A couple of weeks ago a neighbor walked by with two beautiful white dogs. I could see that the smaller of them was a young Samoyed, so hurried out to see them. It turns out that his stepdaughter had found the two dogs running loose together, and so far their efforts to find the owner had been futile.

Fast forward and while no owner has stepped forward, some sleuthing showed that the older (but still very young) dog had likely been used as a breeding dog, and the Samoyed puppy was her son. My neighbor decided to stop trying to reunite the dogs with the owner, had them fixed, and is now trying to decide what to do with them.

The mother dog is a white Siberian husky (possibly a mix) with blue eyes, about eighteen months old. The baby looks like a full Samoyed, except he has one blue eye, and one eye that is a bit of a mess. He had entropion, which is an inverted eyelid. So his eyelashes had been abrading his eye since birth, leading to constant infections. My neighbors treated the infection and had surgery done to correct the eyelid, so now his eye looks nearly normal, except the color is blue and brownish. Not sure if that is how they were meant to be, or if six months of irritation caused discoloration. Regardless, it’s kind of neat looking.

What does this have to do with me? Well, I fell in love with the dogs immediately, and began considering whether we could take them. We’re not really dog people, mostly because we’re lazy but also because we travel a lot. And, we have cats. For Ed, the answer was easy. For me, it wasn’t, especially as my neighbors came to realize that they probably couldn’t keep the dogs either. They have cats too, and a koi pond. And the older dog seems to be a born hunter.

But I have been helping with the dogs, bringing them over here from time to time to give the neighbors a break. I kept the dogs all weekend while they were out of town. As my neighbors start contacting rescue organizations, we’re experimenting with separating the dogs. Even though I love the adorable little Samoyed, I’ve been taking the mama dog because she is of the greater concern to my neighbors because of the hunting instinct and the pond. And she is such a good dog. While the little guy gets into everything and has to be checked on constantly while in the backyard, Luna (that’s what I call her) is very well-behaved and happy just stalking squirrels. She doesn’t bark unless she thinks someone is breaking into the house; she barked when window cleaners used ladders right next door. This isn’t a bad thing, I went and checked and then she stopped. Last night she sat out on the front porch with us and seemed perfectly content.

But, we don’t really have a good place in the house to keep her, and it doesn’t seem fair to the cats (including Timmy and Murray and Lulu). And dogs are a lot of work. And we travel.