This Morning

This morning, my Dad inducted me into his daily excercise regime - a 3-4 mile walk down the road, across the street, down another road, turn, turn again, and then a long overgrown gravel path, and then turn around and go back. It wasn't bad. But something peculiar happened on our return trip. We had just made it back onto Robert's Road, my street, and we were passing some bottomland/swampland when we heard a dog barking - in a pitchy, whiny sort of way. My Dad and I both thought that it sounded like it came from the woods, but we walked on, until there was a large disturbance in the undergrowth - as if some creature were walking through the underbrush. Dad and I stared, and then ... a puppy walked out! He (it was definintely a he) was a small - no more than a foot and some inches long, with dark, short fur on his head and back, and his paws and face had some tannish coloring. He was stocky, and had the look of a puppy someone might have bought from and pet shop. We thought he was probably a rottweiler or a labrador. Anyway, we stopped at the first house on the street and knocked, but nobody answered. We talked to our neighbor, and she didn't know anyone on the street that had gotten a puppy recently - for the puppy wasn't very old at all. We took him home for a bit, and my dog Scrappy wasn't too thrilled - but she just sniffed him over and kept her eye on him. We all thought he was cute as hell - and he was. But we would not keep him - not a rottweiler or a lab - especially not a rottweiler. Our dealings with rottweilers have left us bereft of our two dear goats, our neighbor's cat, and almost our neighbor himself (had he not had his weed-eater to keep the rottweilers at bay). And labradors, in my experience, have been hard to control. Both breeds are large and potentially dangerous. So, although the little tyke was so cute (sooooo cute!!), we could not keep him. We took him to the animal shelter and they took him. And that was that. Scrappy is happy now - now that she is queen of the property once more, and hopefully the owners of the puppy will come and claim him. So many things have happened and I haven't yet been home a week! This time last week, I was watching Signs with Callie and Andrew, while I packed things away, and now this week, I am writing here when I should be doing the dishes or something else useful. Well, the kitchen beckons.