Jake's Beginnings: Third Installment

On Friday morning (following the Monday when I first met my to-be-new-family), my mom drove up the driveway to PJ’s house. The arrival routine was the same.... double doors, excited button noses, prancing and dancing. competition for attention. But there was never any question, Mom was there to get ME! And I looked so cute! PJ had given me a bath and made a cowboy motif kerchief for my collar. (After all, I was a Colorado dog now.) Mom and PJ talked for a long time, and PJ told her all about my history and my progress and my preferences and the things she had learned about me. She sent me off with notes and documents and some treats and special instructions. Mom took a couple of photos of me with PJ (it was clear she was getting sad - and excited at the same time - about my leaving.) The good news was, PJ told Mom that anytime I couldn’t travel with Mom and my sister, that I MUST come back to PJ’s to stay. No kennels allowed! No more crates! No more confinement! No more mistreatment! (Even though I was supposedly going just for an overnight, it was pretty much assumed I was going HOME!)

PJ sent me with Mom with two favorite blankets, a couple favorite toys, a seatbelt and harness (we decided against the one Mom brought...I could wiggle out of it in my seatbelt), some food (what Annie - Peggy’s Welsh terrier - didn’t eat...she snuck in the car while we were fitting a harness to me and chewed open the ziplock bag of kibble) and some cookies for special treats. (PJ didn’t like for me to go to bed hungry, so I got a cookie every night right before bedtime. And, by the way, it was clearly communicated that I liked sleeping in beds. Human beds. That was very important information, not to be forgotten or confused!)

I got all buckled into the backseat and sat quietly as if I had done this hundreds of times before. PJ teared up and Mom promised to be in very close touch. I was headed out! Very very calmly, very very quietly, very very sweetly I rode the 30 miles or so to my new home. Mom talked to me the whole way, and I laid stretched out across the backseat, or with my head hanging down over the edge of the seat. Not a peep came out of me. I was thinking. Wondering. Imagining. Dreaming. Perhaps remembering. But I was content.

After a while, we pulled into a garage and Mom unbuckled me and scooped me up in her arms and took me in the house. I was pretty baffled and I moved, at first, in slow motion. Then I started picking up my pace, exploring every nook and cranny. My tail was up, and it was wagging. I found food and water and Mom brought in my blanket and toys from PJ’s house. It didn’t take long to find more toys. They had the smell of another dog on them. Mom said, "They were Molly’s. She’d want you to play with them." But I wasn’t quite ready to play.

Rika (another one of the nice ladies who rescued me) had told Mom, when she asked, that I barked when I was outside and running the fence. There weren’t any fences here at the new house. Only a nice second story deck that looked out over a golf course fairway and then open space and then a mountain ridge. Mom told me to start watching out for rabbits and deer and elk and squirrels, and even coyotes and foxes. I already saw birds. I just watched, with my head stuck out between the deck rails. I stood and breathed in the new scents and looked carefully over my new backyard. I was quiet as a mouse. No barking. Not a peep.

The sun was shining and Mom sat in a chaise lounge chair while I explored the view. It didn’t take long before I went to her, and jumped up in her lap and we cuddled. It was special for both of us. I was with my new human, and she was holding her new little dog. There was a bittersweet part of the experience, though. Mom explained that Molly had died in her arms, in that very same spot, just a couple of weeks before. We were quiet together, and it was nice. We were both healing and looking forward to a future together. Both of us could tell we were a good match. A good pair.

Back inside, I kept going room to room. I found the high bed that Mom said was her bed, and with one graceful leap, I was on it. Now it was OUR bed! There were some soft toys on it, and now they were MY toys. I grabbed one and shook it side to side. Mine! All mine!

There were lots of stairs in my new house. A long flight down to a big playroom, and another long flight up to the loft (where the computer is) and to Nina’s bedroom. I managed the stairs okay, but I was still pretty awkward. My back legs were spread way apart, and I was clumsy. I couldn’t quite get the rhythm down. I could tell I was going to get lots of practice on stairs, though. (Who needs a fenced yard? I could run miles in this new house! I was already happy. This was a night and day difference, compared to the puppy mill crate I had grown up in.)

Something was missing though. Or, rather, someone. Where was Nina?

Before long, Mom scooped me up again and buckled me into the backseat of the car. We were on the road once more. I sat quietly and patiently, as if I had done this a hundred times before. I looked out the windows and tried to take it all in. But where was I going? Was my stay over? Fifteen minutes later, I had it figured out. We had gone to pick up Nina. She squealed my name and I wagged my tail. We were all together now. A family.