Ellen Byron

Please enjoy these pictures of our dog

Due to a scheduling snafu, the world woke up to no post from us here at Chicks. Gasp!! THE HORROR! I bravely jumped in and said, “Don’t worry, Chicks. I’ll fill the gap!” But… with what? I shared my New Orleans Do’s and Don’ts all over the internet for anyone who might be visiting the city, especially for the upcoming Bouchercon mystery convention. I wrote about my new headshots in my June newsletter – a newsletter you can sign up for by clicking here!!! (Of course I’m including a plug for myself. Shameless Shilling is literally my brand.) And then it hit me – what could possibly be better than pictures of our dog, Pogo?

We adopted Pogo as a companion for our other rescue Wiley in 2011. I love this dog so much I might as well have birthed him myself. But my hair stylist reminded I cried to her in the first month of the adoption that I didn’t think it was going to work – which proves you MUST give all pet adoptions time because the furbabies need to adjust to the huge change in their lives. Anyhoo, Pogo is the light of our lives and now that our kid is off to college, we hover over him and dote on him in a way that is borderline nuts. I’ll shut up for a minute and show you those promised pix…

I immortalize all our pups in my Cajun Country Mystery series. (Another plug?! Ellen, you are certainly living up to that Shameless moniker!) Lucy, our late basset hound rescue, is Gopher, the series’ cover girl. Our late Wiley is King Cake. And Pogo is Jolie, who doesn’t get enough page time and I made a girl for some reason.

A couple of years after we adopted Pogo, I got a FB Friend request from a pretty teenager. I’ve learned not to accept all Friend requests arbitrarily, so I messaged back to see if she’d made a mistake in sending it to me. She wrote back “We were Snoopy’s first family.” (Snoopy was his name initially. Our daughter renamed him because he jumped up and down like a Pogo stick. Frankly, I’m impressed our Gen Z’er even knows what a pogo stick is.) The rescue had told us Pogo was an owner-surrender from a family devastated by the circumstances that forced them to make this hard decision. I was so thrilled to hear from the young girl and assured her Pogo was living his best life. Her sister older Friended me too and we all keep up with each other on FB. The fact the teen said “first family” and not “owner” told me everything I needed to know about the love the family had for our little guy, which is what helped make him such a treasure. (The older sister eventually was able to move out on her own and adopted two dogs, one of whom resembles our beloved Pogo.)

I have to run now. I hope you’ve enjoyed my last-minute post. And Pogo. Our surrogate child.

Readers, do you have pet stories?

27 thoughts on “Please enjoy these pictures of our dog”

  4. Aww, what a cutie! And what a great story.

    If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you’ve seen Koda, our greyhound rescue (in fact, he’s my post today). Like you, Ellen, I think I fuss over him just as much, and sometimes more, than my kids (now off to college). In fact, I took The Boy to the eye doctor a week ago and they somehow got to talking about Koda. “Is that who she replaced you with?” asked the doctor. The Boy said, “She wouldn’t do that…would you, Mom?”

    I said nothing. LOL

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  7. Aw, I love Pogo’s story! And I love how Pogo’s original family was able to find you. I always wonder what happens to the animals that come through my life and move on–most recently a stray, probably abandoned cat who showed up here in February and lived in my spare bedroom for two weeks until I confirmed nobody was looking for him and found a rescue group to take him in. I know he was adopted (and quickly!), but I can only hope he found a home as good as Pogo did. Adopt, don’t shop!

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

      1. Thanks, Ellen. I wish I could say that was the first stray cat who ever showed up here. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to think it’s fine to just dump your animals when you no longer want them or can no longer keep them. I’ll never understand it (and reading your Pogo story, I know you wouldn’t either), but it is what it is.

        Liked by 2 people

        Reply

  8. Hubs and I vowed we’d never get more dogs after our Smokey and Bandit died when our kids were young. Of course, if you’ve known me for more than eight seconds, you know about Nala. She was our Navy boy’s dog when he was in Guam but he couldn’t take her when he got orders to Bahrain so she came to live with us. I can’t remember a time without that sweet girl in our house!

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  10. Well, Ellen, now we can call you Rescue Chick, because of your devotion to your furbabies AND saving our post day! You can do all the shilling you want, thank you. There’s a problem, though: I post next Monday, and how can anything I write about live up to such an adorable pup? Sigh.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  11. Thanks for stepping in, El–and what a cutie Pogo is!!
    Speaking of pet adoptions, I spent the day driving down to Los Angeles, where just a half hour ago we passed Robin’s mom’s cat, Mary Alice, on to her new forever people. A sad but also very happy moment, as they are going to be great kitty parents. (And our Miss Ziggy is happy to have the cat gone, I can assure you all.)

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

Leave a comment