Life is strange.
I should actually start last year for this story, I suppose, or perhaps the year before. I have two children, now ages 13 and 5. My Mother-In-Law, their Grammy, passed away two years ago. It was hard to understand for my then 3-year-old. My then 11-year-old understood all too well.
There was a giant void in all of our lives, and for the adults, my husband and I, there was no filling it, not even a way to soften the fact that the void existed. For the children, however, we tried to figure out something to make it "not as bad."
Fast forward a year.
We decided that the children needed a dog. We already had a cat, but cats don't run around and wag their tales, or bring you balls to throw for them. A dog does.
We talked for months about what kind of dog, what size dog, where to look. We went to shelters, we searched the Internet. We knew we didn't want to spend much money, and we don't support puppy mills, so we knew it would have to be a rescue animal.
We went to the local petsmart one weekend when we knew they would have rescue animals. We got there as the van arrived, and my husband helped the people unload all the cages and all the animals. My eyes immediately settled on a beautiful, bossy black lab pup. He was the only one, and I scooped him up before his big paws could hit the floor.
At almost the same time, my son was reaching into a group of coon-hound pups, and scooping up his own "pick of the litter." I had decided on the lab. Period. As we made my son put his pup back, he burst into tears and sobs. I was NOT giving up the lab, but my husband and I couldn't stand the tears. What to do?
We arrived home with two new puppies. Then the nightmare began.
Long story short, the little coon-hound had a congenital defect and couldn't hold down food. We spent hundreds of dollars and drove hundreds of miles. She got smaller and weaker, the lab got bigger and stronger. We finally had to find a new home for my beloved lab, who I called "Sarge", (he was an alpha male that "barked" out orders.) We concentrated all our energy, and all our money, on saving "Scout." Thousands of dollars later, there was simply nothing else we could do. We were all devastated.
So here we were, just a year and a half later, and a brilliant idea had become a disaster. We swore no more dogs for years. We still haven't paid off all the vet bills on the credit cards.
Life is strange.
My children really wanted another dog. A healthy dog to play with. My five-year old wanted a new pet so much that she found a phonebook, and flipped through the pages, found a telephone, and somehow made a call.... to a PET STORE. I heard her say to the telephone "Hi. I want a pet." She then handed the phone to me. I looked at it in disbelief (she can't read yet), and said "hello?" A lady said "Fish n Chirps, may I help you?" I did what any normal person would do in that situation. I hung up.
It wasn't long after that I got some interesting news. My best friend of "muffled number" years does not like dogs. Let me rephrase. DID not like dogs. Then along comes Sam, the most adorable Beagle mix you have ever seen. You can read all about Sam on
her site. Sam had a hard life before he was "rescued," and believe me, he was rescued.
Time passed by, then late one evening my husband called. "I found something. Can we keep it?" I knew whatever it was was living, or he wouldn't have asked that. I cautiously asked what it was.
He did not tell me. Instead he told me how he was driving in the middle of nowhere on his way home from a job. He saw a furry, muddy black thing laying in a field with sticks and wire sticking out of it. He went to get a closer look and it got up and came towards him dragging a three-foot-long stick that was stuck in the hair of a hind leg. He removed the stick, and some of the wire and trash and whatever else he could remove, and put it in the truck. It was with him, looking at him with big eyes.
Gee, whatever could it be?
He brought it home and snuck it into our bathroom. It was the dirtiest smelliest thing I had ever seen. It had enough mud on it to grow a respectable garden, enough wire wound into its curly black and gold hair to make a small cage, and enough mats that had to be cut out to stuff a small chair cushion. And it had the sweetest golden brown eyes.
We did the best cleanup job we could and dried it off. It ran around like crazy when we got it out of the tub. It was a she. We opened the bathroom door, and she took off in a happy run. My husband and I looked at each other and waited.
"A DOG!!!!!!!!! A DOG!!!!!!!" the children yelled from the other room.
This dog then went on a hunt around the house. It found a ball we didn't even know existed, brought it to us, and waited. I threw it. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her, grabbed it, and brought it straight back. The kids squealed with glee.
We named her Sassy. My husband came up with the name because his Mothers initials were s.a.s. We all agreed it was a good name, and that Grammy would have gotten a kick out of it.
My husband told me he thought God had him drive that way, had him find that dog. Her personality is perfect for our family. She even gets along with the cat. She is sweet, and smart, and playful. We could not have searched the world over and found a better fit.
I called my best friend of "muffled number" years. "Guess what we have."
I told her the whole story and emailed a picture or two. We laughed at the fact we were both dog owners. We laughed at the way we got them, rescuers that we are. We laughed because dogs are work. We laughed because we already had too much work. We laughed because there was really nothing else we could do.
Life is strange, indeed.
