Shelter from the Storm

I was stealing myself from writing a sad blog post today . . . about two dogs.

One is our neighbour’s dog Ranee who spends much of her time with us (family grown up and gone) and the other, Maverick, my son’s, girlfriend’s teenage puppy (it was looking like she might need to find a new home for him).

So, during storms and fireworks nights, Ranee often comes to us for shelter (as she did on New Years Eve) and at the moment, we are also sheltering Maverick, full-time, but temporarily.

We live on the edge of the bush on a main, busy road without fences and keeping a puppy safe is not without its stresses – especially on those occasions when he escapes. The rest of the time he is in the kitchen/family room area or out on the deck – with its temporary barricades, wallowing in his kids-sized blue shell-pool. The kitchen-tidy is in the laundry, the couch is in our entrance and anything precious is shoved in cupboards or living on ‘higher ground.’

This morning began peacefully enough. I was writing a poem, Maverick was sitting happily under my feet and all was well, until the storm.

As the raindrops splashed onto the deck and thunder rumbled above, the wet, brown head of Ranee appeared behind the barricades. I need to explain here that a boisterous male golden-retriever and an old female kelpie don’t quite ‘work’ in a room together . . . but we tried.  All Maverick wanted to do was play (he was quite insistent) and all Ranee wanted to do was sleep in a safe place – ours.

At one point, a safety gate and two stools were toppled over and Maverick took off, at lightening-bolt speed along the driveway, only halted in mid-flight by the familiar rattle of the puppy-food bag.

Both dogs spent the morning in the same room, separated by a make-shift ‘indoor fence’ sheltering . . . from different storms and I live to tell the tale!