Elizabeth and Tristan: A Tale of Love and Rebellion

I was in the mood to paint, but I couldn't decide what to paint. So while I did my usual rounds of my favorite art stores, going through the thousands of art books that they had, I decided to pop into a pet store.

I don't know why, but something about pets and paintings just went together. There was just something so emotive about a pet that made it fun to paint. And if you've ever known a dog, then you'd know that they're as expressive as any human being can be.

So I walked into the pet store, and looked around at all the pets. There were cats, dogs, rats, hamsters, birds...everything! They had a few kittens that were particularly cute, but I didn't want to buy one for my painting. I'm not someone who's really into buying pets for fun; it just makes me feel really guilty afterwards. Besides, I have enough cats living with me already.

So after 15 minutes of walking around and looking at the various animals up for sale, I finally found what I was looking for: A small dog in one of the many cages that they had stacked on top of each other and placed around the room. She was sitting down by herself in a corner of her cage, and she looked so sad and lonely. Her eyes were closed and she was panting heavily; she looked like she needed somebody to help her out of this cage before she died from heat exhaustion.

I went over to her and tried to open her cage door, but it was locked. The little sign on it said that she wasn't allowed out because she was sick; whatever they thought was wrong with her was probably wrong with them for locking up an animal like this in heat like this! If anything would make a dog aggressive and crazy in heat like this without any water or place to cool off then it would be being locked up in a hot cage like this! I started banging on the door as hard as I could until it fell off its hinges onto the floor with a clang! The poor dog suddenly perked up out of her daze when she heard the loud noise from my hammering and tried to get up from the floor where she was lying down. She sat up on her haunches and looked at me with those big brown eyes full of tears. She looked terrified and confused at what just happened to her cage; luckily though after taking a few seconds to regain her senses, she slowly climbed out of her now-open cage and walked slowly towards me with caution as though she wasn't sure if I wanted her or not.

She still looked scared out of her mind though; I mean look at this poor little thing! You can tell that nobody has taken care of her in weeks if not months! Her fur is all matted together in some places while the rest is sticking out everywhere else; it looks like she hasn't been groomed properly in ages! And look at how skinny she is! If you put your hands together all scrunched up and made them as long as possible, then you'd have about half of how long this dog's ribcage is! It's terrifyingly thin! What kind of people leave their dog like this? How can anybody do such an awful thing to an animal!? Why does society have such horrible people among us!?

But anyways...I got distracted there for a second thinking about how much I hate people who treat animals badly. But anyway...the point is that I bought that little dog from that nasty pet store owner who tried trying to sell me something else instead when he saw what happened when my previous choice fell apart under my pounding fists (he left right afterwards). But anyways...that's another story entirely...back to what happened next:

I took the dog home with me (and paid him his asking price) and gave him everything he needed: His own bed (a comfy one too!), food (which he ate voraciously), water (which he drank even more voraciously), grooming tools (which he let me use freely) and love (something he definitely needed!). He became so happy right away that he now lives with me at my home rather than being locked up in some horrible place like his old pet store. We both love our new life together so much now! After training him well enough (he's a smart dog!), we began painting together every day after work ends; he paints along side me while I paint whatever project we decide is worth our time by coloring pencils or crayons or water colors or oil paints or pastels or charcoal pencils or whatever we can find lying around here somewhere when we need artistic inspiration material (we haven't run out yet!). And we both love our new lives together so much now!