Fur Family

If it weren’t for the dogs, I could just close the house and go for as long as I like, but there are five depending on me. I planned to be dog less so I could travel, but these dogs bark at strangers in the night. Many days I talk and they listen; these days they’re the only ones who do. We’re friends, so I provide for them when I travel.

About ten years ago, when Kirt and I bought the house in PuertoRico, we fed dogs that came and went; only Stormie, the border collie stayed. A couple of years later we returned to be greeted by Blondie, who was then a young adult of at least a year, probably a year and a half.

Every trip to Puerto Rico for a few years we were welcomed home by Blondie and Stormie, and then someone in a big SUV dumped Chi in front of the neighbor’s house. Every year other dogs migrated past our door. Kirt never didn’t have a problem with feeding the strays, but had philosophical discussions about what was our problem and what is the island’s problem; and he was as kind hearted a man as I’ve ever meet.

We left the world of pure bred champion dogs behind in Illinois, said farewell to cold weather and life with dogs as the epicenter, but now, we had two Puerto Rican street dogs going with us to New Orleans. Blondie and Chi loved the Big Easy; raccoons under a house were way better than squeaky toys, but for a new invention, the leash, they’d have a raccoon for doggie games.

In the last months of Kirt’s life Lucky and Robert Redford appeared in the same week. Kirt and I agreed we needed a couple of boys to balance the girl-boy ratio.  Along came Lola with marks of physical abuse still visible, her feet swollen giving her a sadly endearing gait.  Before he died, we had a family of five fur kids.

Here I am almost three years later with my family of five.