At last that day arrived when we were to meet Geneva.
This German Shep puppy is scheduled to officially become a new family member on the first weekend in Feb.
We drove down to Boca on I-95 on a cloudy morning. Boca is about an hour or so south from where we live in Florida.
Along the way, we saw a rainbow on the country road that leads to the highway. We took that as a positive premonition.
Soon, though, we were on the dreaded highway itself.
I-95 — the North to South spine of America’s Eastern coastline — is a veritable nightmare of gigantic rigs and SUVs driving well over the speed limit in endless waves of traffic.
Especially when there are sudden squalls and heaving gusting. Rain and wind cause more accidents and fatalities than anything else on this road.
It did not help that everything — cars, highway, sky — looked uniformly grey and hazy.
We saw several accidents along the way, but thankfully our ride concluded safely, except that we lost our way, and I, alas, my temper — albeit under, ahem, extenuating, if not downright exculpatory circumstances.
Somewhow we had missed Exit 75, possibly because of all the endless construction on 95, or all the cars zipping by at Daytona 500 speeds on both our left and right lanes.
I-95 is a packed 7 or 8-lane highway (it changes, depending on which section on it you’re driving).
This isn’t some rolling bucolic Route 7 up in New England, where we used to live.
It seemed like we were the only ones — and this on a Sunday morning atr 7:30 am mind you — who were obeying the speed limit, and using the car blinkers to signal lane changes, as well as taking other defensive driving precautions. How quaint!
Due to the phantom Exit 75 situation, we had to find the dog breeder’s home using a different route from the one I had mapped out the previous night
So I turned on the GPS location button on my wife’s phone.
But my wife was quite upset due to my taking her to task — okay, I yelled at her — about missing Exit 75. That was her job, I thought. To be the navigator: mine was to drive.
Google Maps was not that helpful, so we eventually called the breeder, and finally got there, despite the various contretemps.
We were met by Andrew, the dog breeder, who was quite friendly and after shaking hands took us in right away to meet Geneva.
Quita, her mom, was already outside along the side of the house, in a semi-enclosed pen area, and she barked at us. It has been a while since I have interacted with a big, young, German shepherd, and was a bit intimidated at first by the barking.
But my wife barrelled right past her, and soon little Geneva was in her arms.
It was wonderful to see.
Geneva seemed to take to my wife immediately. She looked at her, instead of avoiding doing so. Her eyes were beautiful and her expression was open and honest looking with no sign of any character problems. Then she gave my wife a big kiss.
Meanwhile, Geneva’s sister and brothers more or less slept during our entire visit — incurious, unlike Geneva, as to our presence. It was as if she had been expecting us.
She nipped my wife’s fingers playfully.
And tugged at her pants.
Nutso Dad was locked up in the house, going apeshit and flinging himself against a big glass window that I was surprised didn’t break. Nobody paid any attention to him at all.
I immediately realized the Geneva was perfect.
She is going to get us out of our Florida doldrums since Saba, our previous, equally perfect GSD, went to doggie heaven.
My hope is that little Miss Geneva, like Saba before her, is going to make our life in FLA a lot more fun and enjoyable — not to mention provide a perimeter of protection from any potential silliness down the road.
Meanwhile, I made sure I apologized for the yelling!
Leaving Amerika 