Puppy Poem and Pix

Tonight's photos are dogs currently adoptable from Catahoula United Rescue Society (Curs). If you are looking for true love and devotion and are willing to give up satin bedspreads and oriental rugs, check out their site or Google your favorite dog breed. Most have rescue groups. Adopting a dog from a rescue group saves not only that dog's life but also enables rescue folks to pull another dog from a kill shelter. Most of the dogs end up in shelters for really stupid reasons. Owners abandon them when they move. They say the dogs won't come when called, or have fleas, or jump on their kids, or bark. Apparently, most of those folks are too lazy or self indulgent to get a dog training book or sign up for a training class or apply flea prevention products. But lucky me, that's how I got my Ginny and Abby.

Note to single folks who like dogs. Dog parks are full of other single people with dogs.

Here's a puppy poem from my upcoming book, Between The Lines (working title)

NEW PUPPY

By Nancy Wayman Deutsch

Busy buddy,
rapscallion
in constant motion.
Searching, finding
hidden treasure:
a discarded bit of tissue,
carried proudly off,
scavenged from my office trashcan.
Or one of my socks,
escaped from my walking shoe.

You ate my white summer sandal,
while I drifted somewhere in sleep.
Only one before I awoke
although I needed a shoe for each foot.
Or so I believed, before we met.

My Waterford vase must find a new home.
It’s silken flowers, bent over
several missing, now.
Why must you walk across the sofa table,
when the floor is nearer your paws?

You pounced on a lizard,
there in the grass
who left his tail behind
when he shimmied up the screen.
You didn’t notice his escape,
nose already calling you away
to some new smell-vision adventure.

Unrolling the toilet paper,
you ran from the bath,
because I caught you that time.
On the kitchen counter,
the meatballs sang a drool song
but, I heard them, too.

Why do you remember to bark at six o’clock,
for a puppy’s breakfast,
though you can’t remember to go outside,
when you need to pee.
I walk you for an hour.
Somehow, you wait,
keeping everything you’ve got inside
until we get home.

Your favorite toy
a fuzzy yellow duck,
which still quacks,
despite his missing foot.
Second to that lopsided duck
anything that our other dog already has
between her paws.

When we rescued you,
I thought you had lost your joy.
Though I know dogs,
this time, I was wrong.
Joy was there, hiding
behind your mismatched eyes,
waiting to be set free.

Live long and prosper.