~ Nearly a Month ~
has passed since my Butter died. I'm getting better altho I still miss her terrribly.
Thank you, Patrick, for your kind words. I do appreciate it. It was harder than I had ever imagined and I never realized how much I looked forward to seeing that tail wag or taking her for a walk until she wasn't here anymore. They really add so much to your life.
I have decided to adopt again and will obtain my new overlord(s) next week. There will be two - male and female (both "fixed" and "older") so hopefully they can keep each other company while I'm at work. Since they are older they should be pretty mellow. Both need medications but I'm fine with that - the older ones with medical needs are usually the hardest to adopt out and Molly taught me that they are not much trouble at all. I thought her allergies would be hard to deal with but they turned out not to be much of an issue.
She had lost most of her fur from allergies when she was pulled out of the shelter and sent to the rescue. When I got her, she still had a lot of scabs on her skin and her fur was quite thin all over. But after about 3 months, her fur started to come in and by the summer she had the "feathers" on her legs like she was supposed to.
I like to think she thrived under my care. Her fur was nice and thick, she had stopped scratching her face and stopped chewing her feet and she didn't have any sores on her skin. It really wasn't much "work" at all. Just giving her good food, good water a medicated bath every week and some stability in her life seemed to do the trick.
On paper, it sounded like work but it was a pittance compared to what I got in return. I got to see her healthy and content. Honestly - if I made her happy then it was all worth it.
Admittedly, I'm a little anxious about the new dogs. I was anxious when I bought Molly home as well. Not only because of her allergy issues but because I wasn't sure I could be a good "big dog".
Which is really the most important thing to them - you need to be the "big dog" and let them relax and be the "little dogs". They want you to be the Big Dog to make them feel secure. So I will need to put on my best Big Dog face when I pick them up and bring them home.
It will be hard for me because I will just want to scoop them up and kiss them all over their flat faces (after I get finished crying my eyes out, of course). But I will need to restrain myself until they feel secure with me.
I don't think I started scooping up Molly and kissing her until about 3-4 weeks after I brought her home. And I remember the first time she licked me - I had picked her up and was carrying her through a snowdrift she had gotten stuck in and she just started licking my face. That really tickled me. It was like she had "adopted" me back.
Complete 90 degree turn - what I'm reading:
More gothic horror by Bram Stoker - The Mystery of the Sea. I seem to be in the mood for the melodrama lately.
I finished Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. It made me cry like a bitch, too. The original movie was much more true to the book than I realized. The movie also made me sad but the book had so much more agonizing detail (and that goth drama style) that I just outright cried when I read it.
Why did I cry? Because I felt sorry for the monster. He didn't ask to be created and all he wanted was to be accepted but everyone was horrified by him. The "monster" didn't want to be evil but felt compelled to turn against his creator in his agony of rejection and despair.
Which leads me to my next selection (do we see a theme here?) Paradise Lost by John Milton. Never would I have willingly read this while in school. NEVER. Are you kidding me? Elizabethan English? Biblical poetry? Come on, man! Ew.
But Shelley's Frankenstein references Milton in so many ways I felt obliged to at least take a look at the original just to see it. I figured since it was a "classic" I could get it for a couple of bucks and then just re-sell it after I'd flipped thru some pages.
Well, lo and behold I actually understood it! I was astounded (and slightly horrified) to realize I could understand it and it made sense! Oh, the humanity!
No high school kid should ever be subjected to it, of course. But as an adult with *ahem* several years of popular culture references (and lately the steady diet of gothic prose) I found it wasn't so awfully bad or obscure as I had feared.
Now if I start to comprehend Melville then feel free to give me a good cyber-slap. That could mean only one thing - I'm seriously ill and delusional.
The Rogue Goddess saw shadows dancing at 8:32 PM
~The Mighty Nephy~
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home