Good times with my lady-friends return

—“Good afternoon, ********* Kennels, can I help you?”
“This sounds like *****,” I exclaimed.
“I turned around and drove back in case what I saw was your car. I haven’t seen you in months!
I’m out here in your parking-lot, and it was a Jeep Cherokee, and that’s your car.”
“I have an eye appointment,” ***** said; “but I’ll be out in a minute to warm up my car, and we can chat.”
“Chat?” “Talk?” “Shoot the breeze?” To me it’s laugh and smile at each other. The simple exchange of emotions, enjoying each other’s company.
Finally there she is. “Hooray-hooray!” I said to myself. A lady-friend I can strike sparks with instead of striking out like I did so many times this past week.
Story after story after story: her partner’s mother had recently been killed in a nearby head-on car accident, blood transfusion for her husband, etc. etc.
“I usually don’t pass here,” I said. “I use back roads to avoid the Bloomfield speed-trap. 500 smackaroos —‘welcome to Bloomfield’!
But the other day I stopped and met ****, and she had let her hair down. ‘Keep it that way,’ I told her. Suddenly **** was cute. Make sure she knows that!”
We talked and talked and talked some more. “Chatting” equals laughing and smiling, plus bewailing the sad stuff.
“What about ****?” I asked, my cute little college-age friend.
“I told her to get another job,” ***** said. “Business is so slow I can’t afford much. Afternoons we’re closed — no one is here at all.”
“The last time I saw ****, I told her I didn’t look forward to losing one of the most pleasant lady-friends I ever had.
She told me that wouldn’t happen, but no **** for five months.”
**** would smile at me, and light up the entire kennel. Her eyes would twinkle. She was incredible.
***** is cute, but she’s 48.
Much more importantly she’s great fun to talk to. We laugh and smile and commiserate the sad stuff.
“No dog yet,” I told her. They all loved Killian at that kennel.
“And what I want is another Irish-Setter.”
“Why?” ***** asked.
“Because Irish-Setters are chick-magnets!”
***** laughed.
I could bore you all noting ten years ago our “chatting” wouldna happened.
“No cutie will talk to you!”

• “Killian,” a “rescue Irish-Setter,” was my most recent dog. He made age-11, and was my seventh Irish-Setter, an extremely lively dog. A “rescue Irish-Setter” is usually an Irish-Setter rescued from a bad home; e.g. abusive or a puppy-mill. Or perhaps its owner died. (Killian was a divorce victim.) By getting a rescue-dog I avoid puppydom, but the dog is often messed up. —Killian was fine. He was my fifth rescue. (Yet another dog lost to canine cancer.)