And now this from the No-Good-Deed-Goes-Unpunished department: My brother-in-law, Johnny Nelson, has been blessed with way more puppies than he needs. My wife and his sister, Rosemary, and her penchant for accumulating more damncats than she needs have been so often the subject of this space that ink must now be shed on behalf of canines.

Nelson and his sister have in common a soft spot for the animals in their lives. He lives in the Chapeltown community on Asa Road where people often dump unwanted dogs. He doesn’t want them either, but that soft spot has led him to adopt several.

(Town people dump their unwanted dogs in the country, “where they’ll find a good home.” Country people use the same irrational rationale to justify dumping their unwanted dogs in town.
In truth, wherever dogs are dumped they soon become road kill, nuisances, diseased and occasionally form packs that threaten livestock. But I digress.)

His latest adopted dog soon bore eight pups. Within a few weeks their appetites had overwhelmed their mother and are threatening to overwhelm their owner as well. Needless to say he is anxious to give them away free to good homes, as the ad on the facing page states.

And he is aware of the Panola County Humane Society’s program that takes unwanted stray dogs, places them temporarily in local foster homes while they receive the appropriate vaccinations and neutering surgeries, and then places them with families in northeastern states eager to give them good homes. But with this large litter he wanted to thin them out immediately and use the already overtaxed resources of the PCHS only as a last resort.

So here is a man who has taken in unwanted dogs, given them a home and uses as best he can his own resources to find them homes and not add to the burden of PCHS, and what happens?
After placing an ad in Friday’s paper he stood in the parking lot of this newspaper for two hours last Saturday and only managed to give away one.

(My granddaughter Blair had already claimed one for herself, and after distributing photos and video on Facebook and showing the pup off to friends, interest in those pups has grown considerably, but at this count he still has six to give away.)

Nelson is also the guy who operates the steam locomotive Marie, and for two consecutive November Saturdays, he extended a come-one, come-all invitation to anyone who was interested in riding on his train.

They came — children, parents and grandparents along with a few “steamheads” — and got a turn riding back and forth behind the huffing and puffing little steam engine. And not once during those two Saturdays did he place those puppies in conspicuous view to take advantage of those parents and grandparents while they were already in a doting mood.

So give the guy a break and reward yourself with a dog with such unique bloodlines that will likely not get recreated in the same combination ever again. (See ad, upper right?)