Of pupplers and nutritional yeast.

What? Rescued-Dog transportation
When? Saturday, November 16
Where? Somewhere between Whytheville and Roanoke, SW Virgnia

Somewhat accidentally, I became a surrogate dog rescuer on Saturday night. For the neophytes, it turns out that there exists a network of animal lovers and activist who rescue dogs in the wild south and find them homes in the tame north. This is all a volunteer effort, of course, and therefore underfunded. A problem with this north-south exchange of dogs for wishes of a better life is the transportation of dogs between places like Georgia and New York. Well, incredibly dedicated people arrange dog runs in which people across the country volunteer to carry the dogs in their personal vehicles for about 100 miles and hand them over to the next link in the chain, or keep them overnight if it's getting late. So I carried four dogs from Whytheville to Roanoke in a cargo of 16 dogs Saturday evening.
The dogs were:

1. Buford, male, tri-color Basset Hound, 1 yr. old, 52 lbs.
2. Koda, male, Bearded Collie, 1-2 yrs. old, 35 lbs.
3. Jessie, female, Yellow Lab mix, 4 mos. old, 30 lbs.
4. Drew, male, brown Basset Hound mix, 1-2 yrs. old, 38 lbs.

These are some pictures of our protagonists and some of their dog-run colleagues

































After haphazardly loading the dogs into Frankie, I headed towards Roanoke. But in less of half mile, and without time to fasten my seatbelt, the dogs had already wreaked havoc. It turns out that prior to driving to Whytheville, I had bought some groceries at Eats in preparation for my trip to the lone star state on Monday. I was stupid enough not to drop the groceries at home and Buford (a male Basset Hound) was the first to realize my mistake. When I turned my head to the back seat, he had between his paws a bag of nutritional yeast and was determined to get his snout in it. Nutritional yeast is used for many different purposes in the kitchen. In my case, I was intending to use it for some carrot muffins (oh yeah). Well, nutritional yeast has a distinctly pungent smell, which turned Buford wild. It was then when I made my second mistake: try to yank the bag of nutritional yeast from Buford. Of course, Buford did not like that, and in his attempt to regain power of the flimsy bag, he tore it up, releasing the bag contents all over the car. Now imagine how theatrical it is to have a pound of a smelly yellow powder flying inside of a car traveling at 70 mph with four dogs going crazy all at once! I can only imagine how suspicious that might have looked from the outside. Had I seen a police car, I'd have turned myself in even though I had done nothing illegal. After the powder had settled down a little, two of the dogs, Koda and Drew, had already taken hold of the passenger seat.

"Think, dude, think", I thought. And I thought that music would tame the beasts. And it did, but perhaps too much. After a few songs from Radiohead's "Hail to the Thief", Jessie was hiding all the way back in the darkest part of the trunk, Koda was on my lap smelling my crotch, and Buford was whimpering. Drew liked it, though. "Dude, this is not working", and I swapped Radiohead for something less troublesome, such as Bill Clifton's "The Early Years". The dogs absolutely fell for it. All of them quieted down, and so did I. It was then when I had one of the most joyous moments in weeks. Drew had claimed the passenger seat, so I was petting him constantly. Then he did something very special: he buried my caressing had in his chest and laid his head in my forearm. It felt like the sweetest of the girlfriends taking your hand and pressing it against her heart while saying: "You know? I really like you". Of course, the trip was too short and I have to admit that I underwent some separation anxiety on my drive back to BBurg after handing the pupplers over to the Roanoke relay.

This Saturday-evening adventure also served to meet with Tmum and her new puppler, shown in these pictures:
































Curiously enough, Tmum and Bill Clifton are married, and live in SW Virginia.




Good luck to you pupplers! I hope you make it safely wherever you go. You'll be in my thoughts long after the nutritional yeast plastering Frankie dies and stops stinking.