Dog Tales: William Has a Date . . . Maybe

The approach of Easter calls to mind last Easter, when William donned his bunny ears to exchange Easter baskets with his dear friend Lucy. The intervening year has been a rough one for William. Lucy died. William suffered old dog vestibular disease. His good bud Quinn died. But, although William is an older and much feebler dog now than he was last Easter, he soldiers on. We celebrated his sixteenth birthday on March 11 with a party at Bruno's, attended by all his friends and well-wishers--both human and canine.

Still, William misses his old friends. So it was a wonderful bit of serendipity yesterday when, while enjoying our third walk of the day (William has spring fever and wants to be outdoors as much as possible), we came upon a woman in the 100 block of Union Street stowing a cat carrier on the passenger seat of her car. She asked about William, noting that his gait was that of an old dog. She drew my attention to a large shaggy dog sitting on the back seat of her car and told me they had figured out she was sixteen years old. The words "figured out" were the clue that her dog was a rescue, just like William. I told her William was sixteen years old, too, and she suggested that, since our dogs were the same venerable age, we should take them on a walk together the next time she visited her daughter in Hudson. I agreed that this was a great idea.

The problem is we didn't exchange names, and I didn't tell her where we lived. All the woman learned was William's name. But who knows? Maybe William's fame (and Gossips' notoriety) will be enough to steer her in our direction the next time she's in Hudson. William sure hopes so.
COPYRIGHT 2014 CAROLE OSTERINK