TOOK A SUNDAY OFF
I decided to take a week off from the column. Needed a little break. Wish I had my act together enough to stay ahead of the game, but that seldom happens.
Celeste got the part of an old widow in Robin Hood (Children’s Theatre), and she has about a dozen lines. It’s her first speaking part. She’s been in five or six other shows, but always as part of the chorus or part of a crowd. If she would perform onstage the way she does at home, she’d steal every scene that she’s in, but I expect she’ll do it just like they tell her to. She can do all these different voices, pick up accents and speech impediments and mannerisms so fast and accurate it sometimes boggles my mind, yet she still has enough shy in her that she’ll only do those things with family and friends.
Another new development is our foster dog, Roo. We’ve had her for a month now, and she was a bit more damaged than we originally realized. She was rescued from the shelter, which had rescued her from dog hoarders who had 53 dogs in a single-wide trailer. Because the people had been in trouble for hoarding before, they didn’t let the dogs outside because they didn’t want the neighbors to know how many they had again. So Roo basically came to us with a fear of outdoors. Ever try to housebreak a dog who is afraid of outside?
But Roo is so eager to please that she’s learned pretty fast. She still has a little trouble knowing how to ask to go out, but she’s getting it. She had never been around men until she was taken away from the hoarders, so she has a lot of trouble not being afraid of men. We’ve been taking her to the dog park and Petsmart to expose her to men other than Geoff.
I have no clue what kind of dog she is. She’s only about 10 lbs, so she’s smaller than she looks in the picture. She has the markings of a german shepherd, but circles around her eyes like a raccoon. Funny thing is she doesn’t shed at all. That’s a terrier/poodle trait, but I don’t see either of those breeds in her. She’s about 3 years old and hadn’t been spayed until we got her, but she’s remarkably healthy.
It’s been fun getting to know her and watching her heal and conquer her fears. She’s such a happy morning dog, and she harrasses Murry and Chewie (who are NOT easy to get up in the morning) until she gets both of them playing.
We’ve already found her one new home, but that didn’t work out, and it set Roo back quite a bit when we got her back. She was back to hiding under the bed and being afraid of being put on a leash. Since she’s doing so well with us and our other animals, I expect we’ll probably end up keeping her. It feels cruel to get her to trust, then hand her off to someone else and make her start all over again.
