Why I Can't Wear Black .

It all started with Duchess. Somehow, I got it in my head I wanted a Great Pyrenees dog. I couldn't survive until I had one. So, my sweetie, being the sweetie that she is, contacted Pyr Rescue and Duchess came to live with us. Alas, that was a short-lived relationship and I won't go into the sad details.

So, next go round, I decided I wanted a Pyr puppy. We saw a sketchy ad in the local free classifieds about some non-registered Pyr puppies over the mountain in Tennessee. We showed up and found two pups left, in a child's playpen, in a carport, with no doggy parents to be found. Lady said her husband had gotten them from his job site for free. Hmmm. She wanted $150 each. This was a rescue situation for sure.

One of the pups had goop in his eyes. When asked if she'd gotten vet care for him, the lady said no. Sweetie whispered to me, "We're taking both of them."


"Hey, Lady," she said. "Would you take $75 for the pair?" Lady did.

I think Otis is the bottom one.

Do you know how much waste two monster puppies produce? A lot. Anyway, Otis (thusly named because he sang like Otis Redding the whole car ride over the mountain) and Elmo (because it sounded good with Otis) came home. Elmo had what's called Entropion - his eyelids were turned in, causing his lashes to irritate his eyes. Vet said it would cost about $125 to fix though he might outgrow it. Since we knew we could only keep one, we picked Elmo.

Otis, still kicking at age twelve, has followed my friend Julia and her family from Atlanta to St. Louis back to Atlanta and now to Alabama. I'm still his auntie.

Elmo, who outgrew his entropion, lived to the ripe old age of ten. Which is pretty good for a dog his size.

Sweet, sweet Elmo.

The day we had to let Elmo go was a sad one. We knew he was in pain from his arthritis and we'd taken him to the vet to see if we could do something for pain management. While there, our vet gave him an examination. His belly was bloated, which concerned her. She drew fluid and found blood. A splenic tumor she surmised, fixable with expensive surgery, but with his age, his size, and his advanced arthritis, very risky. We made the difficult decision to set him free.

Because our vet was super busy that day, we had to wait for the awful moment. So Sweetie talked to Elmo, she told him when he got to the other side, if he felt like it, to send a call out to the Pyrenees universe and if there was another Pyr that needed us, that it might be okay.

Not a week after he was gone, I got an e-mail with the heading: HATE TO DO THIS TO YOU. It was from friends and fellow Pyr owners telling us about their friends in Georgia who'd found a young male  Pyr roaming. They'd been unsuccessful in finding his owners. Would we take him? Their vet in Georgia agreed to do his neuter, microchip and vaccines for shelter pricing. I forwarded the e-mail to sweetie.

"It's a sign!" she replied.

Enter Henry. Now known as bad dog Henry.

Who's bad? Me? You must be confusing me with another dog.

Two weeks later, Sweetie is standing in the driveway when a neighbor pulls up in her van, with a Pyr inside. "Hey, I found your Pyr," she said through her opened window.

Sweetie explained, "Can't be ours. We have a new one and he's up in the pen."

Neighbor got out of her van with the Pyr on a leash. "It has to be yours. I asked everybody else and nobody's claiming him. Besides I've got to go to the doctor." She hands Sweetie the leash and drives AWAY!!!

Walter is sure the camera is a weapon of abuse - terribly camera shy

From work I say, "Oh, I'll pick him up and take him to the shelter." Sweetie says, "Oh let's give him a night to relax."

The next day is Wednesday, the shelter is closed. On Thursday, I call from work. "I can meet you at the end of the road and take him to the shelter."

Sweetie says, "His name is Walter."

And this is why I can't wear black.