The latest ratings are in and you may be interested to know that our little rescue dog-er, ahem, our little dog-Ellie Mae, has made a remarkable comeback from that low point on February 2nd, when she had a fatal attraction to a flock of chickens.
How she achieved this, specifically, is impossible to pinpoint but I know it’s true. I know it because a little incident occurred yesterday that clarified matters once and for all, and made me realize that Ellie Mae is no longer “on trial” here.
Did she invite our flock of fifteen chickens to tea, serving them cracked corn and fresh cabbage leaves as a conciliatory gesture for her fatal faux pas?
Did she make up with Mr. Crips, the cat, practically unthinkable, what with the harassment trial only a few weeks removed?
Actually, it was not Ellie Mae who did anything to improve her ratings-it was I. And what I did was leave her out in a freezing rain, while I puttered about in the workshop, making a half-dozen or so cuts on my table saw, for a set of cupboards I am working on.
Well, I didn’t do it on purpose!
Whether Ellie Mae is indeed a black-mouth cur or not, she shares many attributes, including an insatiable need to be outside and gallivanting around. That may also include cavorting, carousing and capering on any given day.
When the two of us had emerged from the house, about a half-hour earlier, it was still dry and a tad blustery. Ellie had been more than patient while I was assembling the cabinet in the newly remodeled laundry room, and the forecast snow had held off, though it was in the mid-thirties. What the heck, I had figured, I will let Ellie Mae have some play time.
With my headphones doing their job proficiently and blocking out the sound of the table saw, I was so immersed in my work I was unaware that the weather had taken a turn for the worse. I might point out that in my defense, I still have all of my digits, so I succeeded at my primary goal.
Still basking the glow of that knowledge, and clutching more plywood than was probably safe for a doddering old fool, I sidled out of the cozy workshop and into hurricane-force winds, and raindrops pelting me in the face-horizontally.
Ah, shoot, shucks and ducklings! Where WAS poor Ellie Mae? My ACX plywood getting inundated with water, never a good thing, prompted me to head the hundred feet to the front door, most rickety tic, hollering for my dog as I sloshed through muddy waters.
Propping my plywood against the kitchen counter, I scurried back outside, crushed beneath the weight of the world. How could I have been so neglectful? How could I have allowed my dog to be subjected to this frenzied winter storm?
Each dragging second was an hour in the passing, before Ellie Mae came bounding into view, ecstatically wagging her tail to see me. If I had possessed a tail, it would have been dragging in the mud.
How could I have been so unconscious? Simultaneously it hit me: Why was I so profoundly impacted? And before I knew it, I knew it. I recognized that Ellie Mae had reached that point in her life and in mine, where she was no longer “this cute, rescue dog.”
She was simply, my dog.
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