The Answer Was, "Eight"

No well-spun yarn is ever complete without a conflict. No short story or novel can ever be considered worth its salt, if the vessel does not get rocked, somewhere in the course of the voyage. Otherwise, what you end up with is a feel-good, syrupy sort of sap, that folks ingest, nod and smile vaguely about, and then promptly forget.

Good news does not sell much of anything, apparently.

The topic of rescue dogs being rescued evokes emotion, naturally, especially when your senses are incessantly tweaked by memes on social media. I especially like the one which depicts a shelter alongside a pet store, with a long queue formed outside the pet store, the pets inside seemingly indifferent to their own fate.

In the picture no one stands outside the rescue shelter, whose many inhabitants are pressed up against the bars of their prison, supplicating the masses who are fixated on the pet store. That image will squeeze all but the most hardened of hearts.

Or how about the meme which poses the question, “Why pay $2,500.00 for a dog, when you can get one practically for free at the Humane Society?” Practically free? Make sure the price includes that part of your soul, which you surgically remove from yourself, to use as an agent to complete the bonding process with your new acquisition.

Don’t misunderstand me, please. I enjoy a G-rated, family film as much as the next soon-to-be-grandpa, but there are still going to be technical difficulties in each tale. Old Yeller is bitten by the rabid wolf, Savage Sam tracks the kidnapers despite a hurt paw and a raging storm, and Big Red is horribly injured by cut glass, when he escapes a cruel master by plunging through a window.

I was riveted to my theater seat for all three classics, as well as being left grasping for a hankie, when Old Dan succumbed to injuries after fighting the mountain lion, and Little Ann ended up dead of a broken heart, in "Where the Red Fern Grows." Talk about a surefire way to lasso sixth graders into reading.

Also reading episodes of dogs these days, are those compassionate folks who take time out of their hectic schedules, to peruse the cyber wall of The Humane Society of Inland Mendocino County. I know because each of the sixteen posts I have done about Ellie Mae, our sweet, eager-to-please, mixed breed rescue dog, has produced a steep spike in the number of page-views my blog gets.

An average post on an average day nets me somewhere in the vicinity of 150 page-views. A post on a beloved community member passing catapults that number to 3,000. Each of my epistles on Ellie Mae has garnered at least 400 page-views, with more than half cresting in the 600-range.

The surge in my blog readership for Ellie Mae posts, is accounted for by the expanded exposure to the Humane Society’s wall. Otherwise, my stats would most likely have landed smack in the middle of the average range: You’re either a dog person and you check Ellie Mae out, or you’re not, and you don’t.

The bottom line is I would infinitely prefer boring and bland, accompanied by putrid stats, to the more visceral accounts that produce the desired literary effect: a conflict, and subsequently rocketing viewing stats. Unfortunately, reality will rear its formidable and unforgiving fist upon occasion, and slug me in the solar-plexus of life, almost leaving me wishing that I had just kept my big trap shut in the first place.

I mean, what are the options here? What am I prattling on about? Did the little darling deposit another doody in the middle of our bedroom rug? Is she still driving me nuts by escaping her yard? Or is her raucous greeting of frequent visitors, fraying everyone’s nerves to the breaking point? 

Fun times, those. 

No, when I saw BossLady leading Ellie Mae back on a leash from her spot, an eternity consisting of only four days ago, I needed no translator to read her body language. I now had my conflict. All I needed to know was how many. The answer was eight: seven hens and the only rooster.

What do you do if you live on a farm, and your new-to-you rescue dog, escapes her pen and kills a neighbor’s livestock? I mean, besides apologizing, providing restitution, and guaranteeing there will not be a rerun? I’ll let you know as I go along, but I will tell you one thing right up front:

It’s not OK to blame the dog.

I will reveal more, as I figure it out, but I’m shooting from the hip, here-JUST KIDDING! I don’t even own a weapon!

[Editor’s note: Do I need to post another photo of Michelle rolling her eyes?]

The two redbone pups from the film, Where the
Red Fern Grows. Wilson Rawls wrote the book.