To start with, Colorado has early elections so I voted and feel quite free to stop paying attention to the final mud sling that accompanies these last few weeks of the electoral cycle. Big sigh of relief.
Of much more import, my dear friend, Jack Warford, turned eighty and I was fortunate enough to attend the celebration. They now live in Santa Fe which is a straight drive down Interstate 25 from here. I took the risk with my 1997 Ford Areostar van even though I have given up my cell phone -untethered in a certain way -and successfully arrived on Friday just passed dinner time. The van sounded like a squeaky wheel and since I actually know an honest mechanic there I scheduled it for a a look see and carried on.
Jack's party was all that it should have been and a good time was had by all. I only knew a couple of people there so I resorted to taking pictures and making party talk about looking for a dog. In Colorado Springs a rescued dog costs $350...a bit more than a little out of my league and morally objectionable as well. In New Mexico, throwing dogs out your car window seems to be a local pastime, so they are a little more realistic about allowing adoptions for $125, much more my speed so, I figured I'd make it a twofer.
One thing led to another and by Wednesday Susie, Jack and I kept an appointment at the Heart and Soul Sanctuary (a tax deductible not-for-profit, by the way) while the van kept its appointment at the mechanic. This woman, Natalie, bought something like 300 acres (for those of you unfamiliar with acreage, that would be HUGE), fenced it off and takes all comers. She has like forty dogs, sixty cats, horses, llamas, goats, and every small animal you can imagine. For all of the animals at her sanctuary, there is NO smell - seriously, none. No horse smell, no dog smell, none. As the owner of one cat and one dog for the past ten years or so (except since Coco has passed, that is) I have been challenged to be so successful.
The original house, which I think she lives in, was not carpeted in the usual wall to wall. Cotton bath mats, practically a hundred of them were laid just overlapping as far as my eye could see. This allows them to pick up any soiled piece and replace it with a clean one. Ingenious, really! Dog bowls, huge ones, were placed strategically up the walkway to the building and throughout the house, all of them more or less full of wet food, side by side with dry. The dogs, all smaller than mid-size, were free to roam throughout the house and the grounds. I understand that the large dogs as well as the cats were in separate buildings with accompanying yard, but since I was looking for a smaller dog and my feet don't volunteer for extraneous walking, I parked myself on the floor of the main room and let a dog choose me.
The first dog to catch my eye was her personal dog, so I guess you could say that I have pretty good instincts. A white mid-sized female, probably four or five years old kept coming back to me with a spring in her step, so just as I was making a commitment of the heart, Natalie said, "That's not a good match for you." I looked at her questionably, I prefer an animal to choose me rather than the reverse. "That dog's been adopted twice and came back both times. She's really energetic and that's not a good match for you." She added looking at my feet.
"Okay," I said to her, and "sorry, sweetheart." I said to the dog.
"Look at this one, Marian." Susie says handing me a cute little puppy. This violates two of my dog adoption rules. 1) It was a puppy, not a dog and 2) she picked it, it didn't pick me and I didn't pick it either...so even though it was cute as a button, I continued to interact with the changing field of dogs milling about.
"That is a good match for you." says Natalie. This is a six week old pup, cute as a button- which you can see for yourself, from my photo. To make a long story short, even though I went to find a dog, a 2 pound puppy is what I got. I named her Kanga, straight from my favorite children's book, Winnie the Pooh- both because she hops about and because she likes to sleep inside my jacket like a joey.
I had to stop a Trader Joe's, a store that I miss oh, so much and somehow ended up with about a dozen different packages of cookies. Evidently, that is what I really missed, though I wouldn't have said so. Okay, so I got a lot of other food as well but I am really shocked at the amount of cookies that followed me home. So, I survived my first cell free trip even if my wallet is a whole lot lighter from the dog/puppy, cookies and vehicle repairs, but hey, it's only money right? As for the election, I'll be watching from the comfort of my sofa, petting a puppy and eating some cookies. {Go VOTE ya'll}
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