Reluctance is a word that immediately popped into my head as I thought about this blog piece. Should I or should I not put down my thoughts on the occurrences of last week. There are a couple of friends with whom I communicated about our most recent dog experience but up until now I've kept a low profile.
If you're a reader you'll know we lost our beautiful Charlie in a horrible accident on February 8. The Queen and I are still in mourning. He was such a joy to be with and believe me when I write there were very few hours of the day when we weren't together. I know I'm still grieving because yesterday I was driving on Dublin Road, thought of him and tears welled up in my eyes.
Not to make light of bad situations but there was a joke uttered by the comedian George Gobel on the Tonight Show in December of 1969 that comes to mind; "Did you ever feel like the whole world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?" Gobel was referring to being the butt of jokes that evening put forth by Dean Martin, Peter Lawford and a host of others. It stuck with me and many times in life as I've been put in bad situations I've become the brown shoes. It's happened again.
This past Tuesday I had a few errands to run on the north side of Columbus and as it happened I was thinking about Charlie and furry friends when it hit me. I recalled a well respected canine humane facility located north of Columbus by twenty miles in Delaware, Ohio. The refuge is located a mile west of I-71 north and since I'd completed my tasks I thought, "What the heck? I've nothing to do. I'll drive out there and see if there are any pups in need of a home."
I wasn't in the building ten minutes when one of the workers brought out a terrier mix with splotchy brown and black fur and weighing in at around 20 lbs. The best way to describe him would be to think about The Tramp in the movie, 'Lady and the Tramp'. He was cute, about a year old with little known about his background except he came out of southeast Ohio near Athens. The lady working with him had developed a positive relationship. Upon being introduced to me he was skittish but eventually let me scratch underneath his chin while lying at my feet. I called this a victory
After a half hour the worker told me the society had a foster program and we could take the dog home for two weeks and if after that period he acclimated to us and we to him adoption could go forward. I thanked her and left for home to explain the situation to the wife and see if she wanted to go back and check out the lad. She said, "Yes" so we picked up our new guest. On the trip back to Dublin I noticed the dog was comfortable with my spouse which was a good sign.
We arrived at our condo around 4 pm and 'Stewie' snifffed around the house; a very normal procedure. Even then I noticed he was nervous especially when I tried to approach him so I let him be. Our living room is around 15 feet from our front door and this is where he settled down. He was lying on his tummy when he saw The Queen go to the front door on her way to the garage. Faster than one could say, "Outta here" Stewie was up and out the front door and then, somehow, managed to squeeze between the bars on the gate. We live in a wooded area and that's where he went------into the woods. Ladies and gentlemen, he was a runner, most likely brought on by fear.
From 4:00 on we searched on foot and in our cars without any luck. Two of our neighbors helped with the process. We called the police. We walked door to door handing out flyers with his picture on them. We called the humane society. Dublin has a social network on the computer. At 6 pm that evening we received a notice he was seen four blocks south of our condo. That was the last we heard that day. I didn't sleep much that night. In the morning I once again scoured the neighborhood then went to the Dublin police department and gave them his picture with all the required information. And then, at 11 am, disaster struck. A most professional young man, one of Dublin's finest, contacted us to say Stewie had been hit by a car on highway 33 located five miles from our home and that he had been killed.
I'm not posting this piece to gain sympathy. I am putting this down to ease my mind and conscience. No one is to blame for this situation. It just happened. It's often been said that God has a plan. Well, I don't like His plan and I'm sick that we've lost two most wonderful of all creatures on this earth in one short month.
It just doesn't seem right.
No comments:
Post a Comment