Doggie Tales

We got this postcard in the mail the other day about a lost Jack Russell Terrier, with a pretty hefty amount of reward money. Yesterday I was walking up the driveway from the road and off in the far corner of the neighbors' field I saw a JRT! I was thinking "pleeeeease let this be the same dog!" Not that I really could have accepted a large sum of money just for happening to stumble across a dog, but it wasn't the same dog anyway. I walked out there and called the dog, and she came running up to me. I didn't recognize her as one of the locals, so I brought her to the house, snapped a leash on her, and called the phone number on her tag. Turned out she lives maybe a quarter mile away, and probably would have gone back home if I'd left her alone, but I didn't want her to go out on the road. So her owner came and picked her up, and now I've met another one the neighbors.

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There is a gigantic, mostly deaf, obese, old black Labrador that lives in the neighborhood. He's not neutered. He's a nice dog, doesn't mess with my birds, and will come over to "help" if the farrier or vet is here and the gate happens to be open. Certain other neighborhood people don't like him much. Actually they hate him, because he wanders all over, craps in people's yards, and in his younger days would search far and wide and be very destructive toward fences and kennels in search of females in heat. Even in his old age, he still wanders. There is one person in particular who really bears a grudge, I think because the dog ripped up their fencing years ago to try to be around the female dog they had at the time.

They have a new female dog now, and I find it somewhat hypocritical that they don't keep her very well contained (she's something of an escape artist)...or spayed. So every now and then when I am sitting in the front window area working on my art, I see this female wiggling around the field out front, flirting for all she is worth with this ancient black lab. He'll prance around in his stiff-legged way and wag his tail a lot, but that's been all he can do these last few years....

...Until a couple days ago. And let's just say that if the old guy isn't shooting blanks, there may be puppies before too long... Wouldn't that be sort of like karma?