Romance

I recently had a discussion on romance with a group of friends.  I’m not a girl who is easily impressed by the usual cliche's; flowers and candy on Valentine’s Day just don’t do it for me.  Here’s the story of one of the most romantic things Tom has ever done.

I blame the whole thing on Nina, my BFF, who called me one day to elicit my help in rescuing a poor, down trodden pug.  In hindsight, I’m not even sure how Nina got involved in the whole thing, let’s just say she’s a cat person at heart.  Not to mention that once she reeled me in, she was nowhere to be found (knowing Nina, she was most likely enjoying a fabulous meal in a chic sidewalk café, flirting with a handsome waiter named Raul.)

The long and the short of it goes something like this - Bobby  belonged to a young woman who was moving out of the country asap -  she desperately needed to find him a new home.  It soon became apparent that while she may have had good intentions, Bobby had lived something of a hard life.  He spent 90% of his time in a crate that was way too small for him, and when he was fed, it was usually either a happy meal or slice of pizza. Worst of all, the young woman had a biker boyfriend who liked to get rough with little dogs.  Guess it made him feel like more of a man. As a result,  Bobby had lost most of his hearing, due to the fact that he was repeatedly hit upside of the head.

I took one look at poor little Bobby’s sweet pug face, and took him home with me.  The problem was all of this happened in a matter of 24 hours, while Tom just happened to be in the backwoods of BC, well out of cell phone range. Poor Tom...... for years he's been roped into my numerous animal rescues, often having to drop everything in order to drive a wounded bird to the closest wildlife rescue centre.  This time I had a funny feeling that coming home and finding a new dog sleeping on his side of the bed, might not be Tom's idea of a good time.

To make matters worse, a few days after Bobby moved in with us, the biker boyfriend called and threatened to take the pug away if I didn’t give him $500. Seems the reason they were making a quick exit is the boyfriend was going to court - where the most likely outcome was an extended holiday in the big house - hence the plan to leave Canada on the first red eye. Once they realized they didn’t have enough money to get the hell out of dodge, boyfriend started making the rounds, trying to come up with extra cash.

Tom came home to a hysterical wife, extra pug, and a scary biker dude leaving cryptic messages on our home answering machine.   Instead of getting mad, he hugged me and assured me that everything would be okay – he would take care of the biker dude – as long as I promised to find Bobby a good home - pointing out that this wasn't an episode of 101 Pugs.

Tom ended up driving his scooter (no kidding) to a tough biker bar on the wrong side of town, paying the pug ransom,  and making tough guy sign an agreement that he would never contact us again. Thankfully it was the last we heard of him, as I imagine that kind of contract might be a just little difficult to enforce.

It doesn’t end there………it soon became apparent to Tom that I wasn’t really trying to find Bobby a good home. What can I say, I really fell in love with the little guy.  So on top of everything else Tom was the one who ended up finding Bobby a forever home, where he lives with another pug, two little girls, and has birthday parties and Christmas presents.

Now that's what I call romance.