My wife and I have fostered rescue dogs for nearly a decade, so we felt confident we had experienced the full spectrum of trial and horror that could possibly accompany most challenging dogs.
For instance… one of our foster dogs wouldn’t walk up stairs no matter how hard I tried to coax her…
… yet somehow managed to supernaturally ascend our dining room table where she proceeded to go full-on “Exorcist…”
Or another one of our foster dogs who was so terrified of people, she would lose control of her bowels if you just looked at her.
“We’ve seen it all!” we told ourselves.
So when a friend asked if we would watch her geriatric wiener dog for a few weeks, we said, “Of course! How hard could it be…?”
And then Vienna arrived…
At first we thought she was just exploring… getting to know her new environment.
But when an hour passed and her walkabout had not waned, we thought, “Maybe she needs love and reassurance…”
We were wrong. She wanted to walk. She needed to walk.
Constantly.
Perpetually.
ETERNALLY!!!!
And so it went, day after day…night after night…
…till the very end of her three week stay.
Like Chinese water torture, the relentless clickity-clack of this little dog’s promenade had left us broken and blubbering by the time her owner returned.
A few months later, however…
…we attended a local fundraiser and discovered that Vienna was the star of it all!
Adults cooed over her! Crowds lined up to see her!!! The children sang their own song about her!!!
And there she was — in costumes and gowns, jerseys and pantsuits. Vienna paraded around in her outfits for hours, posing for photographs while accepting treats and praise.
I couldn’t believe it… they could not get enough of her!!! They FREAKING LOVED this quirky, obsessive dog!
Surely, I thought, there were better dogs for this event. You know…. dogs that liked to be touched. Dogs that could sit still.
(Let’s be honest, the bar didn’t have to be terribly high, am I right…?)
And that’s when it occurred to me… sure, there were other dogs who could have been better at this gig. But none of those dogs were here. None of those dogs showed up.
But Vienna did!
And like the Grinch, that’s when my heart grew 10 times it’s size for that old wiener dog. She became my mantra for 2017:
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SIDE NOTE:
We did discover that doggy-Xanax and an electric blanket could subdue Vienna’s obsessive journeys…. which…. “Xanax and electric blankets” might be my back-up mantra for 2017… let’s see how things go… (;
