| CRICKET Five years ago, around midnight one night, I was walking my two greyhounds around the block. In the distance I saw what I thought was an animal walk across the road and go smack into the wheel of a parked car. I couldn't figure it out but as I got closer I saw it was a small, very matted and hairy dog. I stood and watched as it thumped into the curb until it dawned on me, the dog was blind! I scooped it up and we went back to my house. I called my neighbor and best friend Shirley and between us we cleaned 'her' up - it took about two hours to shave her down like a sheep. Under this mat of hair and twig we found a small female mixed breed, blind as a bat, with a piece of frayed rope and an old collar almost embedded in her neck. From information on the old tag on the collar it turned out she belonged to the family whose house backs up to mine. Her name was Cricket, she was stone blind, stone deaf and 16 years old. They had had a new baby, and Cricket had fleas, so they strung her on the side porch with a rope. She was left like this for months. One night the rope frayed enough so she got loose and wandered off into the street, which is where I found her. The family was not in the least bit distressed, they had 'hoped' she would get loose and be run over, that way her death would be an 'accident' and they could absolve themselves of any guilt. Although Cricket had a few initial challenges learning her way around my house she learned to cope very well, and provided I didn't move furniture she had a plan of every room right in her head. The only problem was out in the garden when she sometimes got disoriented from the smells from her old home, so she would plop herself down and do one single "Bark" every 30 seconds or so til I went to rescue her and get her turned in the right direction. She never caused a single problem, and lived another happy two years. Sometimes in the still of the night I still imagine I hear her one solitary "Bark" and it takes me back. Victoria King |