Do something like this?
True, it all started over eight years ago when we adopted our dog from an animal shelter. She had been a stray and was picked up by animal control and brought to the shelter. Judging by her condition at that time, it was estimated that she had been on her own for several months. She was a mess–long matted hair covering a skin and bones little body. She is a fantastic dog, except for one thing. In order to survive on her own, she had to hunt and gather every bit of garbage possible and fight off any other creatures who wanted to take it from her. I should have known better, but I tried to take something away from her in her best interest.
What was I trying to take from her? That’s an odd story. My DP and I generally take the dog together on her last walk of the day; we usually walk the same route in the evening. On this route, we pass a house with a front bay window and four Yorkies. Why is it that they usually come in packs? This house has often put bread in their front yard. I imagine that their reasoning is the the bread and squirrels attracted by the bread will amuse and delight the pack of Yorkies. They have dogs–don’t they understand that dogs will also want to eat the bread? But no, the item in question wasn’t bread.
I can only place a guess at what they were thinking this time. They must have had some dog food that the pack didn’t like or had gone rancid. You can’t just throw the dog food away, you should use it to mulch the trees in your front yard. Yes, you did read that correctly. A month ago when it first appeared I thought that it was some sort of pelletized mulch, then the dog started eating it like there was no other source of food available (certainly not her high-quality nutritionally balanced kibble waiting at home). Another neighbor was worried that they were trying to poison the neghborhood dogs. We would shorten her leash when we approached the Yorkie house–most of the time. Some nights we would be talking and not notice until the dog was jerking toward a tree and filling her gullet as quickly as possible. We would just pull her back to the sidewalk and continue on, bewildered why anyone in their right mind uses dog food as a mulch.
With the raining and drying cycles in the last few weeks, the dog food turned to mush and then dried in a solid mass. The dog would now try to break of a piece of the rancid dog food mulch when we weren’t watching. That is what happened last night. I should have known better. I should have remembered other times that I have tried to remove horrible things from her mouth. But no, I didn’t want her to get sick. The wilderbeastie finally dropped the prized piece of rancid dog food mulch and decided that my flesh, the flesh of the hand that feeds her and rubs her ears, would make a nice substitute.
Filed under: Green green grass of home, She's crafty, The waiting game, Walkabout, Wide open spaces
It just sort of happened.
Sometimes I really hate WordPress. I have written posts in the past few weeks, really I have. I save them so that I can return when my mind is fresh and continue to craft them into something that I would want to read. But then I open the saved post and find…….most of it has disappeared. Oh certainly this can be attributed to my naivete as a new blogger, but that makes it no less aggravating. I just wrote a few paragraphs summarizing the year-long building renovation project of the organization I work for, the work I had done to completely revamp the programs I manage, and my process deciding that this work was most likely the pinnacle of my efforts here and the time has come to find a new challenge. I saved the post. I opened the post. The post was now one sentence in length. Aargh.
But moving on…..I knew when I started this blog that itwould most likely not be like the blogs that I frequent–insightful, funny, well-written posts that appear once a day. No, my blog would be lucky to have 2-3 posts a week. So here I am, posting for the first time in nearly two months.
My darling partner and I made our every-other-year sojourn to visit my uncle’s farm for the wheat and barley harvest. The harvest was expected to be late when we bought our tickets, then a hot summer and a drought moved the season ahead. Two days after we arrived, harvest was finished. What shall we do with our time? Take a trip to the hot springs in Canada? Spend a few days at Coeur d’Alene? No, of course not. We painted the 5-bedroom 1890 farmhouse. It was a good time with the family, working on a common project and doing something that my uncle could never have done on his own.
We also went to see the grandstand show of the annual convention for the PGI with a few in-laws and a friend from seminary and her partner, some of the coolest people imaginable. A great time was had by all. Just imagine the light, sound, and pure energy of over 10 million firecrackers joined in a “Super String”
A week before we went to the farm we received a phone call from a social worker at our adoption agency. Yes, one of those voice messages that makes your heart stop. An expectant woman had selected five families from the profile book, ours was among the five. She asked the social worker to call each of the families and ask if they would be willing to work with her in her particular situation. Our answer was a very easy YES! The next message from the social worker was that the woman had not decided between parenting and adoption and wanted to wait until closer to the due date to meet any families.
Then a week and a half ago, the same social worker called me at work to say that they expectant woman had narrowed it down to us, just us, and that while she hadn’t made a decision between parenting and adoption, she thought it might be a better informed decision if she met us. So we set a time.
We met in the parking lot of the agency, having arrived at the same time. She brought her mother with her. Her mother pulled out a list she had made of everything she liked about us. She talked about the dreams she has for her child. She talked about her decision process. We talked about openness. Everything she said was so genuine. We exchanged contact information and agreed that she would contact us when and if she wanted to move forward.
The hopefulness is back. We started picking out a name, which is just so much work. I’ve been sewing little things like a maniac. We’ve been trying to remind ourselves that she hasn’t made her decision, but we are still racing ahead. We keep marvelling that this is so very different than our experience last year.
If she decides to parent, that will be a well thought out decision and it will be a good decision. If she decides to place with us, this could be the open adoption relationship that we have dreamed about.
