Welcome to the zoo

To paraphrase all of those Bibley-types, there's a hole in your heart that can only be filled by yet another dog.

So here's Tressie, the latest addition to the Sheltie ark here in Greensboro. She's only a temp, though, who we are fostering until we or Triangle Sheltie Rescue can find her a pemanent home.

We've had pretty good luck with the foster dogs we've had so far over the years. They often come from disturbing circumstances but we've never had one that was destructive or mean or rabid or anything like that. In fact, we've only had one that wasn't reliably housebroken, and since she arrived at our home housebroken and only seemed to lose the knack of it while we had her, that was probably our fault somehow.

Tressie was seized from some jerk who was keeping 50 dogs in his 1,000-square-foot house, apparently trying to breed and sell them. He had them stacked up in cages so they'd be peeing on each other all the time, which if it were me would probably make me want to extract urinary revenge on any human I came in contact with. But she's resisted that temptation so far.

She actually seems pretty well-adjusted considering. She hasn't eaten much since she got here, which is probably not a bad thing since she's really fat. She also lets out rather mournful (though fortunately, not too loud) howls at the door alot. We think that may be because she misses her sister Hershey, who apparently she used to snuggle up against in their cage against the cruel, cruel world with. But it's pretty hard to find homes for dogs together, so it's best that they be separated now, even though it makes us feel guilty.

We haven't fostered for a while, so Fife and Fergus and Kaylee haven't had to deal with an interloper lately. The last one we had was an adorable little black-and-white mutt named Pippin that we were very tempted to keep, however bad an idea it would have been to have four dogs permanently. He was small and cute and playful, which is Fergus' appointed role so he was in a snit even after we found Pippin a new home. There doesn't seem to be much jealousy toward Tressie, except for when we haul he big butt up into our laps where Fergus and Kaylee think they have reserved seating. Fife doesn't care so we can usually just rotate the three of them across our two laps like an auto assembly line, but on those occasions (like now, when Leslie is away) when there's no spare lap, it can start to tip 80 pounds or so between the three of them. Fortunately, I have long legs, but whoever gets stuck down by the feet probably still feels slighted.

Leslie left for Washington, DC this morning for a conference. I'm driving up on Friday, and we'll have dinner with friends Vikram and Kat and spouses Friday night, which should be great because I haven't seen either of them in forever. We'll also hit some of the good museums. I haven't been to DC since a field trip in the 8th grade, so I'm looking forward to seeing Fonzie's jacket in the Smithsonian again. Fonzie's coolness is timeless, isn't it?