Man's Best Friend

Mrs. Penguin has a rat terrier who we shall call The Leaner.  Why "The Leaner"?  Because he insists on sitting right next to you and leaning on you the whole time.  It's kind of oddly uncomfortable. Besides the leaning, he is the sweetest dog alive.  He is not a barker and he doesn't chew up anything, he just really likes to be touching someone when he's sitting down.

He may be the sweetest dog that has ever lived but he is also the dumbest animal God has ever breathed breath into.  He means well but he's just a little idiot.  With that being said, he is a big fan of riding in cars.  Trust me, that will come back into this story in just a minute.

I got home from work one evening right as Mrs. Penguin was heading out the door to go to her job.  We had a quick hallway romance and she took off.

What's that?  You don't know what a "hallway romance" is?  That's when you pass each other in the hall and say, "Love ya!", "I love you too."

Mrs. Penguin left for work and about twenty minutes later she called me and asked if I could meet her to pick up a dog.  She said she didn't have time to bring it all the way back home.  I figured The Leaner must have sneaked out the door and jumped into her van without her noticing.  I was surprised it took her so long to finally spot him.

I said I would come meet her and pick up the little idiot.  The second I hung up the phone, The Leaner walked by.  I thought, "What the...?"  Wait, if he's here then who am I picking up?  I tried calling Mrs. Penguin back but she didn't answer.  The route she takes to work is notorious for bad cell phone coverage.

I drove to meet Mrs. Penguin and as I walked up to her van she handed me a yellow ball of fluff about the size of a meatloaf.  It turns out that she was driving down the road and this hairball was walking down the middle of the highway.  She thought she would get it off the road and take it to the closest house.  The problem was, there wasn't a house for a couple of miles in any direction.  It seemed like the dog either got lost or was abandoned.  It looked healthy and it was very friendly.  It had some dried mud or something on it's back but it was well fed.

I took the dog home and found it a place to sleep.  We would start finding her a home the next morning.  Well the next morning we decided we need to take it to the vet to have it checked out since we have other dogs and we didn't want our dogs getting sick from something the puppy might be carrying or visa versa.  The doctor looked her over and declared her a healthy, full blood Labrador puppy.  The only mark against it was that "mud" on her back.  It turns out that she had a slight skin infection and she would need medicine for a week.  After we got the medicine and were heading out the door I noticed that Mrs. Penguin looked mad about something.  My first thought was, "Great, what did I do now?".

When we got to the car Mrs. Penguin turns to me and said, "I don't know who the dog belonged to but obviously they weren't taking too good of care of her."  I immediately thought, "Crap, we have another dog."  Yep, we have another dog.  I'm not too upset because she's adorable.


Don't judge me,
Opus T. Penguin