Pets Aren't Patriotic!

I hope you all enjoyed fun & safe Fourth of July celebrations! I have a good friend from England who just mutters through the holiday each year! He says we all need to repent. Ha! Anyway that adorable pic above was taken about 21 or so years ago. Writer Son is on the left & Rocker Son is on the right. Couple of cuties weren't they? Here is an updated pic of them this last Easter........If you go see the pic of them at the very end of that Easter post, you will agree that they are no longer described as cute &/or adorable very often. Maybe when they each finally figure out how to find a wife, she may use those words, but for now, uh uh!

My Fourth Of July memories always come flooding back as we join with friends to eat yummy BBQ & watch the cities' fireworks displays. Our town has totally outlawed ANY AND ALL home fireworks, so there are no groups of families in the streets screaming & waving fire around in their hands at all.


My childhood July 4th evenings involved sitting in my backyard by myself soothing my jittery cocker spaniel. She absolutely went nuts at all that unexplainable racket in the skies & in the streets in front of our house! I can still feel her trembling body & rapidly beating heart as I held her close & spoke sweet nothings in her ear. Poor baby!

Unfortunately, many years later as an adult, I again had a dog problem on this noisiest of all holidays! Molly, another cocker spaniel, always freaked out every year & managed to scale our very high backyard fence, which she CANNOT climb at any other time! The panic just gave her some extra crazy adrenaline I guess & off she would go into the night! There were many serious problems with this doggy-panic-attack.

We were often not home on these nights because we went to friends homes to have BBQ & watch city lights as we did this year. We would arrive home late at night & I would immediately head to the backyard to check on her & sure enough she had found a way to escape even though we thought we had covered every possible means of exit. The complication came in that she was a solid black cocker spaniel who had become deaf in her old age. So how do you find a coal black, deaf dog in a dark & quiet neighborhood after all your neighbors have gone to bed?

Our family divided up & began walking the close streets & yards. We couldn't call her name, which was very frustrating! After a long time of searching I called all the guys back to the house to just wait till morning. One of my sons was so heartbroken he sat in his room holding our cat just praying that Molly would come home. About an hour passed in a quiet & very sad home when we heard a scratching at the front door, I opened it to find our dirty & weed cover doggy, just wiggling with delight at finding her way home to us!

I led her back to my sons room & without thinking I opened the door & let her in. I forgot about the cat in there & the important fact that they fought like...well, like cats & dogs!! What a noisy, hissing, scratching mess of rejoicing went on in there!!