School is going to start soon, but as of now my schedule is still not settled yet and I feel like everything is hanging in mid air. This has got to be one of the busiest summer vacation ever, after my summer classes I had a few weeks of break, between practicing that got hung up during a regular semester and teaching students, running some seriously time consuming errands, and getting a bad cold,  I also got ANOTHER dog, yes, here you go,

yep, a real dog. It all started last week when I decided to pay a visit to the animal shelter and learn a thing or two about it. And may I use the expression of "opening a can of worms" because that's exactly what happened to me? It's like a horror movie except it's real. Most pets don't make it out of the shelter alive, and the particular one that I visited keeps pets for about five days and if no one come to claim them by then they are euthanized.

I was so excited when I arrived at the shelter, only that my excitement was followed immediately by sadness. I saw a dog looked almost just like Kelly but three times bigger, and he was wearing a red bandana around his neck, and he looked very scared and was rocking left and right  inside his little doggy cell not knowing why or how he ended up there, this reminded me very much of Kelly when I first found her. I also saw the black little poodle mix in the picture and he was the loudest cry baby so I naturally bend down to see him, and he quickly reached out both paws and squeezed my hand in between them. I typed in both dogs' numbers in my phone and went back into the office to ask about information on them. The officer behind the computer told me that the black little guy was about three years old and he was a stray, this was his last day for a chance to be picked up, and the white fluffy dog was turned in by his owner, he was 9 years old and possibly had arthritis and that was the reason why the owner had turned him in. It really broke my heart when I heard this, and I wanted to keep this dog but I was not sure if I could really afford the medical expense if I really needed it. To my relieve, the second time when he checked on the file, he said the dog had already been adopted and was going to be picked up the next day.

So that settled it, the little black poodle mix was going home with me. The adoption procedure was simple, all I had to do was pay, and so I did. The dog needed to be neutered and given all kinds of shots and that only took one day. Next day he was ready to be picked up, I made a run to the pet store to buy a new leash, a dog bed, some more kibble and food bowls and got everything ready for the new dog. When I came back to the the animal shelter again I was given all kinds of forms and papers and then finally the dog, all fixed and on a leash and jumping up and down. That's when I was first able to see him well under the sun light, he was really dirty and he was nothing but a bag of bones, but he's got a ton of energy. That's it, it's a happy ending at last, one puppy saved out of many. I had a chill feeling as we walked out of there leaving all the other dogs behind. So I tried to not think about it anymore, farewell, little puppies, I'm sorry I can't save you all.