Monday, January 19, 2004

NEW DOG NEW DOG!!

I started crying in the pound today. It's not right that dogs have to be there. It's not right for puppies to sleep on cement surrounded by their own poop. They become silent as you come near, sniff your fingers, jump up with their paws against the fence. Wiggle and sniff and whine, and then bark frantically as you turn away and move on.

Rows of dogs. Some are beautiful, some are scruffy. They all seem to know what's going on. They know it's an audition. They know they're competing. They what's at stake.

What is it about dogs? Why do they crave human companionship the way they do. Desperately begging for affection and touch and words of affirmation..... why?

Two pound puppies we have in the house now. North End scrubs.... The first couple days home are always weird. A dog that comes home from the pound seems sad. You think it should be happy, because it's acquired a home. In the case of both of our dogs, they were off the street. None of this nice-people-couldn't-take-care-of-me-anymore business, both of these were scooped out of an alley. Today's addition, Indy, is a black furry skeleton, and at 10 months old, no-one's really sure what her life was like before the pound. She was wandering the streets with two other dogs, on the brink of starvation.

Now she's asleep on a mattress, her head resting on a pillow, and she seems sad. Maybe she doesn't realize that she's home. Maybe she thinks she'll be returning to the cement floor amidst the raucous barking of the North End's misfit dogs. We're strangers to her, and who knows what sort of humans she's dealt with in the past.

Soon she'll understand. Soon she'll feel safe. Once we've fattened her up and the Dooders warms up to her.

No-one should be homeless. Welcome home Indy.

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