powered by SignMyGuestbook.com

2005-11-18 - 10:40 p.m. Better After a week, I suppose I'm doing better. I still cannot sleep throughout the night, and the nightmares are frightening, and I know that's why god invented vodka, but I'm trying to be careful with that. Tonight when I parked in the garage nextdoor there was a chocolate Lab in a car with his family who lunged out of the back of his people's SUV to lick my face all over - I said, Oh, my German Shepherd died last week, and I miss having a dog - maybe he sensed that? The man smiled and nodded, but the woman stepped up and said in a strained voice, What's going on? I spent hours online this morning surfing over 25 shelters, foster homes, German Shepherd and Herding dog rescue groups, and most if not all are mis-represented and are actually small, mixed-breed dogs. Others have quite serious problems, like one dog who'd had such severe ear canal infections that he'd had his entire inner ears removed, or a dog who has such intense skin allergy problems and raw skin that he must be bathed in a special solution twice a day. I am not holding out hope too much, but I did email a foster care couple in Pennsylvania who have a dog actually named Rex (!) and they specified someone experienced in GSDs. What I have against me in this adoption thing is that 1) I do not have a big happy family with kids - I am single - and 2) I live in New York City...doesn't matter that I have a nice fenced-in safe yard, and can take my dog on long drives and hikes in the Ramapo Mountains. Peter says these adoption groups say they are holding out for the 'perfect' home for their foster dog, but actually they are being too...I don't know, the dog is among four or five other foster dogs in the household, not getting individual attention, but... Anyway, as an aside, the last Friday night when I came home I was out of it, and just crawled into bed. The next morning my upstairs neighbor Peggy was banging on my door..."Gina! Your keys are in the lock!" I awoke and dressed in a daze and went to the door and thought, Damn! Where are my keys? and opened the door and there they were hanging in the lock, not a good thing to do with no attack-trained dog lurking behind the door. So, here's a real New York story...I went outside and sat on the front stoop in a sleepy daze on that Saturday morning. There was a cool breeze. The street was noisy because a city Sanitation truck was blocking traffic as they collected paper recycle bundles. There was a backup of cars a block long. Men were starting to yell, leaning out of their car windows, in typical NYC fashion, "Hey! MOVE IT!" Then I saw what was going on...and I had to smile. The men at the truck had come across a stash of books in one of those clear plastic bags. I could hear them from my front stoop - "This book is good, I'm taking it!" and, "Wait a minute, let me see that one." Horns were honking as I watched the two big burly black men gather books under their arms and smile and nod at each other and save them for later. I thought, only in New York...traffic held up while Sanitation men sort out future reading material...