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This column should have concerned something significant, but just as I sat down to collect some scintillating thoughts about vital issues of the day, like CU football recruiting practices and the investigation of Janet Jackson's exposed nipple, Martha announced that our spare dogs had escaped.
Normally we have but one dog, a 15-year-old female chow
mix named Ted, which comes from Teddy, because when she was
a puppy, our daughters thought she looked like a teddy
bear. That term comes from President Theodore Roosevelt, a
famous hunter who in 1902 refused to shoot a bear in
Mississippi because the circumstances weren't sporting. A
cartoon made the incident famous, and a store owner in
Brooklyn got the president's permission to make Teddy's
Bears.
Roosevelt was a Republican, so you can see that the GOP
holds an honored role in our household. On the other hand,
he set aside forest reserves to prevent exploitation of the
public domain, he promoted the death tax,
and he
railed against malefactors of great wealth,
so he
might have some trouble fitting into the modern Republican
party.
Being rather ancient and arthritic, our Ted hasn't given much thought to escape for years. Even if you leave the gate open, she'll ignore the opportunity and sleep on the porch.
However, we have been dog-sitting for some younger and more athletic critters who have figured out how to climb the woodpile, jump over the back fence and explore Salida.
Just how that came about is one of those small-town chains of mishap. It started with a fellow named Tom, who has a small shepherd mix named Laika. Tom had to be out of town, and he had made arrangements with a dog-sitter, except that dog-sitter wasn't answering her phone when the time came.
So he asked our daughter Columbine to watch Laika until she could get hold of that dog-sitter, and then take Laika there. Columbine, who lives about three blocks away from us, has a big white German shepherd named Sierra. On Sunday, Columbine flew to Oregon to visit her sister, Abby. And she had not been able to find Laika's regular sitter before she left.
So instead of just dog-sitting Sierra for the duration, we had both Sierra and Laika. When they're both indoors, they pester our cats, and when they're both outdoors, they escape when they're not barking at everything that moves, from birds in the sky to water dripping off icicles.
The current condition of Salida streets and sidewalks is such that there's no good way to go dog-hunting. We seldom have snow on the ground for more than a couple of days, but it's been so cold that there's still about a foot of the Feb. 1 storm which was followed by a couple of smaller snowfalls.
I have seen city plows at work. and in some places the pavement is bare. But in many others, it's like a skating rink. If you walk, you're not likely to slide into anything, but you could slip and fall and break something important. And there's the danger that some motorist will slide into you.
But if you drive, you could slide into some object or some person. On the other hand, you've got two tons of metal around you, so you're less worried about someone's car sliding into you.
The most sensible course might be to sit back and figure that the dogs will eventually return, but this isn't home for either dog, so they might not come back here. Further, there's a dog-catcher, and some stiff fines to get the pets out of the pound. And I don't know dog-sitting etiquette well enough to know who should be responsible for the fines in this case.
Even if just waiting is the most sensible course, it's
hard to resist the thought that you shouldn't just sit
there, but you should do something. I suspect that serving
in our legislature is something like that -- when here's a
problem, like a drought, there's a compulsion to do
something,
even if there's nothing to do that would
help the situation.
So we slid around town in four-wheel-drive for half an hour, discovering several loose dogs, but none that we wanted. Martha decided to walk over to Columbine's house and wait for them there, since that seemed like Sierra's most logical destination. She reached the corner down the block, and the dogs ran up to her.
I have read that dogs do not have emotions. But when
Martha returned with them, they had expressions like
Some UFOs abducted us from your yard and we've been
trying to get back ever since, so we're really glad you
found us.
Thus all is well, at the moment. Somehow we'll manage
until Columbine returns and takes the extra dogs.
Meanwhile, if you get one of those Work at home
solicitations, ignore it. Unless, of course, you want to be
in a position where you can't get any work done because
you're off chasing dogs.
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