It's only about six o'clock in the evening here, but they've had a long day. Heck, they've had a long month. They're tuckered, and rightfully so.
Because we're moving, and because we have logistical nightmares trying to keep the boys with people who both want them and know how to take care of them, they have been shuttled around the better part of two states. Today I picked them up and drove two hundred and fifty miles home. Sure, the back of the car was air-conditioned, but they're tuckered. For the last week they've been in tight quarters in a loving home, surrounded by children and at least one other dog. Most importantly, they haven't seen Karen, who calms them and knows how to take care of them best. We had to buy run-of-the-mill dog food because we were caught with having to remove them from one location and take them to another without bringing along their regular food. The person who was allegedly watching them went to play golf on July 4th and didn't leave any air conditioning on, no fan on and no water. Even though we were able to provide water, the room was stifling. Karen and I got them out of there and took them elsewhere, where they were cooped up and left along a lot over the weekend. Then they were driven about a hundred miles to a new venue where they've been for a week.
Before that, they were with a young couple and their two-year-old daughter who played dress-up with Custer. Given Custer's proclivities for small children, it's not hard to imagine the brute sitting calmly next to the little girl as she put bows and ribbons around his ears. I just wish we could have seen pictures of him like that.
Each weekend we go home we take them with us. That's a three-hundred mile drive both ways in the back of the car, sometimes with the sun beating down on them through the rear window. Although my car has vents for the air conditioning to blow on them, Karen's car doesn't. We have to make stops to let them do their business and give them water. Inevitably, when we get out, people want to pet them and ask about them. They're always on call whenever get out of the car. It has to be tiresome for them to be petted all the time, although you'd never know it looking at them as they lap up the attention. But then it's back into the rear of the car where, if they're really lucky, Karen will throw something from her lunch to them, usually bouncing it off the interior roof of my car. Somehow, she never seems to bounce it off the interior roof of her car...
...These are our boys. We love them and try to take care of them as best we can. It's been rough on us not being with them, but nowhere near as rough as it's been on them being passed around like the collection plate at church. Through it all, they've borne the indignities and strains of being in new locations with new people almost weekly extremely well. If it were me, I'd feel unwanted, no matter how much it was explained to me otherwise. It doesn't matter how much we tell them because they don't understand a word we say.
Sherman and Custer are the best dogs I've ever been around. Sure, they have their problems, whether it be physical (Sherman) or mental (Custer). But they are the most loving dogs a human could ask for, and we're darned lucky to have them in our lives.
(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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