I broke out of detention yesterday. For the first time in two months, I put myself in the car, turned on the ignition, and drove away from the house on my own recognizance. I didn\u2019t go far\u2014three miles only, from our house in Bellevue to my daughter\u2019s home in Redmond\u2014where my grandson, his dogs, and I all went for a socially-distanced walk together in the school yard across the street from their house.<\/p>\n
Colt and I didn\u2019t exactly maintain the six-foot mandated-distance requirement at all times since it was usually more than that. At fourteen, he\u2019s probably three inches shorter than my six-foot one, but his 37-inch inseam is three inches longer than my 34. Although we may have taken the same number of steps, after ten paces or so, he was ten feet in front of me. He\u2019s built like my brothers which is to say, all leg.<\/p>\n
When I took Bill to his first Busk family reunion back in 1986, he looked around the gathering and decided everyone looked so much alike that he couldn\u2019t tell any of us apart. He told me later that “Busks are like golden retrievers\u2014they breed true.” And looking at long-legged Colt cavorting with his relatively recently adopted rescue dog, Apollo, I was reminded of my three long-legged brothers.<\/p>\n
You may remember more than a year ago, I wrote about my daughter and Colt losing their Stormy Girl to melanoma. It was a good six months before a new rescue dog came into their lives by way of NOAH. Storm was an Irish Wolfhound. As for Apollo? He\u2019s a tan Canardly. What\u2019s a Carnradly? you ask. That word came into our lives several several decades ago when we asked our vet at the time, the late Dr. Hughes from Animal Hospital of Factoria, about the breeding background of our newly adopted pound puppy. Dr. Eighty Bucks, as we nicknamed Dr. Hughes\u2014that\u2019s what he always charge, eighty bucks\u2014looked at Boney and said, \u201cHe\u2019s a Black and Tan Canardly.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d I asked, thinking we had lucked into some kind of rare English breed. \u201cWell,\u201d he explained, \u201cyou can hardly<\/em> tell what kind of dog he is, but I think he\u2019s half Irish Wolfhound and half German Shepherd.\u201d<\/p>\n Apollo seems to have the same mysterious background, although his forebears probably have more to do with a boxer\/shepherd mix than anything else. There may even be a hint of greyhound, because when he flattens himself out at a dead run chasing after Colt, his top speed looks more like mach one! But he\u2019s also a very lucky dog, one who found a forever home with people who love him.<\/p>\n While Colt and Apollo ran, I was put in charge of Snowflake, their fifteen year-old golden retriever, another lucky dog who was rescued from a puppy more than ten years ago. At this point, Snowflake is pretty much stone deaf and blind besides, but her nose works just fine. She could follow Colt and Apollo\u2019s scents and movements and would go meandering off after them. When I tried calling her back, she kept right on walking, paying about as much attention to my calling her as if I\u2019d been your basic telephone pole. I finally had to put her on a leash.<\/p>\n When our walk was over and the dogs were safely back in the yard, I handed over some goodies\u2014some ink-jet packets from Grandpa for Colt\u2019s printer and a blueberry pudding cake and some raspberries from me. Colt grabbed the cake and took off like a shot. He may have waited until he got into the house to open the cake container, but I doubt it.<\/p>\n Colt is fourteen. He\u2019s supposed to graduate from eighth grade next month. That\u2019s not going to happen, but we\u2019re going to celebrate the event anyway, probably over food eaten by sitting six feet apart on our back porch. His mother is a single mom who works long hours. Colt has been home on his own, day in and day out, since the middle of March. Not surprisingly, he\u2019s worried about graduating and working on his homework. He\u2019s also lonely and a bit dejected at this point\u2014no school, no youth group, no bowling. I hope my visit brightened his day.<\/p>\n I know it brightened mine. We were outside. I didn\u2019t wear a mask, but you can be sure that when I came home, I washed my hands!<\/p>\n Now I\u2019m back in detention\u2014until next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I broke out of detention yesterday. For the first time in two months, I put myself in the car, turned on the ignition, and drove away from the house on my own recognizance. I didn\u2019t go far\u2014three miles only, from our house in Bellevue to my daughter\u2019s home in Redmond\u2014where my grandson, his dogs, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-health"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-xF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2087"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2089,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2087\/revisions\/2089"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}