The place was out in the middle of nowhere, 40 miles north of Monument Valley. It was a rest stop called Hobbs Wash.
The wash happened to be about ten minutes from where I found two kittens in 1992.
They were a brother and sister act, who I named Bugs and Bunny.
After I saw the dog run in front if me, I realized she was a scared little puppy
and not a wild coyote.
So, I turned around and came back, then spent about 20 minutes coaxing her off the sandstone
where she was cowering. Someone had kicked her and broken her jaw.
She devoured the bread and yoghurt I gave her!
Another picture of her surroundings at Hobbs Wash.
The next day, she's at peace in Paradise Valley, Arizona
(who wouldn't be at peace in PV?)
In her new collar and tag, going home to Wyoming!
Click on the photo below to see Sandy, while TORI AMOS sings to her on the road!
And here's a pic of the brother and sister kittens I found in 1992 (outside Mexican Hat, UT)
Bugs (cause he had ticks in his ears) and Bunny (the astro kitty) had been taken to the dump to die and
were about to be killed on the highway. Bugs already had been hit by a car and had
a broken leg and Bunny was playing with him... to
keep him alive. I miss them. They were both taken by coyotes (in 1996 and 1999).
In my upcoming novel, THE EDGE OF HEAVEN when the last character wakes up at the edge of heaven, it's the animals which he saved during his life who wake him up, licking his face... then they go play with each other as he confronts his fate. Bugs and Bunny will have some playmates, Sandy (my new dog) and Peabody (a terrier who died in my arms after some idiot in a pickup ran him over in West Laramie... and kept on going).
Somebody nice likes me!
:-)
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The years went by and Sandy had a fun life in Laramie, Wyoming...
A couple years after I found her at Hobbs Wash, we stopped there again. She was right at home, but really happy to leave and not be left behind!
Over the years, Sandy kept getting painful infections in her left ear canal.
Finally, in July 2012, she needed to have the ear canal removed and the ear closed to the outside, so the increasingly bad infections would stop. Surgery was performed at CSU Vet Training Hospital in Fort Collins, one of the top care facilities in America, 70 miles from Laramie.
The first day out of the hospital, she looked pretty beat up...
The poor dear had almost no balance during the first week of recover and kept falling over to her left. Fortunately, the nice people at CSU gave me a harness to keep her from falling on her face.
But by the second week when she got her stitches removed, Sandy was perking up. There's still a lot of summer left to play!
Let's go have an adventure!
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The end of Sandy's life came March 5, 2017 in my new home in Colorado- after months of increasing pain from arthritus, deafness and age.
She had a god last day and went to the EDGE OF HEAVEN (where my novel describes animals we rescue, wait for us as we also pass from dimensions and illusion.
Her ashes will be in the garden of my new home; and an artwork of sand dunes will mark her corner near the kitchen and back door where the decision to say goodbye was made the night before she died.
Her last day...
Goodbye PookiePoo. Thank you for loving me.
See you at the edge and we'll go beyond there together, as always...you were my friend and inspiration
Sleeping, breathing, smelling her boy nearby, just before the end...
