Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Breaks

We are in garden city, Kansas today. We made it through the rest of Colorado a few days ago and camped in Holly, Colorado, four miles from Kansas. On our way from the gas station to the campsite we passed a small friendly dog, and stopped to pet him. His owner came outside and we talked for a long time. He was from Holly and had moved to wine country in California, and moved back to Holly with his wife a few months ago to retire. His son owned a multi million dollar company, and it was interesting that he chose to come back to Holly and retire after living in big cities. He was getting ready to go eat dinner with his wife at the Subway in the local gas station- the only exciting option in Holly. That's where we ate dinner, too. He told us that his dog had just had puppies, and was selling them for 50 dollars. After looking up "bike touring with dogs" online Mary decided to buy one ( it was a shi-tzu puppy, which usually go for 500 to 1000 dollars.) apparently a lot of people travel with dogs on bikes, some for years at a time. And the puppy was trained, beautiful and happy.
We bought her, named her Tatum, got her some puppy food and camped with her that night. The next day we planned on riding into Garden City to buy a venitaled cage to attach to the bike, but the more we thought about it we realized it was not fair to bring her on the bike trip in case something happened to her. She was very happy riding that day, but you can't control hailstorms or getting hit by cars or anything else that could possibly hurt her. After another night, a few fights, and almost splitting ways, we decided on either bringing her to the local shelter or putting her on Craigslist. We stopped in a small store to buy some sodas this morning, and the owner of the store loved Tatum. We told her what was going on, and she said that her elderly single mother needed a puppy. We talked for awhile and then crossed the street to look for puppy supplies. On our way back to our bikes, she came out of the store and waved us over. Her mother had come down to see Tatum. The two of them were very kind, the mother had a large yard and Tatum liked her, so we gave her up. It was a horrible decision to buy her, an amazing few nights with her, and a hard time parting. We didn't feel like riding after all that, so we did a large circle around town running errands and came back to the same campsite tonight. I feel stupid, and a little defeated, but I don't regret meeting that little angelpuff for a second. Tomorrow, we will get back on track. Together. Without any animals.

No comments:

Post a Comment