This week’s yap was with a charming young pooch, Katie Trimarche, who lives in a super dog-friendly neighborhood over on the beach with nice sandy, windy, kinda bumpy roads. Katie is a rescue pooch, a blue Pit, who had a sorta sad life up ’til her Forever Mom and Dad adopted her. But I never wudda known that from the way she gracefully pranced up for the Wag-and-Sniff soon as the door opened.
“Welcome Mr. Bonzo, Sir,” she said softly. “I’m Katie. This is my Mom and Dad Wendy, Peter. I call ’em Mimi and Omon. Can we get you anything? Some water? A Pupperoni?”
“Thank you, no,” I replied. “I’m eager to hear your story.”
“OK. Follow me, please,” she said, and led the way upstairs to a sunny room with a big window looking out onto a porch and the ocean. There was a nice big dog bed right by the window and a pink one on the porch.
I readied my notebook while our photographer took a buncha pictures. Katie was totally ready for her close-up: her pretty grayish, goldish coat was super shiny, she had white socks and bib, a cute nose, with a little spot of white that got real pink out in the sun.
After the photo shoot, I asked her to tell me her story. She plopped down onto her bed and began.
“The Dog Catcher picked me up cuz I was a Stray. What happened before I mostly can’t remember. I think I’m about 1 ½ in People Years. I do remember wandering around, didn’t know where I was. I had just had puppies but I don’t remember what happened to ’em. I was very confused. And scared. And sick. But, thank Lassie, the Dog Catcher was nice. He took me to the Humane Society shelter. If he hadn’t, I’m pretty sure I’duh been A Goner. The Humane Society people were real gentle and nice, too. They cleaned me up. Then they found out I had heartworms, which can send a pooch straight to Dog Heaven.”
I nodded. All us pooches are scared of heartworms. “Oh, Woof! That musta been scary. So, what happened?”
“Mimi’d been a volunteer at the shelter for a long time. I’d been there for a 2-3 weeks so we kinda got to know each other. She was still real sad cuz hers and Omon’s other pooch, Tipsy, had just gone to Dog Heaven. But she was afraid I wouldn’t get adopted cuz of bein’ sick, and bein’ a Pit an all. I was worried, too. So Mimi and Omon decided to JUST foster me till I got off my heartworm medicine, cuz I needed to be somewhere real calm and quiet. Sometimes humans can’t ackshully adopt a pooch cuz they hafta go back Up North, but they can foster pooches, like Mimi and Omon did me.
“Well, Mr. Bonzo, I was SO happy to be with ’em. I’m was No Trouble At All. They’d say, ‘No, Ma’m!’ when I did stuff I shouldn’t, and I learned real fast. I’m super obedient! So here’s the Best Part: They decided to ADOPT me, like, Forever! Isn’t that PAWSOME?”
“Totally!” I agreed.
“I’m still taking my heartworm treatment, so I still hafta be real quiet. No roughhousing! No runnin’ around with other pooches yet, but I WANT to! The only pooch I’ve hung out with so far is my niece, Koko, who lives with my human brother. Koko’s a Buh-SEN-gee and we only play quietly ’til I get all better.”
“Can you take walks an stuff?” I wondered.
“Oh, sure. Dad takes me on two leash walks a day. I’m very good on a leash. An I love meetin’ all the neighborhood pooches. I spend a lotta time on the back porch lookin’ at the ocean, watchin’ those big birds flying by in bunches. I zip up to the bedroom to keep followin’ ’em, but they’re ushully gone already. When Mimi an Omon are outside, I go down the stairs to the back yard. I go over by the seawall and yap with other dogs goin’ by on the beach. When I’m all better, I get to go on the beach, too!”
As we yapped, Katie was chewing on a stuffed dog toy, gently tearing it to shreds till the stuffing popped out. She delicately nibbled on the bits of fluff for a while, then petooied ’em out. Finally her Dad gathered it all up and threw it away.
“Another one bites the dust,” Katie said proudly, shaking a piece of fluff off her nose. “They usually last a coupla days max. I get sorta worried when Mimi hasta go on a Air-und, so I nab one of her slippers an take it to my bed an lay on it till she gets home. Even if she just goes out to the mailbox, when she comes back in, there I am, upstairs, layin’ on her slipper.”
“Whaddya you eat?”
“Blue, an Pupperoni treats. And sometimes a little dab of peanut butter, which is PAWSOME and, for some reason, it makes Mimi and Omon laugh. When they’re havin’ dinner, they say ‘Sit and Don’t Beg.’ So I sit. THEN, I sneakily sneak under Omon’s legs, in case anything yummy should happen to fall on the floor. I’m pretty sure they don’t even know I’m there.
“At night, I sleep in my big, nice crate. When Mimi gets up, I go say good morning, then go back to sleep till Omon gets up. Then we hang out on the porch, see who’s on the beach, stuff like that. I’m happy long as I’m with Mimi or Omon.”
Heading back to the office, I was thinking how lucky pretty Katie was that there was a foster program for pooches. And EXTRA lucky to get adopted. Every pooch deserves a second chance, doncha think?
And I was hopin’ there was still some peanut butter left in the pantry.
Till next time,
The Bonz