A whole lotta love

I took Rugger and Obi to a Promises Animal Rescue adoption event on Saturday. It was a day full of love, expressed in myriad ways by both dogs and humans.

The dog love is ever present, of course. Both Rugger and Obi genuinely like people and they crave contact and attention. They both got a lot of it today, but being dogs, they naturally gave even more than they got. Dogs just can't help themselves, that's what they do. They kissed, licked, snuggled, and leaned on many passersby, nearly all of whom stopped to partake and to reciprocate.

There were other displays of love as well. Debbie brought cooling collars to help keep the dogs comfortable. Volunteers filled and re-filled water bowls. Pat brought me (and them) a huge quantity of dog food, including some limited ingredient food that I'm hoping will help Rugger's allergy issues.

There was another expression of love today too. The folks who adopted Tevya from me years ago stopped by and left off some donations in the morning before I arrived. Tevya was a shepherd I had fostered back in 2008. He died recently and his folks wanted me to have his things to use for other foster dogs. As I opened the bag and looked through the items, what I really saw was a whole lot of love. Love they had for Tevya, love he had for them, a lifetime of a good dog's love. I'm grateful that they shared that love with me and I'll pass it along.

This is Tevya, a sweet, goofy boy. His folks had a couple human babies in his
senior years, but he adapted and adopted them as his own. They sent me a number
of pictures over the years, but these are some of my favorites. My absolute favorite
as well as my favorite story, was shortly after adoption when they came home to find
him sitting among the remains of a well-shredded dog bed with that goofy smile of his.
They didn't get mad, they didn't return him, they just got him another bed.