Home for a Holiday
12/23/2019

Smiling, Amy peeked around the corner.

“Can you take Sperry for the weekend?”

Amy is a person, Sperry is a dog, and I’m a sucker for all animals. We all work together at the Flagler Humane Society, each according to our talents. Presently, we were preparing the shelter for an upcoming Town Howl that was a gathering of the community to discuss an all-important cause to us, tethering, or more accurately, anti-tethering. But never mind all that, this story is about Sperry.

She’s a brawny Pitbull/Shar Pei mix with copper colored peach fuzz and a baritone bark that could frighten a year off your life. You might have fled for the hills if you hadn’t stopped to notice the liquid love welled up in her amber eyes.

Oh, she’s as strong as Schwarzenegger, as agile as the Williams sisters, and as persistent as a robo-call but she’s also the sweetest dog I have ever known. The shelter needed a deep clean so Sperry could not hang around her usual haunts as the cleaning solutions would be too caustic.

“Okay,” I said.

And, just like that, she was towing me out to my car, muscles rippling, nostrils snorting, and nose-painting my windshield with avant-garde. I hopped in the driver’s side and we both grinned all the way home. Upon arrival, at half my wife’s size, she bombarded Cindy with cheerful enthusiasm.

“So, this is Sperry?”

The dog shouldered past her, galloped through the front door, tore across the living room, ducked into the master bedroom and sprung onto our bed before I could muster an answer. Sprawled across the entire bed on her belly, she resembled a bronze Halloween Gargoyle with the sole, paramount duty of monitoring everyone within smelling distance.

Cindy took her for a walk but I may have it backwards as it seemed more like a chariot race. Oh, she minds well, does whatever you ask, but if nobody’s asking, Sperry’s in charge!

Evening came beckoning for a peaceful moment with a glass of wine out on the lanai.

No wine for Sperry but she doesn’t mind because look! There are squirrels out there and birds and, oh, my God, Raccoons! So, no peaceful moment for Sperry either.

She resumed her Gargoyle pose but now it included quaking and wining. Policing the house became a total bore as she zeroed in on the black-masked marauders splashing the bird bath just beyond the wafer-thin screen.

Does she love them or hate them? Either way, she really, really, really wants those raccoons!

Apparently, if she had her druthers, she’d devote every waking minute out here on our lanai, explaining to the world’s critters exactly who’s in charge.

Well, she just may get her wish.

Happy Holidays!


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