A Time for Paws: Emerald II

A few days later, the vet calls and I can barely hear what she's saying because of some audaciously loud barking in the background. "Hey, Doug...your dog is ready to go home."

"Don't tell me that's him I hear..."

"Yep, healthy as a horse and ready to go..."

So Emerald came home. It would be an exaggeration to say that Geri was ecstatic about getting a second dog. There were some hints that the Shelter would be a good place to take him for adoption. I told her that I at least owed it to him to make sure he was good and well. You know, just make sure that everything's okay.

So Emerald set up house in an open-air shed off the driveway. It had a gate that I could close. Unfortunately, it housed a small flat trailer, but I went to the barn and brought up some hay bales and made Emerald a very nice outdoor home on the trailer with the hay bales keeping out the wind and weather.

Problem was: I didn't get to spend much time with him. He was sequestered and secluded, and, with the exception of walking him and sitting in the shed with him, he and I saw very little of each other.

Until the neighbor called.

Unbeknownst to us, Emerald had a habit of barking very long and very loudly at 2 a.m. each morning. With our bedroom on the far side of the house, we couldn't hear him. But the neighbor could. So it was back to two choices (in Geri's mind, anyway)...either the Shelter for adoption or inside with Baylee. At the time, Baylee was living confined by the means of a baby gate to the kitchen and utility room area. Emerald would just have to get used to the same thing. Yeah, right. Within five minutes, he had leaped over the baby gate and was politely sitting beside me on the couch, staring into my face, as if asking, "Now what?"

So once again, Emerald had barked his way into getting what he wanted. Eventually, we built a large enclosure for the two of them outside for their daytime life. Nighttime, they slept on the couch in the den, or the living room, whichever they chose. We were still doing nightly walks for bodily functions (theirs, not ours) and that got old. (Ever tried to hold on to an umbrella being blown upward by the wind in a thunderstorm waiting for your dog to go potty?) So next came the chain link fence all around the backyard for the daytime hours and back with us in the evening. Now it's pretty much the house all the time because the weather is just a little too hot or a little too cold or something that causes them to knock on the door to come in just about as soon as they get outside.

Five years have passed (seems like five months) and now Emerald and Baylee are as much a part of our lives as anyone or anything. Baylee enjoys her little brother, and, needless to say, we enjoy both of them.