The Elfen Niece needed to beef up her resume' so it would be more competitive when she applies to Vet School and that required volunteer experience at a Vet Office, Animal Shelter or Farm. Shortly after we learned that, I happened to have cause to drive within sight of the County Pound so I stopped in to pick up an application. While I was there, I asked to see the inventory.
Many dozens of dogs were barking, snarling, jumping up on their cage doors and doing all the things dogs do in jail but there was one that was different.
She looked like a beagle that had been stretched in every direction. Long body, legs for days (four of them) and big ol' elephant ears. I'm no expert on actual Hounds but she was definitely a Hound of some sort. The thing that made her stand out from the mongrel horde wasn't so much her appearance as it was her attitude of complete indifference to me. It reminded me of the way TEN cold-shouldered the Johnny Bravo salesdude in Gooseburg a few months back. She looked at me, turned around and walked out into her little fenced dog run without making a sound.
Archibald Rutledge said of the Hound:
"He invariably seems to me to belong to an older and a wiser generation, which regards the behavior of all other living things as an exceedingly juvenile performance. A hound is the only dog that can make me self-conscious of my own ridiculousness. Fixed by his appraising eye, I shrink into my true stature."
And so it was with me.
I went on about my business but the dog kept haunting me. It finally dawned on me that we hadn't heard anything back about TEN's application so it seemed reasonable to go check on it the next time I was out that way. The office is only twenty minutes from the pound so one could argue that being at the office was, constructively, out that way. I had the argument with myself so it was easy to win and I went back a week after first being snubbed by the beast.
The second look was much the same as the first. Amidst the cacaphony of yips, yaps, barks and snarls, the big galoot just stood there silently as I looked her over.
Her chart said she was a Treeing Walker Coon Hound. Fifty percent off adoptions that weekend too. Oh My.
Call me Uncle Versey. I ain't hunted coons in years.
Tossed and turned all night alternating between half dreams of getting the dog and bleak reality of The Lovely Bride having a cow. I devised a sinister plan: I would ask her permission. I've never used such an underhanded tactic before. I'd have the element of surprise.
That Saturday Morning, I asked TLB if we could have a rational discussion about an important subject. She allowed that we could and told her that I found a dog that I liked, the dog was heartworm-negative, snipped and chipped and the pound was having a sale. She said she wasn't against it and that was close enough for me. I Christened her Ann, after Bugle Ann, a dog in an old book and movie and brought her home.
The poor thing was gaunt and famished. After we bathed her, she ate three bowls of food. Then she took over the dog bed and promptly had a seizure. I was thinking that maybe I should change her name to Hillary but the seizure ended before I got through listing all the reasons why I could never do that to anyone, much less a dog. She recovered quickly and has not had another.
Ann turned out to be an inadequate name. Her personality called for at least two syllables so she quickly became Annie. Just as quickly, she won our hearts. She simply doesn't get tired of being playful and affectionate.
Annie has broken all the rules and never gets in trouble. The small side of our sectional couch is no longer mine. She just took it for granted that the couch is hers and somehow it is. She sleeps in The Elfin Niece's bed when TEN is not around. She gets away with begging. You name it. She is the pretty girl that gets away with everything because of her charm.
So now we have Bullet, the business-like GSP; Abbey the mixed mutt that we inherited when the Father in Law went into the ALF and Annie, the Dog Pound Coon Hound. Its a bit more of a pack than is optimal but the dogs are adjusting and its nice to have someone around that's always happy to see me when I get home.
