I think we people have a bad habit of praying when we need something and forgetting to be thankful when our prayers are answered.

One of the worst emotions I think a person can ever encounter is the sick feeling of having hurt someone when you thought you were doing good. That happened to me yesterday.

The night before a little stray dog approached me in town when I was visiting my mom. As I parked my truck she came shivering to me from behind a dumpster with a "Can you help me?"expression on her face, but she was so timid I couldn't approach her. She was skinny and shivering so bad. Several other people parked while I tried to call her and I asked them all if they'd ever seen her- and they apatheticly said no.

I asked my husband to bring me a dog crate and I was able to lure her into it with some delicious smelling hot meatloaf fresh out of mom's oven...She got a flea bath right away, but she's got mange and might be pregnant too... more vetting than I can afford- the next ten hours were spent trying to muster up the gumption to take her into the pound- but she'd been so happy snuggled in that crate with a hot water bottle getting the chill off her bones- It was hard to think of her on a concrete floor without anybody fat. maybe I can find a terrier rescue to take her in where she's be fostered in a home.... she would hop on 3 legs when I took her out the cold was so hard on her- how did she make it before? I made a little shirt for her out of one of my daughter's old turtlenecks- just slipped it over her head with the back in the front and rolled up the sleeves- cut a short slit up the back so I could cinch up the waist with a knot... oh she was happy in her pink shirt!

Then we were getting ready to go out- I was changing and asked my husband to take her out- and she ran from him!! By the time I was able to get outside-she was GONE into the night... in a new place, without a name to call or acollar or a sense of where she was... and wearing that damn pink shirt!!! Iwas just sick.I just thought of her getting tangled in some brambles or a barbed wire fence... as a stray dog she had a chance- but as a stuck dog she was a goner! I imagined the cuffs on the arms getting soaked and unrolling, tripping her... finding the pathetic scene months from now hanging from a fence... argh. My husband must have gotten up 10 times in the night to check the crate we'd left on the back porch for her if she came back... and it began to pour.

Finally the next day after noon- she came back- without the shirt. She got some dewormer and must be feeling warmer now because she likes tosleep on the top of the crate (like Snoopy). She let me pick the brokenglass out of the pads of her feet with some tweezers.

No puppies. (yet) The bulging belly seems to have been mostly composed of deer hair. I'll spare you the details.