[Dailydrool] another real life Christmas story

[Val Brewer]

My 21 year old son is spending his junior year of college abroad studying in Florence, Italy.  This is far from our home in Hawaii, so to save money he did not come back for the Christmas holiday. His half-sister, who lives on the mainland, decided to visit him in Italy, for which we are glad. This is the first year in 25 years that my husband and I have not had the kid(s) with us. Two days before Christmas the two of them took a day trip to Rome. My stepdaughter took the train back to my son's apartment early so as to be able to attend a performance. My son came back later to Florence. When he was returning, it was rather cold and dark. He took a cab to the train. The cab driver had in the cab a 6 week old puppy, shivering and looking frightened. The cab driver told Billy that he had found the puppy abandoned by the road and picked it up to warm it up but could not keep it and planned to drop it back outside at the end of his shift if none of his fares
 bought it from him. He was asking $15. Scam or not, my son took the bait and bought the puppy with the goal of finding it a good Italian family. The puppy snuggled with him that night.
The next morning, he woke his half-sister and informed her that they were going to spend the day hunting for a family for the puppy--he wasn't quite sure how to go about this since neither speaks good Italian, but they'd figure it out. My stepdaughter said, "Not without coffee first" and so they went to her favorite cafe. While she sat inside, my son and the puppy (both probably looking bedraggled, cold, and cute) sat on the curb outside. An older Italian woman with her dog came over immediately to admire the puppy and my son was able to communicate his problem somehow. The lady swept up my son, my stepdaughter (with the promise of "real" Italian coffee), and the puppy and shepherded them all to her dog-friendly office filled with other Italian women and an assortment of dogs. The office workers began calling their friendship network, while my stepdaughter discovered that she and one of the workers communicated well in French. One of the women decided
 she could not part with the puppy herself and went out and bought it a bed, food, leash, etc., and adopted it. She named the puppy "Perry Mason" since he was found by an American and her husband is a lawyer. And then the office adopted my kids, inviting them for Christmas dinner, and my son to come by weekly to the office for coffee (where Perry will come with his new slave during the day) to watch Perry grow up. My son writes that Perry went to the vet on Christmas eve day and was pronounced in "perfect health" and 8 weeks old. I am hopeful this will be a Christmas adoption for the puppy that will work out. It is a Christmas adoption for my kids which has already worked beautifully.