He was depressed.  Anyone standing on the opposite side of the bars of his little jail cell could see that.  When the kids and I whistled and called to him he did not even lift his red brown colored head off of the cold dank cement slab.  It could be that he did not even hear us with all of the barking, growling, and howling going on around him, or maybe he just did not care.  He probably was just resigned to the fact that soon (like some many other lost, no longer convenient, or recently out of fashion pets) he was going to be forgotten about and destroyed.

He woke up a little when the animal control officer pulled him out of the miniature cell and walked him towards the enclosure where my kids and I could see him up close.  Now he saw us and ran right up wagging that stump of a tail he has (I never could figure out what had happened to that tail as it was not cropped right).  He seemed really excited to see us, and then he turned rapidly to the right and stopped to smell a nearby pile of poo.  Anyway, he eventually began to focus his attention on us once again as he came running up to us and appeared to take some interest in the ball we had.  I threw it, he chased it, and just left it there where it landed while standing over it wagging that silly stump of a tail.  That did it, I decided that we were going to be the other members of his pack.

We headed back home to get a car carrier for him and then we stopped off quickly to get him a new house and some food (as well as a couple of toys).  We headed for home without delay taking the newest member of our family with us.  We were really excited to get him home with us here in the countryside were we live.  My children, my folks, and I all went out to dinner that night foolishly forgetting that we just got a new dog.  We remembered this when we came up the driveway riding up the hill if he would still be there.  Thank God that he was, he acted as if he was thinking that he had already been on doggie death row and that he was not leaving the spot where I foolishly left him.  He hasn't left yet!

  He runs the entire property and then onto the neighbor's and back, running like a fool hound dog until his tongue hung down to the ground.  He permanently rides shotgun whenever the truck starts up being the first one in and the last one out.  He is ever vigilant for any ground squirrel, bunny, coyote, or bobcat who dares to invade his fiefdom.  He can climb straight up the hill in a millisecond and descend it just under the speed of sound.  He helps us gather up the chickens when they need to be corralled.  He greets me with smiles and laughs (they say dogs do both) when I walk up to him.  He is always a pleasure to be around, except for when he has just been skunked!

Read more about my dog @ Deskunking