SKIDDISH

For many months I have been trying to find homes for some stray dogs in our neighborhood. These dogs had homes when they were puppies. They've known what it's like to belong to families, to be abandoned, and they don't know how someone they've loved so much couldn't love them back.

I adopted a stray dog and wrote about how broken she was when she was abandoned. That dog became a minor character in my eBook, A NEW SEASON.

One of the female strays had puppies in the neighbor's shed. A home was found for the mother and her puppies. The father, a chow mix, had to be left behind, abandoned again.

Recently, I've come across a group that will adopt the chow that I've named Kato. The problem is, we need to confine him so he can be transported to his new foster.  Now that's a problem.  He has lived on his own for at least 2 winters. People have chased him out of their yards and treated him unkindly. It is difficult for Kato to trust humans.

So I've begun to feed him, often leaving him trails of food to my house. He follows, but at a great distance. As the Arctic blast approached, I worried about Kato and whether he could stand the freezing temperatures. Would he find shelter, food, or water among the ice? Still, he refused to allow me to catch him and take him to a new home.

A few days ago he scooted into my garage, snatching a dish of food, and ran away with it. I thought of how he would face the night in the cold, when he could have had a warm rug and shelter from the wind. I also though about people I've known in my past who've chosen the hard path to trod even when better options were available to them.

Maybe that's why I love dogs so much.  They seem so human.