A nervous first date

With my stomach in knots and not thinking at all clearly, yet with a fierce conviction to meet this pooch, I headed to ACS. Always one to cry at the slightest thing, I was still surprised at how I seemed to have lost complete control over my tear ducts! Since for the past few days I teared up every time I saw the ACS picture of Nadine, what would happen when I actually met her?

Darcy Jane and Myra had been adopted two days earlier, so I entered the dog section looking for two little shih tzus. I wandered around without seeing them, fearing that they had been adopted, when I heard a woman at the far end discussing Doris with an employee. I slowly headed in that direction, but stopped as I overheard the employee ask the woman if she wouldn't want two little shih tzus. As Doris was such a timid dog, seeing the two of them huddled in the corner of their cage together was heartbreaking. All four gals had been together their whole lives and suddenly two of them had disappeared. Doris would be better with her sister, the employee persuasively said. 

Drawing on my inner Elinor Dashwood, I sensibly told myself that if the woman adopted Nadine, it would be for the best. Nadine would be happier with her sister than alone with me. Remember how good I am at self-deceit? I hovered nearby, listening for her decision that would determine so much for me. 

"No," she said! I breathed out, realizing I had forgotten about respiration. The woman headed to the next stage of the adoption process, leaving me alone with Nadine and Doris. 

She was bigger than I thought from the pictures and they had given her a really close clip of her fur. Must have been getting knots. Her cut made her look like a puppy and the green, fall-themed bows in her hair were an obvious (and too-cute-for-words) ploy to spruce up this poor wee thing into a dog a normal person would want to adopt. Lucky for Nadine, I'm not particularly normal. She and Doris were so wrapped up together it was hard to tell where one began and the other ended. The room was a racket of barking dogs, but Nadine and Doris were silent. Nadine was shaking. I immediately started getting weepy again when an employee came over and asked if I wanted to see a dog.

If only to distract from my crying, I said a bit too loudly, "yes, please!" Next thing I knew, I was on a bench in the hallway with Nadine on my lap. Shivering and scared, she wouldn't move, wouldn't look at me, and not a peep came out of her. She just laid there, waiting for it to be over so she could go back to her sister. People walked by, question marks in their eyes as they noticed her tongue. One little boy said to me, "I like your dog." I almost corrected him, but then...didn't. I liked how it sounded. I chatted with the volunteer photographer who knew much of Nadine's backstory. After about 15 minutes, she stopped shaking. After about 30 minutes, she looked up at me. Her left eye, the slightly off-kilter one, stared at me, probably wondering what the hell was going on now. I told her, "You are going to have an awesome life now, little girl. I promise."