Is It My Perfume?

OK, I’m in. I closed on my 747-square-foot manse on Friday afternoon. Signed, sealed, delivered, it’s mine.

I was walking the dogs around my new neighborhood in the afternoon rain on Saturday, and guess what I found. A stray dog. He was a big, black, Shepherd/Scaredy-dog mix, skinny, faded collar but no tags, not fixed. He and Redford got along swimmingly. (See what I did there, with the rain and the swimmingly.) The stray followed us a couple blocks back to our house and into the back yard. He took a biscuit but only at ten paces from me.

I called Animal Control, but of course, they were closed for the weekend. The message said for animal emergencies to call 911. I figured that my temptation to adopt yet another dog was an emergency. If I kept him until Monday when the office opened again, I wasn’t gonna call. I was going to have three dogs. In my might-as-well-be-a-mobile-home. The four of us would have had 186.75 square feet each.

When the animal control officer came, the poor monkey kept circling the shed and darting away from her. At one point, he ran up onto the deck and poised himself to jump over the railing! I managed to grab his collar, and the officer got that loop-on-a-pole around his neck and rassled him into the truck.

I wanted to call out, “Wait! No! Forget it, I’ll take him,” but I bit my tongue. The officer called me about 20 minutes later—between you and me, I think she might have had a little crush on me—and told me he was fine and calm once he got to the shelter.

Man, I hope he finds a home. Him and my gentle beast from a couple weeks ago. (I haven’t had the balls to call the shelter and check on that little guy.)

I’m not a praying person, but if I were, I’d be on my knees tonight.