"Are you the person who took Sweetie?" I asked the woman who answered the doorbell. "I wanted to thank you." She was, and I did. We adjourned to one of the rooms in her house; the TV was playing Nemo over a comfy dog bed. And there she was! I'd been afraid that Sweetie might be completely unsocialized after her years alone on the fenced lanai. But she came over to say hello, and has clearly bonded with her new person. Mary is retired military; she did logistics for the army groups that traveled to excavate the graves of dead Americans in SE Asia. While in Vietnam, she had visited the Hanoi Hilton; she's also following the Theravadan monks on their walk across the south, and I told her about the weeping man who told the head monk that his father had been a POW there. She flinched at the memory of her visit.
Shortly after my confrontation with the previous "owner," and before the Humane Society came by, the owner had told Mary that she could have the dog. "Take her," he'd said. She'd asked for Sweetie a year ago, but he didn't want to give her away then. All she could do was to give Sweetie a platform that got her off the cement. Mary decided to think it over, but that next night was cold and wet, so she took Sweetie into her home already populated with a rescue dog and several foster cats. The vet had said they'd check her heart first; if there was something wrong, it's wouldn't be worth going further. Her heart was strong! She was 25 pounds underweight was all. All.
Sweetie couldn't walk when Mary got her a few days ago. She's now walking, indoors and out. "Has a bit of a swagger when I take her on short walks," Mary reported. Sweetie's a lovely soul, and she sure smells better than she used to. "For however long she has left," Mary told me, "Sweetie will have a good life."
My heart, cracked hard by the events of this past week, year, decade, opened wide. Next time, I'll take Lilith with me.
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