Hot. Real hot. Central Arizona in August hot. I'm working in the garage, building a portable reptile display case for the Game and Fish Dept to take to classrooms. I'm covered with sawdust and something else I'd rather not think about.
My wife drives into the driveway, back from the library, and sticks her head out the window before she opens the door.
"We need to talk".
Now, those words are rarely followed by: "you are now wealthy", or anything to that effect, but before I could gag out a reply past the sawdust, a large, black shape raised up in the back seat.
Sigh.
While my wife was at the public library, a black Lab with no collar came up to her at the car. The pavement was hot enough to melt tires, so my wife opened the car door. The Lab accepted the invitation, got in and flopped down on the seat. After about an hour asking around the area only to find no one who claimed this dog, my wife brought the stray home.
Now, we already had a dog, whose story has yet to be told; dog number one, and three cats, so I was dubious about introducing this beast into the mix. Besides, the Lab was top quality--her nails were trimmed, she had the kind of Lab block head that painters immortalize in the study of English country houses, she was leash trained--she had to belong to someone.
We turned her in to the shelter, put up flyers, put her on the Internet "found dog" site....nothing. The shelter scanned her and she wasn't chipped, she had no tattoos or ID of any kind, but it was inconceivable that someone would just abandon a sweet dog of this caliber. Still, no one came forward to claim her, so after the three days at the shelter were over, we took her home.
She needed to learn her new name, and uncooked ground turkey shortens the learning curve pretty well, so after three servings, she knew her new name was Scout. We introduced her to her new sisters (all the cats and the other dog are girls) and she settled in from day one. Gotta love those laid back Labs.
At our house, pets are family, so Scout sleeps on the bed now, although it was clear she had not been allowed to do that before. Her sister, the princess, is one of those dogs who has to turn around three times to lay down, and if something is lumpy, goes someplace else and starts all over. Not Scout. She flops wherever, and if you're under her...yeah, whatever. She has actually laid on my face. She weighs 65 pounds.
She's so black, my autofocus lens can't acquire her details to focus, so I have to focus on the grass at her feet and then compose the shot.
Scout likes to wrestle with her sisters (she now has two, Isabelle's story, dog number three, is on the Mixed Breed Forum), and Scout generally wins, since she just flops down on them and it's game over. She also folds them. She'll grab the neck of her playmate and drag it back to the hindquarters, then lay on the other dog, folding it in half. Her first sister, Lucy, folds pretty easily, since she is tall and thin, but Izzy is a squat little platypus, part Rottweiler, part Shar-Pei, and a veteran of the streets. Izzy doesn't fold so easy, but we went on vacation to a rental house with tall grass in an unused horse pasture, and all the grils had more fun than any humans ever could, and Scout pounced Izzy most effectively and folded her right up.
Scout also does fashion statements, like "nice ear."
My wife likes a bath in cold weather, and Scout has the Lab love of water, so she joined her. Didn't stay long, though. Too warm.
Scout has eaten a few sofas, so in her own way, she's keeping the Code, which states, in part, that you never know how much your people love you until they have spent at least $300 on you, preferably in vet bills, but the value of chewed furniture and shoes can be substituted. So far, our free Lab is worth about $1000, but like the credit card commercial says: value of warm, furry lips sleeping on your chest in the middle of the night: priceless. There will be no more doggy jail for this Lab. She's home now.
Scout and Lucy on vacation.
