Want to play some numbers games. I’m writing this on the 13th for the 14th and 15th in ’16.
Means nothing to the dog in this photo I snapped during the week. That is Porche Noel, a wanderup dog found on our porch at Christmas several years ago. She was starving -- concave abdomen, pronounced ribs and wild eyes -- and walked on three legs or with a pronounced limp. Pitiful little girl. Around a year old.
She’d been knocked around -- this is Dallas where you have to really look hard sometimes to find kindness.
When you tried to feed Porche, she went ape. We had to put her in a crate, then scoot the food quickly in while she tried to kill you, jumping around like she’d never be fed again.
It was so awful that a visibly shaken Martha finally declared, “We can’t have this dog in this house.”
Patience, we decided. Patience.
And, so that is why this is a miracle photograph.
The dog who once tried to kill people and animals at feeding time now understands snacking (we've been excellent teachers in that category. So, this is, indeed, Porche Noel in her natural state, chin on my hip and squeezed between her two humans.
Every night she sacks out between me and my dimplesspouse Martha. And, yes, Porche Noel is no 6-pound Chihuahua. She’s about 40 pounds of “don’t-bother-me-I’m-sleepin’.”
I think I was reading to Porche when she nodded off, sort of smiling at whatever I was reading to her, something I’d written. I hope she’s smiling. She also gets that look when she’s about to heave -- but I hadn’t read that much of my work to her that night!
And, while Porche prefers the nighttime comfort of the bed, she is not above finding another dog to flop down on. In this case, Wendy wasn’t interested and curled up at one end of our old couch several years ago. Texas Earl the Cheeseman, our free from Kiest Park Rottie, had stretched out on the other end, so Porche simply flopped down on top of him and drifted away.
How can people live without the entertainment factor of the canine existence? I won’t even bring up the mutual admiration society Porche has formed with the world’s cats.
[Send photos of your slumberin’ darlin’s to dallrp@aol.com and we’ll feature the sleeping dogs, napping cats, dozing dromedaries in readlarrypowell.com’s Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap. We post these photos to inspire insomniacs to believe that they, too, can find sweet, restful sleep and realign the though processes in their brains. That other dog? That is my late brother Barry’s late Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Oliver. He was the spotlight dog in our very first Let Sleeping Dogs Lie & Napping Cats Nap on May 14, 2005. Yes, that long ago. The dog with the derelict (that’s me) at the top of this page is the late Calamity, the dog we rescued and gave to my brother Garry, now also gone. I miss all four of them and sometimes I spot bits of them in this dog Porche Noel. She is a running little dog like Calamity; she is a sleeping little dog like Oliver; and she can be a lot of fun and a bit of a wart, just like both my little brothers. So, everybody get some sleep and be sure to tell people and critters that you love them. You’ll sleep better.]
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