MIDNIGHT, JUNE 1991-MAY 25, 2009: A REMEMBRANCE,
PART
VI. Midnight and Whitney, over the next couple of years (that's right, they were in rescue all that time) had several sojourns to the kennel in Sun Prairie. In winter and summer both, I would carefully monitor the forecasts for predicted extremes in temperature. During every stretch of subzero cold or hundred-degree heat, I would haul my butt down to Bertha's farm and pick them up. They always seemed thrilled to go (and thrilled to see your humble narrator too, if the truth be told).
The rescue, to their credit, never failed to pick up the tab for the kennel stays... even if it wasn't much. The kennel ("Drachenberg," since gone out of business) never raised their price, and they continued to treat Midnight and Whitney like visiting royalty. At one point we even came close to adopting them out to a kennel employee who was especially taken with Midnight. But as luck would have it, his girlfriend loved Whitney, but was afraid of the extremely mild-mannered "wild dog" that came with the package. End of adoption.
(Klaus: "What that guy needs is another girlfriend.")
And then there was Bertha. I suppose that after two-plus years, it was understandable that she didn't want to be "stuck" with M&W forever, and she was beginning to think that the rescue in fact had decided that she was the dogs' "new owner by default" (even if the rescue funded all their needs). Once again, it all came back to me and my knee-jerk decision to bring both dogs into rescue when we were having a hard enough time placing the purebred German Shepherds that people were forever dumping on our doorstep. I assured Bertha that we were still looking for a home for Midnight and Whitney, but in the time that had passed since they had entered rescue they had attained the ages of twelve and eleven, respectively. If our original appeal to give the "senior chums" a place to live out "their last years together" had failed, it wasn't likely that anyone would want two dogs who probably had, at best, months to live by now.
"I want these dogs out of here by the Fourth of July," Bertha told me.
"I don't know if I can do that," I said. "I've got to find another place for them." (Actually, I had been doing just that for several months already, and was almost to the point of asking Klaus to do me another "favor.")
It was July 2 when my telephone rang.
"Hi," a chirpy female voice said. "Are you Alois?"
"That would be me."
"Aren't you, like, Midnight and Whitney's caseworker?"
"Yes indeed. Are you interested in them?"
"Well, actually, they're like... here."
"Where is 'here'?" (I almost threw in a "like".)
"The Iowa County Humane Society."
Iowa County borders Dane County to the west (and, incidentally, is where Barneveld is located). I guessed that they had escaped the farm and somehow made their way out there.
"No, a lady brought them in. Bertha?"
"Oh, brother. Yes. They were being fostered on her farm."
"She said she couldn't deal with them anymore. I don't know why. They are such sweet dogs."
"Yes, they are. And she didn't have any right to dump them at a humane society." Although a part of me had always sympathized with Bertha, if she was trying to make some kind of point with me by what she had done, I certainly didn't appreciate it. She hadn't even given me until July 4.
It was time to make a decision about Midnight and Whitney. I could not put it off any longer. Ultimately, I had always understood that they were my responsibility.
TO BE CONTINUED
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