Friday, February 3, 2012

Chapter 3- Ours

None of us could explain the sudden change of heart. One day the couple was ready to take Bonnie to Arizona to be a show dog- the next they were relinquishing their claim and giving her to us. It was with indescribable joy that my sisters and I heard the news! Our prayers had been answered. We were getting Bonnie!

As soon as possible, we had her home.

We were living in a squash-colored military house with awful chrome window edging - but it was the biggest place we'd ever lived. After the tiny apartment in Hawaii, we reveled in the space indoors & the yard that seemed gigantic. I got my own room- which was very exciting. It was in the basement of course...but there was carpet on the floor and odd windows that were half above ground/ half below. To complete the suite I even had my own tiny bathroom & shower. I felt like a princess after sharing one bathroom with three sisters!

Bonnie was to be an outdoor dog except in extreme weather (hot/cold/tornados/blizzards). My Dad, always resourceful and not one for fancy things, got Bonnie an obnoxious orange (think hunting orange) collar & simple green leash. She also had a choker collar that nearly killed her twice...but that's for a later chapter.

To understand Bonnie's indoor privileges you need a basic understanding of our basement floor plan.

Most basements were simply wooden steps down to a concrete-floored room that ran the entire length of the house. We had a fancy one that had belonged to a high-ranking officer. He had fixed it up! It had been sectioned into rooms (some with carpet!) and one of those was a tiny bathroom. When you opened the door to go down you were instantly at the top of the carpeted stairs. At the bottom of these immediately in front of you was a door. To the right was a nice carpeted room which we used as our schoolroom. It was one of the nicest homeschooling rooms we ever had!

If you opened the door instead of turning right, you found your self in a hallway- tiled with linoleum. There were 3 doors on the right, one on the left & one straight in front of you.

The first door on the right led into the laundry room- a giant room with the original cement floor (and a drain). There was a giant utility sink & a refrigerator...we felt like kings with two refrigerators and our freezer. (I'm afraid we've never gone back to a single fridge since then.) The second door led to the "utility room" which housed shelves of sports equipment & a giant cushion for Bonnie. The last door on the right led to my room. Because it had carpet, I was not supposed to let Bonnie in there. For the most part I obeyed...

The little door at the very end of the hall was my bathroom & the door on the left? Well, that was a magical room. The room was the same concrete floors as the laundry & utility rooms. It was so large that we set up our ping-pong table in there & our Foosball table. Around the edges of half of the walls were shelves and pegs which my Dad used for his tools. We dubbed this room: The Workshop.

There. Now that you have a generic idea of our basement, we can move on.

That first night we had Bonnie in the hallway of the basement. We were discussing her training.
"First, she's got to learn her name girls" my Dad said. The air vibrated with the word "Bonnie" as four little girls repeated it over and over while stroking Bonnie's soft fur. Bonnie enjoyed the attention.

We were ecstatic to hand her a tennis ball and play fetch- but Bonnie didn't understand that she was supposed to give it back so we could throw it again. My sisters and I were unconcerned with that fact and scrambled around the hall chasing her and trying to pry it from her teeth while she danced out of reach and playfully challenged us with soft growls. We had the upper hand though, as the floor was slippery and Bonnie slid all over trying to keep the ball away.

Bonnie was finally home. At last she was ours! And in my heart, I knew she was mine.

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