Lassie Come Home

Lassie Come Home
Well, the cat (or actually the dog) is out of the bag. As y0u may have previously read, the mountain man and I are the not so proud owners of not one, not two, but three dauschunds. Yep, I was gracious enough to be gifted with two of the little mini hotdogs from a friend who was unable to keep them about six years ago, and I came to this wedded union proudly bearing my tail wagging dowry. Coincidently (I think not), my most handsome groom had bestowed upon his son the same breed of useless (but cute) canine for his confirmation seven years earlier. So we find ourselves today the proud caretakers/slaves to three of the most useless animals on the planet, unless of course your goal is to catch the most squirrels in the woods behind our house. THEN you'd be sitting pretty.

My personal Grizzly Adams, has made it VERY clear that if not for the happiness of two of our three other dependants (the kids), said dogs would long have been banished from the homestead. However, I have seen the big guy "smush" (a snuggle with the dog's head under his chin - a weird foriedn mating ritual?) with our female lassie, and I've long suspected in the case of moutain man that his bark was worse than his bite. Yesterday, we learned the truth.

I returned home from my fabulous (choke, choke) choice of employment around five pm, which at this particular time of year is pitch black on the northeastern seaboard. After a grueling work day (have I mentioned we don't have facebook on the job?-) and my leisure traffic filled commute, I dragged my ass, and my hand bag, and my lunch tote out of my car and into the house. Turning back to hang up my coat in the foyer, I realized the wind had pushed open the door I apparently had not shut securely. Now, our third little pooch, Bruno, is male, but is really the queen of the brood. And she was in no way going out in the dark windy night. Nope. She ran right for her crate and snuggled under a blanket.

The other two dogs, however, have a great heart for wanderlust. They love to run , and were out the door and in the wind before I had turned around. They have bolted before, and let me tell you, for dogs with such short legs, they can really run fast. All this added up to my use of a few expletives while donning my coat and taking off to a late start behind the dogs. Our youngest son was fast behind, and the two of us started out on a search for two small dogs in the black of night-the proverbial needle in a haystack---magnified 100 fold, due to my forgotten eyeglasses, still in my handbag, which I had dropped by the door in my haste. Not a bright move, considering, I should probably have 3 seeing eye dogs when not wearing them.

So, off we went down the block, shouting the names of both runners. Which, by the way, had every dog in the neighborhood barking except the two we were seeking. This was a good thing, though, because we got to see some neighbors we hadn't really seen since the weather got cold. (Nieghbors : "Hi. Looking for those mangy mutts again? Me: "Grunt" followed by more expletive adjectives for the dogs.)

Twenty minutes and our second pass down the block later, Grizzly Adams reports that he, with great foresight, had grabbed a piece of cheese (which is apparently the only thing irresistable to these mud footed monsters), and was able to lure Rusty, our biological female back to the house. She had been in the back woods, apparently hunting for a fridge full of cheese.

He then tells us that he found our littlest (but fastest) member of our canine clan , Mickey, in the garage of a neighbor a few doors down. Apparently, this dog seems to always seek out human company. Lucky , or unlucky as the case may be, our beloved neighbor was plying through his holiday decorations, when confronted with our tail wagging five inch high terror.

So, alas, the dogs were safe, we were near frost bitten, and mountain man grumbled all the way back to the house about those good for nothing, useless mongrels. "I have no care for those damned pests anyhow."

Sure you don't big guy. Oh, and thanks for bringing them back home. That's why we love you. You're so ruff and tough! xoxoxo