Adventures in Dogsitting

I forced myself out of bed yesterday morning after less than three hours sleep so that I could drive 45 minutes to a ritzy community center in Kingwood (a suburb north of Houston I’d never visited before) for a Dog Adoption Day. Homeward Bound was teaming up with an organization called Twyla’s Friends, a no-kill shelter that’s been in business for over 17 years. We found our contact and introduced ourselves. Cindy (our contact with Homeward Bound) was running late.

Kara and I held leashes and petted lots of dogs. From 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. we hung out and helped reduce the chaos, informing people about the dogs we were holding. I learned many dogs’ names and backgrounds over that three hour span, but managed to forget every human name but one. Go me! It was fun, though. When it was time to go, we helped pack up the dogs, gave our number and information to T., our contact, and took off.

Cindy never made it by the time we packed up at 4. She called as we were on our way home, saying she was three minutes out. Confused, I told her it was over and we were on our way home. She speaks very fast and sometimes I miss things, and she said something about a library and meeting our contact there. I said I didn’t know about any library event. She hung up to call T., and we continued home.

She called back a couple of hours later when I was in the deeper parts of exhaustion. I don’t think I comprehended very much of that conversation. I hung up fully intending to go straight to bed, but decided to take care of a few minor things first. That led to somehow keeping me awake until 12:30 a.m. before I dropped into a Nyquil induced coma. I woke up at 12:30 today, fed the animals, and fell back to sleep for almost 3 more hours. Now I’m awake, and while I don’t have my hours straight, I can get a lot done this evening and tonight.

Tywla’s Friends meets at the community center every Saturday between 1 and 4, and I told T. I’d be there as often as we can, though not every weekend. It’s a long drive and we don’t have a lot of funds for gas as a general rule. But I like that our circle of shelter friends is widening, and I hope we will be able to do some good. If you’d care to donate to Homeward Bound, there’s a button in the sidebar. Funds from that button go to food, cat litter, vet care, and gasoline for the pets we shelter and the driving to help out at these events.