Instructions on Life from a rescue named Maisie
I wander into the bedroom and find Maisie, as per usual, curled up in a small, compact ball, her chin on the heap that is my standard t-shirt and cargo shorts, carelessly thrown there after our morning walk. Her sumptuous tail is wrapped around her, its tip grazing her nose. When she sees me, her …
The date came and went, with barely a blip on the radar. My husband took her around the park and I managed to get myself out for a two block walk, but other than that, Maisie’s year anniversary with us was dramatically uneventful. That was not how I had planned things to be. At the …
Continue reading "Here’s to a Year With Little Miss Sunshine"
I am up on the meadow with Maisie, just at the top of the hill, right where the path starts winding in a graceful curve to gradually make its way back down. The sun is shining and it is unseasonably warm, in the upper 30s, but the wind is gusting, blowing hard and fast, and …
It’s that time of year and they are everywhere: dogs wearing tacky Christmas sweaters and plaid flannel shirts; dogs dressed as chefs and posed in front of flour-dusted wooden cutting boards, their dog-shaped gingerbread cookies right there in front of them on the floor (how are they not eating them all??); dogs opening their Christmas …
Maisie is having a particularly bad hair day. She is in desperate need of a haircut, something to which I hadn’t given much thought, mostly because I am thoroughly charmed by her shaggy, disheveled ears. Most mornings, she looks a bit like a washed-up starlet, lazily lifting her head without actually moving the rest of …
“How do you feel about drums?” he asks, his voice quiet and calm and steady, elbows on his knees, hands loosely clasped together and hanging down, his eyes looking into her small face. She looks up at my husband with her steady gaze, sweetly and patiently, her tail wagging ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, as …
The list is piling up: wash and hang the laundry; weed the garden, the flower beds, the gravel drive; mow the lawn; scrape the peeling paint off the bathroom ceiling; practice (guitar, violin, vocals, piano...take your pick); evict the daddy long legs and other uninvited guests from the basement; clean the remnants of your cat’s life …
Barks at Strangers 