If you've never been by here before, you don't know we live in a 1920s era farm house. It's beautiful. 2 stories of original style everything. My husband bought this house because it looked like what he thought my grandma would have had. This means wide beautiful woodwork, glass doorknobs, no shower, a big single bowl kitchen sink and no air conditioning. We live in the northern part of the country, so it's not normally a huge issue, but it's been 90+ degrees with thunderstorms.
Our poor beagle, Skippy is terrified of thunder. He often has to be tranquilized to get through it. We're talking huddled mass of quivering, panting, drooling neediness. The poor thing shakes so hard, that if he's on the couch or bed it feels like a bad 'magic fingers' bed. He has reason to be afraid. He's a rescue from hurricane Ivan. To him, thunder, lightning and rain mean that his home is about to disappear, his pack will be gone, his humans will be gone, he'll be hungry, wet, lost and maybe (who knows) have to run from alligators. He is a hunting animal from Florida after all.
When there is a natural disaster of this type, rescued animals that aren't able to be reunited with their owners are put in shelters. As the shelters in nearby areas fill up, they are shipped farther and farther away to hopefully be adopted. We lived in Knoxville, TN and were going out to eat on my husband's birthday. There is an animal shelter on Kingston Pike with a 'play yard' that's visible from the street. As we were driving by, we saw a passel of puppies out there playing. Just on a whim, we stopped in to watch them play. To get to the play area, you have to go through a room where the animals are kenneled. Labs and lab mixes seemed to dominate the room, there was a beautiful blue tick ( I think ) hound, brindled dachsunds, pomeranians and just plain old mutts. Of course, we had to stop and pet some of these on the way to see the puppies. Over in the corner in the bottom tier, was Skippy. Awwwww, it was love at first sight (for my husband).
I tried to be the voice of reason. Beagles bay loudly. Beagles eat everything. Beagles run away. Beagles chase little animals and we have two cats. The dog we have won't like having another dog come to the house. My husband looks at me, Skippy looks at me. Two sets of pitiful brown eyes - awwwww... The adoption was on. After all the paperwork was complete, we took Lucy (the other dog) to the shelter to see if they would get along. He immediately rolled over for her and licked her face. She decided she could "whoop his ass" at any time and would still be the alpha dog, so home we went.
After all the drama involved in introducing him to the cats, he was official. Fast forward a couple of weeks. Husband has to leave town for 5-1/2 weeks for work. I work, so Skippy is kenneled a good portion of the day. Skippy feels abandoned by his man person. The pee commences. Pee on shoes. Pee on laundry hamper. Pee on husband's pillow. Pee on husband's side of the bed. Pee on any damn thing that smelled like husband. I swear the dog has a 10 gallon bladder and can find something to pee on with a 2 second window of opportunity. This is one time I very seriously considered lying through my teeth to the husband. I came so close to taking the dog back to the shelter to be put back up for adoption and telling my husband he ran away. You know how it goes, lies snowball and I have enough trouble remembering reality. I just didn't have the energy to try and remembe lies, so I kept the dog.
We finally got through housebreaking issues and stealing garbage issues. Now there's just the occasional running away and finding a skunk issue. And thunderstorms. Thank goodness the weather is due to cool down and clear up. We'll get him peeled off our sweaty, beagle smelling legs and laps, until next time. Poor baby.
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