No Plague Dogs Here!

I get up everyday with the sun, not because I’m afraid I’ll miss something – at my age, it’s hard crawling out from under those toasty covers – but, because my pups whine and bark and howl. They’ve waited out the night in their own cozy beds, and all have urgent business to take care of out in the yard. I have to wake up first, so I stand at the coffee maker for a moment, yawning and scratching my head. I need to be sure I wasn’t really kidnapped in my sleep by aliens who took my brain and replaced it with a metal plate.

Nope, that was just a dream – like a scene from The Plague Dogs. Coffee’s done, so it’s off to the porch with the dogs.

I must enjoy watching the day break as much as my dogs do: the smell of the early morning dew on the grass; little critters scampering across the fence in the back; and the gold finches – hundreds of gold finches. I don’t see the birds at first, I hear them. From blocks away, I hear the little ‘twit-twits’ growing closer, louder, more numerous.

My dogs even watch as the birds fill the trees in the yard. Where do they all come from? Little flashes of yellow dart in and out of bright green leaves, holding my attention as the birds jockey for perches on the feeders.

But, my pups are hungry for attention too, and they gather around my feet. They rub against my leg, howl softly, and nose at my hand until they spill my coffee. They want their own head-scratching, now – some assurance that The Plague Dogs is really just a book of fiction and that things like that never happen to dogs who are so kind and lovable and needed by the people who keep them. The dogs have no idea of how much I really do need them.

I hope you have someone to love, too.

gwwd