Post your slice or a link to your blogged slice on Schoology.com by the start of class on Friday!
The slice topic for this week can only be Lilly. I have wanted a dog for as long as I can remember - at least since freshman or sophomore year of high school - and I actually thought recently that I'm glad my parents didn't try to cheer up a moody teenager with the ambiguous "dog" I wanted, because, I would have had to leave that likely Australian Shepherd at home, two-and-a-half hours away when I went to college, and that would have been hard - a chink in the armor of necessary focus required when heading into the big changes that come with beginning college.
Driving the last carload of odds and ends to the new house, I stop at Petsmart hoping that since it's a Saturday afternoon there will be puppies to pet from area shelters and rescues. With the all puppies inside the knee-high, plastic fence napping, I linger giving 'pets' on their sides and scratches to the their ears and necks. And I stay, and smile, and chat with the family who had been won over by the middle school-aged son; they would be getting the mostly-white charmer he hoped to rename "Mercury" after Queen's Freddie Mercury. And as time passes and more people come up to claim the puppies they'd seen earlier that day, the thought crept into my mind, "Maybe I could get one..." and I texted home saying, "Want to come see them?" along with a pic of the five, resting litter-mates in solid black and Jack Russel-mixtures. "Short coat - won't shed much," and "Already spayed," I add for good measure, trying to sound informed to help my husband stomach this impromptu puppy prospect.
It's now five days later, two of which, you all know, have been "school days" that have required 5 a.m. wake-up calls and innumerous trips out the backdoor and across the driveway to the grassy expanse where I say, "Let's go potty...Go potty..." and hope for little more than a reason wrapped in a plastic grocery sack to give Lilly the half Milkbone and head back inside to get ready for the day, and crate training, and Nylabones, and a little buddy who I can run with and tucker out from lots of play.