My grocery budget is currently under revision due to the 50 pounds of dog food I purchase twice a month. Money doesn’t buy as much as it once did when we didn’t have so many dogs around the house.
Grumpy wanted a special dog and he looked everywhere to see if he could find a black Labrador; to his surprise, there was an ad on the internet about free Labradors! We traveled many miles East to find the house where these beautiful creatures were born.
Once Grumpy picked the puppy he wanted, we brought it home to train. The dog trained grumpy first, as he sat on the recliner as if Grumpy wasn’t even there. He liked being in the house and being spoiled.
Once he was able to eat on his own, I made sure it went outside to avoid any accidents on the rugs or on the floors; he didn’t like it at first, but what we needed was a guard dog to keep us safe.
Our grandchild, who lives next door, found a bundle on the side of the road and brought it home for his mother to raise. This dog was nothing we had ever seen before, as it grew up to be large, with a non-descript nose and face and extremely quiet. Once it was used to our new puppy, they became fast friends and stayed out on the yard all day; now we had two.
Our neighbors down the road have a white miniature poodle they call Snowball and after a few weeks, he too, came to our yard to keep them company; now we have three.
As the little poodle found our home down the road, their other, very sour-looking guard dog, decided to enjoy the company of the other three and comes down the road a few times a week; now we have four.
One of our other grandkids has an extremely soft heart and likes to help other people, sometimes to my chagrin. He calls one day to say one of his friends, who to no fault of his own, was regaled with a very, very large white dog. This friend lives in an apartment and the neighbors have complained several times about the howling and scratching all day while this friend is at work. Now, this grandchild knows I cannot deny him many things, so he asked us to take this very large white dog because we have plenty of room outside. He promised to bring food, vaccines and everything the dog needs so we wouldn’t have to spend any money. So far, I have seen one 50-pound bag of food and nothing else, after several months of its arrival.
Today, we have five dogs roaming around the pasture and the front yard eating 100 pounds of dog food every month without regard to my food budget or my extra cleaning chores. They have dug up my tulips, including all my easter bulbs, dug up holes where you can bury yourself and have brought back dinosaur-size bones to chew. I don’t know where they find these bones, but it’s my duty to clean the yard of all the debris.
Do I hear any of the grandkids coming around to help? No, they’re too busy with their little dogs at home.