One chapter ends, another begins

Waiting out the weather...

Just in from letting the dogs have a romp on the ice-crusted back yard. They had a time of it -- Chase!, Tug-O-Tennis Ball, Top Dawg Championship Wrasslin' -- in spite of the 30F degrees.

Opal Hound seems much less mindful of the cold than does Beano. His mamma's folk, Boston terriers, are not for not liking temperature extremes, and in that regard the Bean favors his mamma.

Beano Miller

This is a transition weekend. A winter weather advisory in effect through Monday is icing on the cake--not to mention roads, bridges and overpasses. Two to four inches of snow and/or sleet is forecast for our neck of the Rolling Plains in the next two days. Opal's scheduled departure Sunday afternoon has been pushed back to Monday afternoon. All fosters are on "stand-by" for further delays as this storm system moves east, covering at least the first few hundred miles of the Road to Forever and Helping Hounds.

Make room for Charlie!

Our next guest was scheduled to check in Sunday, and that has been reset for Monday, as well. Yes, Anniepie and I decided to stay in the HSWC Foster Babies program for another go 'round. Besides the overwhelming need for folks to foster shelter pets, I think a huge factor in our decision is Beano!

Annie and I both will miss Opal. She had us from that first anxious moment at the shelter. Knowing that she is bound for Helping Hounds and an excellent shot at adoption is why our hearts are aching but not breaking.

But what about Beano? This little spoiled terrier had to overcome some tough jealousy and possessiveness issues in those first several days. So much so, in fact, that allowing Opal to remain with us was in jeopardy. By this final week, though, Beano and Opal Hound had bonded like true siblings, in spirit if not in blood. How, we wondered, would Beano take Opal's absence?

John Brandshaw clued me in to a little of what I've come to call Dog Zen, seeing the world and events through the heart and mind of a dog.

    The new canine science reveals that dogs are both smarter and
    dumber than we think they are. For example, they have an almost
    uncanny ability to guess what humans are about to do, because of
    their extreme sensitivity to our body language, but they are also
    trapped in the moment, incapable of projecting the consequences of
    their actions backward or forward in time.

Dog Sense, p. xxii

Dogs may indeed be creatures locked in "the Now." Yet hundreds of years, and even more hundreds of generations of dogs and humans, of codependent relations provide abundant anecdotal evidence that dogs "miss" close friends who have passed on.

I, for one, have no doubt Beano is going to feel the loss of his sister. Better, I believe, to bring in the next foster dog sooner rather than later. Beano will have little time to pine as Charlie, a beauty of a beagle Beano's age (4), is set to check in even as Opal departs.