A good deed [View all]
No secret, my less than sterling success in adapting to an alien culture where I retired. But one good thing is that it sharpened my appreciation of people who can still be good, even if they might think I'm as strange as I've found a lot of them.
The last year or so has been rather encouraging, I must admit. And today something especially nice happened. I noticed a close neighbor, a plumber, had gotten a small dumpster to clean out his garage. The loud regular bang! of heavy objects caught my attention, so I watched from across the street as he carried out more huge heavy things I couldn't quite see clearly at that distance w/o my glasses.
When I called out to ask if he was throwing away anything that might prove handy for me to make a doghouse with, he didn't just ignore me or brush me off. He walked across the street to my place and said sorry, it was all too junky to make a good doghouse BUT I was welcome to an insulated doghouse he'd made himself years ago for a dog that chose to stay strictly indoors. Molly Maguire and Bridgid are indoor/outdoor dogs, and I just want something as a backup in case I accidentally leave them out longer than I should for a winter potty walk. They both refuse indoor facilities even in a storm.
So I feel very blessed in many ways. That couple really love dogs, too. The one they have now was a rescue from a local situation of extreme neglect. The lady walks a lot and would pass a house where this poor animal was chained outdoors and half starved all the time. He was just a possession, not a pet and would've died long ago if various neighbors hadn't fed him.
Anyway, last Christmas my neighbor lady took the dog some turkey on a plate and set it down before him. He looked at her, reached down for the first big chunk of meat, and put it in her hand before he started to eat the rest. Thank God she finally convinced his 'owners' to let her take him home with her. Now he's her very shadow, and he won't go in the doghouse either; maybe partly because he spent the first 4 years of his life chained to one.
But my girls are close as 2 peas in a pod, and the doghouse is just the right size for both of them to curl up in if they get tired of waiting for me to let them back in the house. I wish they'd scratch on the door or bark, but they don't. I tried putting sweaters on Brigid but Molly just rips them right off. She doesn't believe in artificial anything. She even chewed 2 collars right off Brigid's neck and would chew her own off if she could reach it.
Some days I can hardly believe how blessed I am. While it's true that I can take care of belligerent neighbors, I love the good kind. To me the doghouse is not the main point. It was the man's neighborliness. I appreciated that by far the most and will try to remember the occasion next time I start to mutter that old camp song to myself. It goes, "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I'm gonna eat some worms..."
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