a canine interlude

It was vouchsafed to me yesterday that I had mentioned only to a few people that we found the owner of the white dog--just a few minutes after I snapped this picture in fact.

The night before our first day of school--because I can feel that the devil, or someone, doesn't really want me to do school every day, including yesterday and possibly today and even some days last week--we took the dogs for a little walk and on our walk someone recognized him and stopped us and then ran to get his owner while we went home and waited. Joy abounded, as you can imagine, except in the hearts of all six children who started our first school day with long tearful prayers for the health and safety of 'Bonzoo' as we finally had been calling him. His name turned out to be Brutus...hardy har har.

For many subsequent days Marigold wandered around asking for the location of 'Bonzoo'. "Where Bonzoo?" she would whine pitifully and then answer herself, "Bonzoo gone." Balancing her distress was Matt's euphoric good mood. He practically jumped and skipped through the week, grinning and talking about the providence of God in caring for the dog and his owner. Everyone secretly wanted to hit him.

Turns out, in the end, that Asherbanapal also probably missed him. Ashy has been suffering an increasingly funny tummy and we've been having longer and longer walks while he tries to sort everything out. Yesterday we ended up at the vet with rather an embarrassing mess and a long, and finally, expensive amount of clean up. Woe is me. "What can cause the excessive growth of this little bacteria?" I inquired of the nurse as the vet hadn't really had time for us after the awful foul scene of the poor dog's derriere.
"A change in routine, stress, loss" the nurse rattled off.

So, there we are. Ashy must have missed Bonzoo. I can't think of any other big changes in his placid and routine bound life. And no, I don't accept that being sat on by six children would be "stressful". Children, you might remember, are a Gift from the Lord and therefore "not stressful". (That was just a little joke.)