A dog chose me as her human.
We had not even finished unpacking the moving truck when she wandered into our driveway and decided to stay.
A little bit shy with scratches around her face and on her left, front shoulder, she had a wagging tale and a winning smile and decided,
“Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people…” (Ruth 1:16).
After two days of sharing the unpacking with her and shooing her out of the house when she got too enthusiastic around my ankles we called her owner to let him know where she was.
“We were wondering where she had got to. I’ll come and get her,” he said and we headed off to town to buy some odds and ends we needed as new owners of a country estate.
Charlie followed us to the end of our drive so we decided to turn off to her house and drop her home. Her owner and two children greeted her ecstatically at their door and we drove off.
Barely two hours later she was back!
Her master walked down our drive several hours later and told us she was a good dog, had always been a wanderer and he hated to chain her up. They were new to the neighborhood too.
“She’s 7 months old and well loved,” he said as he showed off her skill at sitting and staying for a moment, “and she’s an outside dog.”
He took her home but like a boomerang she was back deciding that my house, across a trickle of a creek and a field, was where she wanted to be.
I didn’t feed her, she wasn’t my dog, I didn’t want a dog, I’d already given up a perfectly good cat who was far better behaved, much smaller and a stray!
Charlie was dogged in her persistence. She slept at my back door on the mat.
She came on walks with me,
marveling that I did not stop and pee, chase squirrels or rush through flowing water snapping at the droplets that splashed up in her pretty face.
She followed me everywhere!
After a week, I was up in the barn sorting more boxes when I saw her eating something greedily, I bent to investigate, it smelled sweet and she snatched at it hungrily. Rat poison!
In a panic Daughts called a vet, Hubs called her owner and I picked up the other cubes of poison around the perimeter of the out buildings.
We administered hydrogen peroxide and watched her vomit green bile on the lawn in the rain.
Her owners arrived an hour later and took her to their vet. Charlie went reluctantly, pushing her body against my legs pleading with me to go with her, bedraggled, wet and confused.
Once again, I had been chosen but I had to let her go.
We’ve not seen her since that afternoon although her owner called to say she was all right.
I suppose he has restrained her.
Without the responsibility of my own pets I cannot guarantee my property is a safe place to be for visiting domestics.
Well hello there! My name is Vivienne McNeny.
I am an empty nester exploring life as a Boomer…you could say I'm happily Boomering along!
As a homeschooling Mum I have finally quit the job of role model and mentor to my four children. I do what I want to do, eat when I feel like it, enjoy life with my blue eyed cowboy and clean my house once a month or so whether it needs it or not!
In true English form I write about the emergence of my true identity now that I can no longer hide behind my children as their Mum.
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