Two Dog Towels

Yes, that’s what we brought out two years ago to make our now seven year-old dog comforable in the passenger seat of a car we no longer own. We go from snow season to mud season to hopefully summer and a fall that lasts a couple of weeks.

We have a small but nice place but no mud room, so one of the dog towels has to be the mud room, so when we want to wash the dog we’ve a setup in the guest bath but it requires three loads of laundry so I try to time her bathing according to the weather. Last night it snowed all night but didn’t stick so our driveway was not shoveled, but about 50# of salt was loaded up on it. Now that hurts Zoe’s paws. So we went out the back in my hiking boots (snow was not that high last night) and it all worked out. Ours is a long driveway and I’d have to at least carry her back in for the sake of our floors/carpets but especially her paws.

It was a great chance that was taken when we moved out here now two years ago. I think about it now because last weekend we had some neighbors come by for us to say thanks for making us feel welcome here. We came here with two cars and a dog. Two laptops, one PSIII, my food processor, a few clothes and necessary papers and that was it. For two years we’ve been living with someone else’s furniture and pictures on the wall. We’ve done work overseas and got used to it, but not forever.

Surely I could go buy some inexpensive towels to be “dog towels” but we’ve tried to stay minimalist while here. It’s a lot easier to say we won’t buy anything if it’s six months. Books are piling up as well as papers but we can do with Zoe’s towels. I just don’t want them to fall apart from overuse/over-washing because they remind me of the folks who gave them to me, Norma and Penny. Norma had a sweet dog Osa who died a month before my dog and we’d been estranged for a time. I can’t find her now. Penny took care of our Zoe for three months while we were overseas. One towel came from each and we all age together.

I miss them. The humans are still there, hopefully, most of the dogs are gone now. Norma split from me and moved further away, by a few doors. The day before her dog died, Osa took her to my home, and I found out how sick she was. When she passed the next day I brought Norma daffodils in a blue vase. We talked for a few monents in which we tried to connect the dogs and our relationship. A month later my dog died suddenly and I knocked on her door, left a note. Next thing, as I was out at the park getting hugs from all the other dog owners, she left me yellow flowers in a blue vase. We had a good talk, our last, as the last thing she said to me was that my relationship with Jim would never go anywhere.

Now I can’t find her, and in a few months Jim and I will have been together for ten years and married for nearly nine of those years. I had a good support network out there when I was single, people who are good friends today, years after we left. And dear friends who’ve passed, and the dogs we “grew up with” have passed as well, the last a few months ago. A three-pound Yorkie named Savannah who could run up two two barking Rottweilers and tell them to stop barking. In a dress crafted by Joan, a former milliner who had to make clothes and bonnets for Savannah because she was too small for the smallest store size.

That was the coast, Hopefully my days in the west will continue. Who knows. Even the dog has a passport for anywhere. We just need the dog towels to pad the car seat for the ride…. Cheers, Dee