Ol' Salty Balls

So, we went out last night with Chris and Ash and Will and Jennie to have a nice dinner of vietnamese tapas at this cool place, Parallel 17, down the street. By the way, it was my second dinner out (thx to Will, Lisa P and Mindy for the first- Lola was GREAT), and feels really good to be seeing myself move back towards normality....I should be back at 100-ish% by end of next week!
Anyway, there was this cute, very old, choc lab tied up on the patio we were eating on. We all commented on what a handsome dog he was..and as the table next to him got up and left, they didn't grab him. We all, of course, said "hey, you forgot your dog". It wasn't thiers. The staff had tied him up b/c he was stray and trying to get into the kitchen (old boy knows where to get his grub on). This dog, to us, was obviously someones dog (choke chain, and older than any stray would live) and not a stray. The staff was too busy to deal and begging us to help... so, of course, we brought him home. We named him Salty Balls, b/c he's pretty old and salty. He's seen some stuff.

He seemed to assimilate well to our three pooches (Jennie's golden, Jada, was over, too), except Butterbean, the most submissive dog ever, always showed her teeth when Salty came near. She spent the night hiding in the back room. Salty actually made Kyle look really young, so that was kinda refreshing. We quickly learned Salty's reaction to anything that excited him was to bark an incessant string of 30 or so hoarse old man barks (NOT a big selling point of his, I must say). Thank god he went to bed when we did and slept the night. After an AM barking session, he ate and followed Kaya around the yard (she IS the alpha of the roost). Then, good-deed Mere went and hung "found dog" signs all around where we found him. On the way home we were on the phone and I said "huh, I don't see Salty Balls in our front OR back yard...that's strange. Oh, well, he's too old to get out"> next thing i know, mere is yelling "oh, my god! Salty's in the road! I SEE HIM! COME HELP!". Dude sqeezed out the many openings in our fence, and in his old man haze stumbled into the road and just stood there (I was already picturing Will doing free surgery on ol' Salty). Makes me realize how lucky we are our dogs don't go anywhere (butterbean once accidentally got out and sat by the back fence door until 5am when mere got up to pee and realized she wasn't in the apt). anyway, we got him safely home, and he immediately tried to escape again. And again. We realized it was time for Salty to go to the humane society.

Oh, well, good bye Salty. We'll keep an eye on his profile on the Dumb Friends Site..if no one gets him, maybe we'll readopt (altho two dogs is plenty right now). At least all the excitement took our minds off the issues we've been dealing with, and that actually felt real nice.