Last Rescue

The little dachshund crawls into my lap and stretches out with his head resting on my shoulder and his chunky little paws curled beneath him.  Hello, little man, I tell him and stroke his curly coat.  He sighs and is asleep in a matter of minutes but I can feel every breath he takes and every heartbeat.  There is something about this small animal that brings out the best in me - his sweet and sometimes shy nature, perhaps, the absolute trust in his eyes, the velvet feel of his fur, the way he runs at the first sign of conflict and doesn't recognize what a toy is for.  It makes me smile to look at him and I laugh when I watch him run - coming at me, his long ears fly  in the breeze and running away from me, his short little legs are like miniature pistons, low to the ground and just slightly out of sync with the rest of him.  It's been almost a year now since I first brought him home - he blended in immediately, too gentle and too submissive to be a threat, too small to be much trouble, and too loving to be ignored.  The other animals, even the black dog, accepted him without question.  Though they are nothing alike in personality or looks or temperament, he reminds me of my first schipperke - Joshua would've loved him, I'm sure of it.  Sometimes, an animal just feels so right it defies description and there's no doubt that it was meant to be.

All but one of my animals are rescues, found on the streets or taken in when they came ( or in some cases, were delivered ) to my door in need of a warm place to sleep and a decent meal.  That I'm a soft touch is well known, too tender hearted for my own good and hardly ever able to say no, but the little dachshund....well, he was in foster care as it was, already had a warm place to sleep and enough to eat....a forever home would've been just a matter of a few days away.  And yet the instant I saw his face, I felt it - a pull so strong and so urgent that it wouldn't be denied.  

He is surely my sweetest companion, the most affectionate and gentle, the most endearing, and far and away the most photographed.  The other dogs were trained more easily, the cats take much less time and trouble. But this small, dappled, sweet eyed and shy dachshund has had my heart from first sight.  And I didn't even know I had it to offer.