It’s almost 1am, and I’m sitting here, wide awake. Yes, I should be sleeping. Yes, tomorrow is a work-day. Yes, I’ve been awake all day, and should be tired enough to sleep, and Yes, I’ll regret it tomorrow if I don’t get some sleep tonight.
BUT.
Tomorrow is a new beginning for 2 beings. A new start for two critters who should be well past the stage of beginning again. There’s a door in my heart, that was slowly, and sadly closed last September (but not locked!), that is open again, letting air and light into a dusty room. Tomorrow evening, that room will no longer be empty.
Honestly, it’s not empty now. It’s cluttered with memories of my little nuisance, Jessie the Italian Greyhound, but the tears that I’ve shed in the last four months have helped to clean the clutter and the dust away. It’s a good thing, because now there’s room for Zoe.
Zoe is a 12-yr old Italian Greyhound who had to be re-homed by her current mom. Her current mom is actually her second mom – her first mom wanted to euthanize her at the age of 7, I don’t know why. Her 2nd mom was a vet tech at the time, and when Zoe was brought in, instead of going to the rainbow bridge, she went to a new home (with the first owner’s approval). Her 2nd mom recently lost her job, and the housing that went with it. While she has a new job, she doesn’t have dog-friendly housing, and has no idea when her life will get settled again.
She’s tried for weeks to find a new home for her little angel – the rescue groups were full, and the shelters told her that a 12-yr old dog is unadoptable, and if she came to a shelter, she would probably leave by way of the Rainbow Bridge.
In desperation, she poured out her frustrations on a message board. An internet friend of hers, somewhere in Texas, made it her personal mission to find Zoe a home in the day or two that were left before the shelter was the only option. Someone told her about a greyhound message board, and suggested she post there. None of these people have ever met in real life – they only know each other from online.
Late Friday afternoon, she registered on the message board and wrote a post about Zoe. She posted two pictures, and I fell in love as soon as I saw them.
Eight hours, sixteen emails, and two phone calls later, it was all over. Zoe would be mine. We just had to get her from central Florida to northern Georgia.
Not a problem! My dog-sitter’s husband is in southern Florida this weekend, at some kind of airshow (he sells small airplanes). He’d be driving back to Georgia on Monday, and Zoe’s current location is about 30-45 minutes north of where he is. So he’ll be stopping in the morning to pick her up, and then they’ll stop every 3 hours on the way so that she can relieve herself, and by 8:00pm tomorrow, she’ll be in my arms, being fussed over and told how beautiful she is.
Her current mom tells me that she’s in perfect health, with no known medical issues. She expects Zoe to live another five years, which is a good lifespan for an IG. For me, it’s not how many years she has left that matters. It’s that she be allowed to live out the full span of her life, and knowing that she is loved.
She has been loved, and she will be loved. These are facts. I already love her, just from that second picture where she’s cuddled up under her blanket. I am SO looking forward to the little annoyances that come with IGs in the house. The little annoyances that it took me forever to appreciate in Jessie. And I’m looking forward to having a snuggle-bunny again.
I’m not usually one to wish the hours away, preferring instead to try my best to experience the moment I’m in, but boy, I wish it were tomorrow evening, already.
And all of this happening because someone knew someone through an online message board. Other than my friend doing the transport, none of us know any of us that are involved in this. This is truly the power of the Internet.