Shoe, Mercury is a dog that showed up in our shade garden on August 1. She was lost, (no tags or collar), so I put 'Found Dog' signs up out front, and tied her up out front in case her people were looking for her. We kept her inside at night. After 3 days, a man came by and Mercury clearly knew him... we were a bit afraid that she might have been abused as she was very skittish... afraid of being kicked, afraid of the hand that comes toward the head. Anyway, when he came to get her he never petted her, and only shouted at her to sit and get in the car. So, as you can imagine, I was not sure sending her back to her people was the right thing.
About 3 weeks later, as Tony and I were again sitting in our shade garden enjoying refreshing beverages, guess who walked in? Yep, the same dog.
So, I decided that I wanted to keep that dog safe, and my whole pack (5 at the time) took her in, which in itself is amazing. I checked around town for lost dog notices (none). He never came back to see if she had run here again. (Wouldn't you?).
So, we kept her. A couple of weeks ago, while I was walking the dogs, a woman came up to us and said "Athena"? I said "Nope". She said that it looked like her dog and that she was excited to see her. I said "Nope, this is not your dog", (because after two months, she is OUR dog now). 15 minutes later, local Sheriff and her and husband and kids show up. Sheriff keeps telling me I can be arrested for theft, I go toe to toe with said Sherrif for 20 minutes, and finally I decide that I do not wish to go to jail for dog-napping. I go get the dog and bring her outside to surrender her, and then the people say something like "you seem very attached to the dog", and I said of course, she is part of the family now! She had been here two months! We love her!
Then, they let me keep her. Her first father is in the military in Germany,and they had been 'caring' for the dog for him. They checked with him first to see if it was okay, they let her stay with me that day (when they brought the police), and they came back two days later to give her officially to us.
We did not need another dog, but she needed us, and now she blesses us every single day with her love and antics. She is kind of hilarious... and certainly loving and loved.
So, there is the story of Mercury. By the way, we named her that because at the moment she came back into the garden for the second time, we were discussing that Mercury was coming out of retrograde.
