Voted! And Now... A Story About A Dog

We all three have. Rich also signed up to be on the permanent early voter list, so all our ballots arrived in the mail yesterday. Thanks to information from our favorite political party, passed along from a friend who's active with them, we even knew quickly which judges were not "in need" of another term on the bench. And just in case you wondered, nobody claimed to have used their secret ballot for tRump.

It was quick, it was easy, and all three await on the clip outside the door for our mailman to pick up. I even added a stamp to each - though I didn't really have to, but now they have to be treated as first class mail, despite any ongoing shenanigans proposed by DeJoy. I had planned to drop them off at a nearby drop box, but that doesn't open until late in the month, and stuff can happen. You know, the dog could have eaten it by then. If we had one.

We've been trying. Unless you want a chihuahua or a pit bull, (NO!) they are awfully hard to come by these days. You need to make an appointment to enter any of the shelters that haven't been closed down by the pandemic. It starts by finding shelters online, then perusing their pictures and descriptions to find what you think you might want. That done, you need to fill out a slew of paperwork online, and heaven help you if any glitch occurs between your software and theirs. For example, one form wants you to check some boxes but nothing will go in them, and while you are trying the box disappears. I can't type a box back onto the form, so....

On another shelter's form, they asked for loads of information on every pet you've ever had. Both of you in our case. You can't just tell them you've had a score of cats who've sometimes had kittens, but have to give information on every single animal and then swear at the bottom that everything's honest on the form. We've both had a score of dogs, filling most of our lives. I've also had snakes, dogs, a turtle, hamster, a white rat, a guinea pig, and lots of mice I raised up to feed the snakes. ("And how did they die, eh?") Those rabbits in their hutches didn't count because they were delicious, so never mind adding them to the list. There was no possible way I was going to describe a fish room full of tropicals we were breeding or ponds of koi and goldfish, not to mention the frogs that hopped in for some fun. And while you could select that you gave pets away to a friend, sold it, or whatever, there was no box to select for the fall pond cleanout where the frogs got dumped in a local lake before freeze-up. Of course, that was only after that first year when the next spring we found some had crawled back in from swampy areas just down the block before our pond froze and were only found after pond thaw as piles of grey slime and bones. The next years they were "rehomed"  - current jargon - further away. Imagine explaining that on one of those forms!

How about those yard toads we made homes for around and in our gardens, but much too often were found by the lawnmower?

Like that should disqualify us to have a dog!

By the time I got through as much information on that form as I could tolerate, and moved on to some final details,  just before I got to the end, the whole screen vanished! I was trying to actually move the cursor to the next and final "submit" page link but was still over an inch away and...poof!

How much you want to bet I was willing to repeat that process?

One other thing I am finding down here these days is a requirement for a home evaluation. Yikes! What have they been running into and what do they expect? All the messes are put away? (Like that will ever happen!) Proof of our chain link fence? No kennel with 54 more dogs and a puppy mill? No doggie graveyard? No dog-fighting ring?

Finally, even if we find a dog we like, submit the paperwork, and "pass" a home evaluation, our application goes in a pile of others for that same animal, and somebody decides who gets it. If that dog is gone, a whole new process starts, because each application is geared to a particular animal.

Oy!

Anybody remember the good old days when you could walk into a store or shelter, look around, pet the animals to see if they were friendly and get information on how big they'd get and how much exercise they'd need, and walk out with the dog of choice? Or somebody would set up on a corner with a box of pups and be glad they got homes? Or a coworker had a dog they "had" to get rid of because of a move or another baby or whatever? Or a stray ran into your yard and stayed, unclaimed?

Sigh......

Meanwhile we only dream of a little small, non-shedding pooch, preferably mutt style, who wants to love us as much as we want to love him/her.  Housebroken is a plus, but we know how to kennel train. I still have the equipment to groom one. And we can locate a vet, actually pass one on the way to a friend's house. If you know of one.... I could drive a few days....