Lucky

Usually it's all fun and games around here dog-wise. There's dog shaming to be done and challenges that could always be worked through and dogs come to their appropriately timely demise. Especially around this time of year the yucks are always coming. Dogs in costumes! Dogs refusing costumes! Hearty hilarity!

Last weekend I was walking with a woman I know slightly and another woman I know even less well came up to me, stood inches away, and poked her finger in my face telling me to never, ever take pictures of her dog and put them on the internet again. We will never know why because she didn't think I needed to know, she just wanted to yell. I am very grateful for the woman I was walking with because that kind of shit needs a witness.

Then Bob's stomach actually tried to tie itself in knots. I saw him the other day and he looks pretty good, though. No Pupkin for him this year but that may be a relief to the old boy.

This afternoon, after hearing some yelling from my living room window, I went down to the street to see what I could do about a dog altercation. I don't want to get into the details here because many of the ones I have are hearsay and I don't think it'd do anyone a service to have them in an easily searchable format. Many thanks go to Paw Paw Petcare, Rikke, Chuck & Buddha's, Waggy Walkers, random neighbor who hugged me even though she didn't recognize me, and the Moskal-Stopek alliance for listening, helping, and not making me feel any worse about all the crying I did. There's reason to believe that the whole thing will have a humane ending if not a good one.

This is all to say that, while I'm feeling generally kind of awful, I also feel very lucky. I'm lucky to know the dogs I know and the people I know. I'm lucky to have enough income and new income options that I can learn more about working with and advocating for dogs. I'm lucky I can afford dog walkers that I trust so much. I'm lucky that, when I picked a dog sight unseen, he turned out to be as good as he is (though far, of course, from perfect).

We're all lucky if we have animals we love and trust. So please give a pet a snuggle today. They deserve it.

Yes, even if they did just puke on your brand new boots.