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Tuesday, February 03, 2009
Festus
Oh, I think you all knew we would end up keeping him.
His original owners didn't want him back (as mentioned previously), and the guy who owned him after his original owners owned him never returned our calls. T especially was still inclined to find him another home, when one magically appeared. Festus took off, something he did a lot in the first couple of weeks we had him, and we got a call on our answering machine from a nearby family he'd gone to visit. Did we have to take him back? They would love to keep him....
OH, THE INDECISION.
I had always pretty much hoped Festus would stay with us. T's position had been that if nobody else would give him a suitable home, we would keep him; now that said suitable home had presented itself he was all for letting the family have him (not that he didn't like Festus, it's just that he's very practical). At that point we were still waiting for the aforementioned guy-who-didn't-return-calls to return our calls, though, so we took Festus home and told the family to wait a few days and we'd get back to them. During those few days we had a Bible study meeting here (an every-week occurrence now thanks to a change in T's work schedule, long boring story, moving on) where Festus proved to be such an annoying, unceasing (, adorable) distraction that even I was all in favor of calling the neighbor family and asking them to collect Festus immediately, in spite of his endearing ways of sleeping upside-down, and cocking his head beseechingly when he wanted to be let outside or given a treat.
Except I just couldn't. You know what did it? I was thinking about an L.M. Montgomery character (everything in life can be tied to an L.M. Montgomery character if you look carefully enough; someday we'll have to play Six Degrees of LMM Characters in order to set out to prove this empirically) who was fearfully indecisive, and what finally cured her was when her fiancé told her that whenever she couldn't decide what to do, she should do what she'd been gladdest of when she would be eighty. Boom! I realized that I would be a happier eighty-year-old if we kept Festus than if we gave him away, and the fence-sitter in the Festus debates became an outright lobbyist for the kids' long-held position that Festus belonged with us. Practical-but-affectionate T hardly stood a chance. (We did address the practicalities. We're to install a redundant gate to help reduce escapes -- hounds do LOVE to go exploring -- and to give him a place to stay during Bible study so that he's neither climbing into everyone's laps nor bounding up and down outside the half-glass door, whining, like a crazy, lonely puppet-dog. Also, we've asked T's sister to stay here with her family -- paid, of course -- during our week-long trip to Arizona in March. We bought him a special collar, which looks like a medieval torture device, but doesn't actually hurt him, so that we can take him for our daily walks without having our arms pulled off or his trachea seriously injured.)
So that's our happy Festus ending. He's not without faults: he loves to chase the gophers in our lawn, which would be fine if they weren't, um, under the lawn. He thinks he's treed the cats if they're on top of the refrigerator or under the couches, which gets very noisy, but he's learning. He's also learning to stick around... mostly. I think he's less prone to running off than he ever has been in his entire history. (I don't think his previous owners let him inside, and he LOVES being inside, and maybe that makes him happier to be here.) When we're arriving home, especially, he no longer tries to get out through the gate, but cavorts around hallooing at us instead, overcome with doggish joy, wagging his whole hindquarters because his tail just isn't enough. We think he likes us.
Comments
I knew you would keep him!! I am so glad he is staying! He is a very cute dog!! AND he does not bark at T. that is good too!
Posted by: debi at February 3, 2009 04:28 PM
So glad to hear it. He's a handsome dog, that's for sure. That second picture is gorgeous.
Posted by: mary at February 3, 2009 06:08 PM
Good choice; he's adorable! We have the same collar for our dog...we sometimes get disapproving glares, but at least my 13 year old's arm hasn't been dislocated yet.
Posted by: Denise at February 4, 2009 11:07 AM
I'm so glad. And I use the "what you'd want to have done when you're 80" rule all the time. Another good one is to just decide one way or the other (before you need to make the ACTUAL decision) and see how you feel and if you regret it.
Posted by: Kat with a K at February 17, 2009 06:58 AM
