IF I HAD A DOLLAR
for every time somebody said to me:
“I could never work here. How do you not take them all home?”~
I would be one fat cat.
You can’t bring them all home, so you’ve got to bring home to them.
FREEDOM
The “quiet,” “shy,” “well behaved” dog you see in the cage is not necessarily any of those things when she’s out of the cage.
Confinement changes us.
Freedom changes us.
Who would we be if nothing separated us from ourselves or from each other?
CHINESE CRESTED
Two naked siblings came in today.
A stringent little couple with their pink and grey blotchy skin and their matching outdated wispy combover tufts. Damn, they’re oddly gorgeous.
They have to get adopted together because the nudist sister is painfully shy and dependent on her exhibitionist brother.
They’re maintenance intense and have stolen everyone’s attention here. Nora Ephron would suggest they’re the worst kind of maintenance: high maintenance who think they’re low maintenance.
They require sunblock rubbed all over them to avoid sunburn in the summer and thick warm sweaters to avoid wind burn in the winter. Just to get them out the door for a walk can take upward of 15 minutes.
After I massage SPF 30 into grandma’s crinkly birthday suit and grandpa’s corrugated epidermis, we head out for a stroll, no longer unprotected or vulnerable.
Heads held high, toupees flying in the breeze.
HAPPY TAIL
It’s a term that sounds wonderful.
It’s not wonderful at all.
I learned this new phrase by arriving at a crime scene this morning.
Blood on the floor.
Blood on the walls.
Was I expected to draw a chalk outline of the body?
I would come to know this mysterious killer throughout my years at the shelter. His name was “Happy Tail.”
It occurs when a dog’s tail repeatedly hits solid objects with strong force during a wagging session, resulting in the thin skin of their tail splitting open.
After hours of this lashing, the cement walls resembled Jackson Pollock’s 1946 Red Composition (which sold at auction for $12 million at Christie’s by the way). I think I may have taken a picture of it while I was scrubbing. That sounds like something I’d do.
Anyway, I suddenly saw the beauty in it.
It was physical evidence of happiness.
SIX SPHYNX
Well, it’s official.
I work at a nudist colony.
A naturist resort.
Whatever you want to call it, I am clearly overdressed.
The Chinese crested have already taken a back seat to the six sphynxes that were brought in today.
I assumed they’d be overtly shy and maybe even a little embarrassed. I was prepared to engage with the alien creature but they made the first move. Turns out they’re desperate for affection, and by affection, I mean heat.
Will they get adopted to be displayed, or to be loved?
Will they get adopted by someone who recognizes their own anomalies staring back at them?
Will they get adopted at all?
BEST SOUND EVER
I love the clang of the cowbell in the beginning of “Honkey Tonk Women.”
And the swish of milk foaming from an espresso machine.
I love the jingle my washing machine makes in an effort to cheerfully alert me that my laundry is done, even though I ignore it every single time.
I love hearing my late grandmother’s voice in my dreams.
But my favorite sound in all of life is when a dog plops down and sighs.
When they circle one too many times, exhale, and collapse into quietness.
You can read more here: Returned
winner of The Maxwell Medallion
from the Dog Writers Association of America