What is Home to Me?

What is Home to Me?

by The FlyLady, Marla Cilley

We have been traveling for two weeks. We had a pleasant drive across this beautiful country of ours.

It was so much fun to surprise Eric Dodge for his CD release party. The name of his new CD is "Home To Me!" I think this is so important to all of us.

What is home to you? Just before we left on our trip, Robert came home from playing chess with a pitiful look on his face. He had seen this sad, abandoned dog living in a pile of trash. He had tried to coax the dog to get into the car with him. He asked if I would go back with him the next day. We had plenty of daylight left so away we went to rescue this poor skin-and-bones pup. We took with us some dog food, a harness and a leash.

The poor dog was starving, yet he would not get into the truck. Robert got down on the ground with him and he was not scared. I joined in the acceptance game and he let me pick him up. He hardly weighed 20 pounds. Every rib was showing. He was as skinny as Shadow was when we found her. When we got home our other dogs went nuts. All three of them got out the front door and started sniffing around. Then all at once they took off. The only dog on a leash was the new rescue dog.

We put the rescued dog in our two-acre fenced-in back yard. He was terrified of the back stairs. Our dogs have gotten out before and are usually home by morning. Shadow showed up but the other two were wild mountain dogs following every scent they smelled.

By the time we were ready to leave on for Utah on Saturday, our other dogs were still not home. Michele along with Nikki and Demos were going to look after our critters. They found that we had a new dog in the family. We joked that Michele was going to quit if we got another critter.

Michele fell in love with our new addition. He looked just like her dachshund, Oscar, in the face. After the first night on our back deck, we woke up to find a pile of assorted things the dog had gathered up. He had built himself a home! God has a weird sense of humor; either he had sent us a dog who was a hoarder, one that was environmentally conscious or one that was going to teach me a lesson by showing me my outdoor hotspots!

While we were gone, Michele discovered his name. He grabbed her Harley Davidson purse and took off with it. He has the need to have fabric and leather around him. Maybe he is just an interior decorator at heart. So from this, she named him Harley. It is like having a two year old in the house. Clyde Brooks said the dog was about eighteen months old.

After a week, our two runaways had not returned home. I put in a call into the animal shelter. Later that morning, Michele got a call from someone who had rescued our runaways.

The sad part is Gypsy, who always followed her nose and the creek, was hurt. Several wonderful people had tried to save her. Ginger would not leave her side. Kelly Toms and her father had to stop traffic on a Hwy 276, which is a long way from our home. Nita Hunt from Pure Pets and her daughter Ella took Gypsy to the Western Carolina Regional Emergency Animal Hospital in Flat Rock. Our precious Gypsy died on the way but I am told that she was being loved the whole time by these teenage girls, Ella and Kelly.

We now think her heart just gave out from her wild adventure since she was not bleeding. Michele went to retrieve Ginger from Annie Probisch at Tail Waggers in Penrose. Ginger is now home teaching Harley a few manners, like don't chase the cats, no jumping on the furniture and don't take the birds' food.

I would like to thank all the good Samaritans who tried to help Gypsy and Ginger: Kelly Toms and her father, Nita and Ella Hunt, Annie Probisch, Artie Wilson and Chuck Byrd from the Transylvania County Animal Shelter, Western Carolina Regional Animal Hospital and our Vet Clyde Brooks.

I am thankful there are good people in the world who will go out of their way to help a happy living thing!

What I have discovered is that home is the place you come back to after you have gone on an adventure. "Home to Me" is about being surrounded by the unconditional love of your pets.

Home is also the place you make for yourself. You take what you have been given and turn it into a home. Despite the fact that Harley likes to pile things up and follow his nose all over the place, I believe he has found his home, too. The more secure he feels knowing where his next meal is coming from and that he is loved, the less he will need to gather up things. Now if I could just teach him to focus instead of getting sidetracked following his nose from one thing to another. This is a lesson we all could learn. There is no place like home!

For more help getting rid of your CHAOS, check out her website and join her free mentoring group at http://www.flylady.net/ or her book, Sink Reflections published by Bantam and her New York Times Best Selling book, Body Clutter published by Fireside. Copyright 2010 Marla Cilley Used by permission in this publication.