd think a puppy would wander, follow a butterfly or some irresistible aroma...not make a bee-line down the road like the fedex man.  all that to say, i'm not convinced that the 3 fishy people down by the pond didn't have something to do with this whole thing.

as for little choc, he shows no signs of distress of any kind.  he's not hungry or cowered or shivery.  he's, if anything, cuter than ever, sweet as always, bouncy and energetic.  thanks be to heaven.

ok, you know that bit

about chaos?

it caught up with me yesterday.  started with a rattle, ended with a sob.

i cried for me and for maggie when i took two puppies to the vet for spay/neuter, knowing someone else would be picking them up at the end of the day and that we wouldn't see them again.  one was sweet angelina, the little black bug of a pup that i'd half expected, half hoped, would be here forever.  the other was bootsy, who happens to be a gentle little fellow despite his giant economy size body and personality.  saying goodbye was more painful than i'd expected...and it took longer, as well.  it's not worth the time to explain, but i wound up ping-ponging between home and shelter, vet and dentist in one of those endlessly frustrating scenarios that's no one's fault but rather, apparently, just the universe lined up in a way that seems designed to make you crazy.  i didn't realize, cause i was so caught up in the moment and didn't have the broader perspective, but that little bumpy bit when things went a little wrong and a little wronger was the early warning thump of a full scale uh-oh-here-we-go, just crankin' up.

when i got home, i cried for poor little choc...the last lonely puppy.  in two weeks he's gone from having 6 wrestlin' buddies, 6 runnin', tumblin', bitin', lickin', barkin', chasin', nappin', nursin' tug-o-war buddies, to having none.  he was looking lost out there in the middle of the pen and on top of it all, i've been trying to wean them so he's missing his mama, too.  i brought him out into the yard to run around with eloise and max, my rottencockers, hoping they'd tire him out before i had to head back to the vet with maggie for her pre-spay tune-up.

so here's the actual very same thought that went through my head as i was trying to decide whether i should take choc with us to the vet or leave him here in the enclosure that has been his home these last few weeks...i thought, "i'm gonna make it easy on myself this time."

the gods of chaos throw back their heads and hoot - high fives, all around.

when i returned with maggie 90 minutes later, choc was gone.  gone.  the gates were still latched.  no sign of digging or climbing or alien invasion.  no possible way he could escape, but...gone.  about that time, the cat arrived with a peter rabbit consolation prize that max promptly chased into the water and that i wound up carrying around wrapped in a towel while i hiked through hip-high weeds, calling out for choc. i got some friends and scoured the surrounding fields and woods  for the next two hours, bloody bunny in hand.

there were some trespassers, loitering with fishing poles, at the pond where my lot line meets the next.  suspicious characters, all 3.  they were on the other side of the fence, claiming they had permission from the absentee owner, confusing me with questions, creating diversions, unsettling my precarious balance. Something wasn't right but i was looking for a puppy, not weird, talkative property violators.

those good time guys, those crazy gods of chaos slap their knees and meade shoots out of their noses.

Back at the dog pen i finally decided there was reason to suspect those folks had choc so i jumped into the batmobile and skidded out of the batcave, headed for a confrontation.  got there just in time to see them drive off up the hill, but not in time to get a license # or anything pertinent like that.

i had thought the bunny would die from its injuries but it was still with us, so i cried all the way to the vet again.  somewhere in all this, i spoke to the folks at the shelter...the people who actually own choc...to report our loss.  by the time i got home, there was an animal advocate APB out on him and on the 3 shifty folks who were nearby when he disappeared.  we had a second round volunteer search party - this one made up of scrambly grandsons and their investigatively gifted mom.  even they couldn't turn up a clue.  my daughter's verdict was that "this is weird.  it's just weird."

darkness fell. maggie would not leave the pen where last she saw her baby.  she would not eat or make eye contact with me so i came back to the house alone except for the rottencockers, who are no help.  the evening dragged on with phone calls, emails, on-line listings and updates.  there was tomorrow's to-do list.  then there was dragging onto the bed and sobbing...but there was no sleep.

"no rest for the wicked,"  they grin.