A BROTHER?? Is he here yet, is he here yet???
Bowser's Relay
My first glimpse was of a surprisingly tiny boy curled up tight in the back seat of a car in a New Hampshire liquor store parking lot. The relay driver passed, made one more circle around the parking lot, and I flagged her down. She pulled the car into a parking space and I opened the back door to meet him. Bowser uncurled himself, stretched a bit. Of course I was crying. Not only to finally see and touch and talk to Bowser after weeks of impatient waiting, but with overwhelming gratefulness to volunteers who had driven him over fifteen hundred miles to me.
Bowser's trip began in Missouri. He was driven to Pennsylvania early in the week by one dedicated driver -- a relay saint who will always be at the top of our prayer list! Bowser spent nearly a week in Pennsylvania, and I received daily emails from his temporary mom, telling me little bits and pieces of what he was doing, how he responded to different situations, how he was, indeed, quite laid back and adaptable. He was spending his days romping with a puppy, running and playing till both of them were worn out. He was rather FOOD ORIENTED (Hah!) and he was getting along well with all her other dogs.
Saturday morning, the relay began in earnest. Pennsylvania to New York, across New York, New York to the Massachusetts border, across Massachusetts to New Hampshire Border. Saturday night Bowser's dad and I met the tail end of the relay on the Maine/New Hampshire border. Seven people had given up a bit of their precious time to help an old hound get to his new life.
So here he was, this underweight boy with no rear muscles and a ripped up ear. Later inspection would reveal tatoos on each ear and some pretty tenuous teeth. But he was almost home now. He took to me as casually as he'd taken to everyone else on the relay. We went for a little walk, then piled into the car to head North.
Bowser thought the front seat would be a better place to sit, so squeezed through the seats to sit in my lap for a while. Later, I found out from other relay drivers that he had done this with them. One couple actually pulled over so that one of them could sit in the back seat with him! After a while, he decided to head back to the back seat for a little nap. I suspected that he thought we were one more link on a neverending car ride, and kept one hand on him all the way home.
It took us a little over an hour to get home. When we got there, we introduced the dogs in the yard. Everyone seemed to get along just fine, so we headed in. Bowser had spent very little time in houses in his life. Only in his foster home and his stopover on the relay. Things like mirrors and radios and telephones were foreign to him. His idea of eating from a bowl was: flip the bowl over with your paw, scatter the food all over the kitchen floor, then make a great game out of eating it! Through the ages, poets and wise men have struggled to see the world anew each day. Watching Bowser find his way around this new life with his neverending curiosity and great sense of joy certainly added a freshness to my own perspective. For Bowser, each morning brought the possibility of countless adventures!
That night my message machine was filled with messages from relayers, wanting to know if Bowser had made it home safely. The calls continued on into the next day. It was two weeks till Christmas and I found myself overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of people I'd never even met.
Bowser's rescuers & relayers
Our Gratitude, always