Forever home -- for real this time

Oh, sweet Crystal... wallering around on my friend M's carpet.

And hamming it up for the camera while rubbing fur all over M's pretty couch.

I got the official word tonight, at the close of an email message: "She has been so great for me. Oh, btw, she is a keeper."

btw? Hey, this is some news to drop as a "btw..." Yes, of course I called him right away. She was cuddled up on the couch next to him while we talked.

We know there's probably no such thing as the perfect dog, but, as Jules would say, there's definitely such a thing as the Perfect-For-Us Dog. And it looks as though M found his Perfect-For-Him Dog.

I am so, so glad.

11th birthday

Cub, on her first day in our family.

If she were still alive, she'd be 11 years old today.

Sometimes I have a hard time believing I miss a dog this fiercely.

It's even a made-up birthday: our best guess counting back her age in estimated weeks, combined with a day significant in other months of the year. But here I am, crying about my dead dog on her made-up birthday.

Recently, I've seen car magnets shaped like a paw print, with the words "Who Rescued Who?" in the center. I wondered that about Cub and me long before anyone was selling it as a slogan. In the end, I couldn't rescue her from liver disease. Nobody could.

I'm really hoping my eyes aren't puffy in the morning. I have an optometrist appointment, and I can hear it now:

"Are your eyes always this irritated?"

"No, I just spent last night crying over my dead dog."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. When did it happen?"

"Three years ago."

**blink blink**

November of 2007 in Eureka Springs... the last "fun trip" we took with both dogs.

Angus hasn't been the same since she died. When Cub was here, he knew his place: back of the pack. He was content with it, and it worked well for everyone. Cub was his rock. Now, he doesn't know where he stands. We were hoping that when we adopted Tuesday, he would make her his beta or, failing that, accept her as his alpha, but neither scenario worked. They get along pretty well, but he won't play with her. He's kinda cranky.

I've heard that there's that dog for every dog person. The one dog who will always be elevated above all others, canonized, sainted, crowned The Best Dog That Ever Was.

I hope there's just one, because I don't plan to quit being a dog person, and there's only so much of this I can take.

Day-by-day dog

That's what Crystal is right now. Her foster "dad," M, and I are taking it day by day. He isn't going to boot her out the door on Friday (a good thing, since I have nowhere for her to go and two rescue organizations have said they can't help), but he hasn't said he's ready for her to live there forever, either.

Although he did say she has been "the perfect dog" thus far, in the time she's spent at his house.

So I'm praying for continuing perfection.

***
In other news:

- Lovely Niece's husband (who still doesn't have a blog name, but that doesn't mean I don't love him) landed a job at a national home improvement retail chain (not the orange one). He had three--three--interviews for the part-time position. He later learned that he was chosen from among 150 applicants for that one non-seasonal position. If that's what he's been up against this past year and a half, no wonder it took so long to land a job! The better news is that even though it's part-time, he does qualify for benefits. Lovely Niece doesn't get university benefits during her internship year, which begins soon, so having another source for health insurance will be especially helpful. *sigh of relief*

- We began work on the master bathroom walls. Ugh. We have a 7-foot-long mirror in there above the vanity. It's going to have to come out of there soon, and I don't know where to put it while it's down. Also, we want both bathrooms functional next time we have visitors (in just a couple of weeks), so we're going to have to watch our timing.

- Speaking of timing, the dogs know what time it is. Breakfast time. Off to fill their bowls.

Re-rescue

So a while back, I wrote about my last rescue dog, Crystal, not working out in her adoptive home. Then it seemed that the family had re-committed to working with a trainer and that things were going to be fine.

Well, that didn't last. Bottom line: Crystal needs to be re-homed. Her now-former adoptive family last night bid her a tearful farewell, and she is spending the week with my friend M. M is a teacher and has his Spring Break this week, and thus a little extra time on his hands. (He is also in the market for adopting a dog of his own, but I'm not getting my hopes up here. See me, not getting my hopes up?)

I really hated arranging for this type of thing long-distance, but that's how it works when you've moved and you still have commitments in the place you left. So my friend A did an excellent job serving as my proxy in last night's transition; she had met the family when they adopted Crystal, so she helped M with picking her up from their home. M also brought along another dog-person friend, and A said she was great to have there for support. The M-to-dog introduction went well, and after they'd had some time to get acquainted, Crystal walked, on her leash, like a normal dog, to M's car for the trip to her temporary home.

So here it is 6:00 the next morning, and I'm hoping M and Crystal had a good night. I'm also praying he falls in love with her and can't let her leave at the end of the week, but I'm not about to push that on him. She isn't what he wanted -- a Labrador Retriever or mix thereof. In fact, when he was buying a crate for her yesterday, I told him that though the crate size I had would be sufficient for her, he would really be better off buying the next size up so it would hold his future Labrador. (See me, still not getting my hopes up?)

But look at this face!

Visuals

Sharing a couple of things today. First, an accomplishment:

Sunday night we hung up some stuff in the kitchen. Appropriately, it's a "Dog and God" motif -- three dog portraits, two religious items (the plaque, if you haven't seen one before, is in Latin... "Bidden or unbidden, God is present").

Oh, I meant to crop that image tighter so it would show up better. Eh. It's already uploaded now. You get what you get.

And the second image, from our usual dog-walk route around our new neighborhood:

Yes, that's a mailbox. With a little patch of grass on top. With an angel sitting there. If this doesn't look like a teeny little cemetery, I don't know what does. (Because of the positioning of the mailbox, though, we don't think it's deep enough to actually bury any complete creature carcass. Perhaps the ashes of the last mail carrier are in there?) SpookyRach, because of this scene, we think of you on every walk.