In Which It Is Official

After days of suspense, I finally received an e-mail from my landlord, aggrieved (the first word was "Argh!"), but acquiescing.  He agreed that we could keep the dog.  All that remained was to determine whether or not she was indeed the dog who had escaped her leash outside the humane society or another dog entirely.  I made "Found" fliers and posted her photo on Craigslist, but before I could even begin to post the fliers, the universe intervened and saved me the trouble.  The note which had been left with the dog outside the humane society gave her name as Charlotte, but since the pup never responded to it, it didn't much help the situation.

Yesterday morning we were walking to the farmers market when a man leaned out the window of his bright red pick-up and shouted to me, "Did you find that dog?"

"She found me," I replied.

"Her name is Charlotte.  We left her at the humane society because we couldn't afford to keep her," he continued, smiling.  Charlotte herself showed no sign of recognition, either of the name or the man.

"Oh!  Well, she escaped."

"Yeah."  He paused.  The light he was stopped at turned green.  "Her name is Charlotte."  Still smiling, he waved and drove away.

I looked down at the dog at the end of my purple leash.  "Charlotte?" I tried.  She didn't respond.  We'd started calling her Vista the day before.  I tried that instead.  Tail wagging, she looked up at me and did the happy little butt-wiggle I had come to recognize was her way of saying Gee golly I'm so happy I'm not tied up anymore!  "I guess you're mine now," I concluded, and we continued on to the market.