7 Things About the Boy Next Door

Chapter 20

"Mourning is love with no place to go." -Unknown

~Harmony~

The first thing I do when we pull into the driveway and make our way into the house carrying armfuls arms of puppy items, is drop everything by the front door and scramble up the stairs into my room. I pounce on my laptop with a huge smile and throw the lid open, assaulting the keyboard as I rush to tap in my password.

Damn dinosaur of a laptop takes a good two minutes to fire up as I feverishly bounce my leg under the desk having to relieve some of the excited energy quickly building.

Finally, with a chime, my desktop opens up and the internet automatically loads as I search for pet pounds around my catchment area.

Scrolling through list after list and page after page of various organizations, one eventually piques my interest; The Ark it's called. With only being a smaller shelter, they offer a slim range of animals and by the looks of it have infrequent customers because of it's secluded location.

Just going by the cool name, I double click on the link and the page slowly loads. Pixel by tiny pixel it seems, different images of puppies and kittens congest my screen as it asks whether I'd like to shop dog or cat. Dog please!

I select the dog option and the previous images disappear as a list of exclusively dogs replace the home screen. With about twenty to choose from and half of those being beautiful pups, I've got quite the decision on my hands.

The list fully loads and the first puppy appears with his name, breed, age and description underneath the image of a little brown, short haired cross with a chocolate button nose and big brown eyes. I smile sadly at his picture, disappointed that anyone could let such an angel live in a pound. He deserves better and so does every other animal I'll find here making me want to adopt several. But of course I can't, so saving one little pup will have to do for now.

I scroll past a few more dogs ranging from all kinds of variations; black to white, large to small and cute to, well, not so cute. But as my pointer hovers over the button to flip me onto the last page, I hesitate, having caught sight of someone very promising.

Sliding my finger fluidly over the track pad, I double tap on a shaggy haired, red-caramel pup with a white tie dripping down the chest breaking the solid colour. It is like she is speaking to me through the screen with those amber eyes of hers. Ember her name reads and I repeat the name in my head as I stare into her shining eyes that are locked onto mine.

It's been decided, I know she's mine, but I read her description anyway curious to see the reason why such an angelic dog is in a place as tough as that.

Her story is nothing too drastic; she's a twelve week old spoodle that was left at her house after the owners moved out leaving her purposely behind. She was alone for about three days without food, water or love before an elderly neighbour brought her in and that's that.

With her picture in memory, I scribble down the address for the pound and skip down the stairs with a crazy grin.

"Mum!" I cry as I hit the entrance floor with an ungraceful thud.

"Kitchen!" Is her reply as I hear the ceramic clinking of plates.

I alter between speed walking and jogging into the kitchen and repeat, "Mum! Mum! Quick I have something to tell you. Mum!"

"What?!" She cries loudly, apparently fed up with my squawking as I round the corner and into the kitchen. Her face is hard, annoyed at me, but when she sees my immense beam, her features soften and gently repeats, "What honey?"