~Must love dogs~

Philly versus Key West? Yeah, right.

 

Here are 10 reasons that Key West actually tops Philly:    I agree!!

1) Its 72 degrees in Key West today. Philadelphia is 33 degrees. Where would you rather get a tan? (I should just end the list there, but I promised nine more reasons).

2) Yellowtail snapper, grouper, stone crab claws, lobster, and other fresh seafood are on the menu in Key West. Hey Philly: you sure about that pork roll?

3) In 2005, Philadelphia was ranked as the sixth-most dangerous among 32 American cities with populations over 500,000. The murder rate in Philadelphia is 1 per day. Key West, on the other hand, is quite safe. Most crimes involve a bottle of booze, two bleary-eyed men, and a woman that should only dance with her insane husband.

4) Key West has free cats! Well, not really. But in Key West, if you want a pet, you only have to put a bowl of water on your porch. A cat, is bound to show up at your door looking for a better deal out of life. (just don't consider yourself its owner).

5) Ever notice that everything tastes better when eaten outdoors? Its easy in Key West. That's probably why we don't mind lousy soft-pretzels.

6) Key Westers don't worry too much about the price of gasoline. I, for one, only fill up the car once a month. Key West is 2 miles by 4 miles - many locals get around on bicycles. Or walking (imagine that Philly!).

7) Key West is always ready for a party - every night of the week. Heck, Key West is so party ready, it even celebrates the sun setting each day.

8) Warm beaches are the norm in Key West. And with water temperatures typically between 70-80 degrees, you can leave that woolen bathing suit in Pennsylvania.

9) Traffic jams, a daily occurrence in Philly, are non-existent in Key West. However, you may have to wait a few minutes for that daiquiri during happy hour.

10) In Key West, you can go to work with a big hangover and no one thinks you have a drinking problem.

Emon and Love (The rescued greyhounds) are doing well.  I am fascinated with their loving, gentle, docile nature. 

I received their winter coats from a lady on ebay who makes greyhound coats and snoods.  Both of them wear them without a problem and they look so stinking cute in them!!  The coats are to keep them warm, but to be honest I don’t feel as bad walking them with the coats on…..the coats cover up most of the sores and evident bones.  Although the healing process has started……..it is going to be a long one. 

To make matters really interesting, both of the rescued female dogs who came home with me are in full blow heat…..Oh Joy!  This too will pass……but not soon enough.  *Oy.

Last night while watching TV we were able to get Emon calm enough to sit on the couch and watch TV for a couple of hours.  She soaks up any time with humans like a sponge.  Poor Love is too worked up with two females in heat to really calm down…. he had to watch TV from the inside of a crate……with a bone to chew on.  None the less, he was happy.

The little female dog who came back with us has taken over the house…….she even bosses the other dogs around when she feels it necessary.  She is happy when on someone’s lap and/or under the covers curled up directly next to you…..(I call her Daisy May) 

Just an update on the doggies!……Everyone have a safe and blessed New Year!

xoxo

ME!*

Standing outside this very rural shelter in 20 below zero wind chill… wondering to myself how long it would take to actually get frost bite on my ears……I had walked past all of the kennels and hadn’t seen the dogs I came for.  I told Acacia with my teeth chattering and my hands buried deep within my pockets, “Maybe someone else took them……I don’t see them” She said… “There they are Mom”…….pointing to the end kennel/dog run type thing.  They were inside the wooden enclosure and only their big black eyes shone out at me. 

When they came from the enclosure all I could see was skin, bones and sores….open sores, some oozing with hay stuck to them.  Those long beautiful Greyhound faces were not slim, they were gaunt and distraught……almost as if they knew death loomed over them. 

The male paced and almost rocked back and forth unsure if he even wanted to stay outside the wooden shelter long enough to investigate me and the possibility of leaving that place……the female let out a bellowing grown when she saw a man approach but when she realized it was the elderly man who had fed her, she wagged her tail slightly……but it was instantly obviously to me that a man had caused her great pain before she came to this place.  Just looking at them made my heart hurt.

My God….Who could have done this to them? 

~~

Later that night, after along trip home… baths and feeding….  I was downstairs with them trying to sort out personalities and spend some time with them…. The greyhounds relaxed enough to climb up on the bed with me I got a better look at the sores…..the sores were all over them……it made me feel sick.  Physically sick.  My best guess at the cause of the sores…..a cattle prod.

To be honest…….these two dogs would have had every right to be human aggressive or shy but they seemed to trust me completely right from the start.  Even standing perfectly still as I put medication on the open sores…….the many, many sores. 

It has been 4 days now since they have come home with me… and they are already looking much ~ much better.  Today they go to the vet for a total check up and I will know more after I see him.

In the mean time…..they are learning about love…….

me. 

December first…..I can hardly believe it.  Seriously….so much has happened to me the last few months.

I must report that I have found a new job.  A job that I love…..unfortunately the pay is $4 an hour less, but I will be able to make it work now that I don’t have a car note.  (The car was totaled……ummm…..don’t ask.) L

So I spent a period of time walking back and forth to work, considering my new job is very close it wasn’t a bad walk at all…….but this is Indiana and the snow tends to fly early so I decided it was time to buy a “hooptie”…..an “A to B car”……….”a clunker”…….lol……..

So as of Friday I am the proud owner of a 1991 Saab 9000.  It is 17 years old, but still drives like a champ…….Only one problem.  No heat.  It went to the mechanic’s today and I found out it is the heater core.  Dave told me to just go to Wally-World and buy a plug in heater…..the cost to fix the core would be outrageous because the dash would need to come out.  So tonight I will go out to find a little heater that plugs into the lighter and make it work. 

I hosted Thanksgiving at my house and although I enjoyed it, I am glad it’s over. 

Luna~ a rescue dog I can’t remember if I have written about previously has become a chewing machine.  I love her to death but she seriously has tried my patience the last few weeks more than I can even explain.

I mean I can literally take something away from her and before I can move it to a safe “non chewing zone” she will jump back up onto the couch with a new chewing prize.  Her chewing knows no bounds so this can range from (and has included) shoes, panties, cups, dog collars, the Vaseline tub, socks, wash rags, fireplace logs, cat poop, the remote, a couch cushion, the cat bed, a phone jack, bills, the phone book……..umm……anything she can reach.  (And she can reach darn-near anything!!)

Franny was also kind enough to show Luna how to escape the fence so they can run around the neighborhood digging in trash and sniffing and rolling in stinky stuff.  (I just recently discovered how they were doing it and put a stop to the escaping…..umm I hope.)

So I’m doing okay…….driving my hoopie that I love with no heat, trying to keep stuff out of Luna’s chewing zone and trying to get my life back on track, one step at a time.

XOXO

L 

The mountains above Nederland Colorado proved to be a place where I would become in touch with myself again………the good, the bad and the ugly. (Some more-so than others)  :)

I must say that the Colorado mountains were the most beautiful serene place I have ever been in my life.  I absolutely loved being there with nature, the picturesque mountains and wide open spaces.  It was without question a place I would LOVE to live.

Mocha and Bear loved it also, but I have got to tell you that I was often surprised when I noticed wildlife (that was very close to us) that they never even noticed……

Like one morning on my walk back from the “greenie”(outhouse) ….I was walking up the hill slowly ~ as my lungs had not yet adjusted to the high elevation and I found I got around best if I paced myself a bit slower than normal.  ~~  About 200 yards from our campsite stood a HUGE deer.  She was standing perfectly still and I watched her as she watched the dogs skip along in front of me, Mocha sniffing every leaf that moved and Bear on chipmunk patrol poking his nose under rocks and logs…....Her only movement was a blink of her eye and a quick glance at me then quickly refocusing back on the dogs.  When I say she was huge….I mean she seemed closer to the size of a small horse or a large buck than the size of deer that we have here in Indiana.  She was just big and beautiful….majestic.  When I see wildlife like that I have almost always felt some sort of connection that I have always found hard to explain……..it is something that I honestly have found almost spiritual….I felt the exactly same thing when I saw dolphins in the wild in Key West this year.

My dogs……the fabulous watch dogs that they are……never even noticed this huge creature standing directly across the gravel road from our campsite.  Upon us returning to our campsite I loaded them into the truck to take a rest for a moment so the deer could go on her journey without the possibility of the two “watch dogs” possibly catching a glimpse of her and barking and acting like fools…….

I must admit that during this journey I discovered for the first time that I am deathly afraid of mountain lions.  I mean, who doesn’t really have some fear of that type of predator…..but I never know how much I actually feared them till I got to Colorado and the only thing keeping them away from me and the dogs ~ in the dark of the night ~ was a thin nylon tent.

Bears didn’t really scare me as I know for the most part when camping they will only come into the campsite if you have left a cooler out or leave food scraps around the campsite….trash, etc.  I made a point never to actually cook at camp as they had been having problems with a bear and a mountain lion not long prior to my arrival. 

The bear story I was recanted made me laugh………….some college kids came in for the weekend to camp and during the evening a bear came into the campsite, opened the cooler they had left outside, ate a polish sausage, polished off an entire jar of mayo, shut the lid of the cooler and left.

The mountain lion story on the other hand made me cringe………..A couple in the mountains was sleeping with their French doors to their bedroom open to let in a cool evening breeze and at some point during the night a mountain lion came into the house and killed their 80 lb lab and drug it off while the owners watched in horror.  (This happened about 1.5 miles away from the national forest I stayed in)

Evidently there was another mountain lion that was coming into camp at a state park area about ½ miles from where we were.  The camp ground host told me to be careful with the dogs after dusk, the lion could stalk them for prey.

“Stalk them for prey…..Stalk them for prey”…………it just kept going on over and over in my head.....as I lay in that "thin nylon tent."

Um.... So okay…..I must admit that was the beginning of the end for me.  I lay in the tent that night horrified that a mountain lion was going to eat my dogs ~  I seriously almost cried thinking about it….so after about 2 hours of tossing and turning, clicking my flashlight on and off about 500 times while pointing at the top of the tent, pausing only to listen to a twig crack in the distance…. I picked up both dogs and made a b-line for the truck……..in my PJ’s and flip flops, holding a flash light in one hand and a dog under each arm, (Bear weighs 50 lbs and Mocha around 30lbs) looking around like a crazy woman in the complete darkness of the forest for a mountain lion that might pounce out of the woods at any moment and eat my doggies.  At about the half way mark between the tent and the truck I tripped and one of my flip flops flew off……only to be left there till morning.  Once I got to the truck (mulch and dirt stuck to the bottom of my left foot)…..I wasn’t going back out….not till the sun came up……Not till I could keep an eye out for any stray mountain lions lurking around.

The following day it rained all day and starting pouring once it became evening.  I was wet and cold, the dogs were wet and stinky, the tent was damp inside and out….only for me to get up in the morning to the mountain air being so cold you could see your breath ~~  while I was trying to stretch out my cold arm to put on my jacket I was seriously looking around for snow flakes.  No snow flakes, but really cold rain is worse I would say…..The dogs didnt even want to get out of the truck to go pee........They looked at me as if to say "No thanks Mom, I'll hold it."

I was headed back for Indiana the next morning.

So here I am back at home, broke, looking for a new job and a new beginning on this thing we call life.

xoxo
L

Late tonight I will leave for vacation…..at 2:00AM we will be heading to Indy to catch our flight…..we have a short, 1.5 hour layover in Memphis then sunny Florida here we come.

My last 30 days or so at work have been so stressful…..I just want to spend 7 days letting my steam out.  I plan on snorkeling every chance I get……soaking up some sun and eating at interesting places.  I love those little out of the way places that look like a hole in the wall but have great service and surprisingly good food…..

It has been storming here like crazy.  Last night a huge tree limb feel into the street and almost onto my car…….that would have been SOOOOO not good.  When I went past at lunch today the limb still had the entire street blocked. 

Lightning struck directly across the street last night and after almost pissing my pants when it hit, I tried to resume my packing……only about 15 minutes later to realized my buddy Bear was hiding in the closet.  (Oreo hides in the basement……)  lol  I told them both they have acceptable severe weather escape plans. 

Since I last posted I found…..well the daycare lady who works next to one of my offices found a little dog.  A tiny blond, Maltese/Yorkie looking little bugger.  She trotted into the daycare along with the kids when they returned from the playground.  Once they put her back outside she never left our building.  About a half hour later I noticed her and brought her inside….she was STINKY and completely matted.  It took Sierah, Taryn and I over 3 hours to cut all of her mats out, comb and bath her.  I never knew something so small could smell so bad……but she is the cutest little thing you have ever seen.  No tag or anything…….

On the car ride home it was evident that she had never been in a car…….her lack of housetraining indicated to me that she was unfamiliar with “no potty in the house rules” so maybe someone kept her outside all of the time…..but she has such a sweet demeanor.  She actually is a little dingy for lack of a better term, she trots around without a care in the world.  She has learned to love being loved on by the kids and I and she howls in the morning when I leave……waking all the kids…….(I DO find this funny)   

We have named her Sophie and I call her “Sophie noodle” because she will let you lay her anyway you please and she will stay there…….she is seriously like a wet noodle.

I am going to miss the kids while on vacation but I am really going to miss the dogs……the kids I will be able to text and talk to but the doggies are going to be stressed…….I know.  Bear and Mocha for sure but Mom needs a break…..a break with some sun, sand and a frozen fruity drink with an umbrella in it……

I will return with stories and photos of the Keys……See you in a week!

XOLaura

Today my oldest child surprised me by coming home from College.  What a nice Mothers Day gift.

Well all of my vacation plans have been sent in motion.  I will be in Ft Lauderdale Fl in just over a month.  We are renting a convertible from the airport and driving thru the keys.  We will stay in a Key West bed and breakfast for 7 days.

I am so excited I can hardly stand it.

I am much over due for a vacation and I have set into motion a 1-2 year plan for a move.

Move on the move later………

Florida Keys

Happy Mothers Day!

 Laura

I needed that…….just getting away.  Walking, watching the dogs run and smile, letting the wind whip around me, sun on my face…….no worries.

It was warm, sunny and windy.  The dogs had a ball.  This was my first trip like this with Mocha and she was so busy running, sniffing and zooming around that by the time we were ready to leave, she was exhausted.  She jumped back up in the truck and wouldn’t even get out for a drink of water.

We went to a dam that had the water lowered…….the ground we walked on somehow seemed almost like the surface of the moon…..well, as I imagine it anyways.  The only problem I encountered was when I went too close to the water and instantly went chin high in mud….this stuff was like quick sand and it sucked me straight down……take a close look at the photos, one with Mocha leaning on me you can see my muddy sneaker and sock.

~~

If you ever spend any time with you dogs walking off leash each one has his own personality when allowed to run free.  Bear has always been the scout.  He runs out ahead, stopping to look back to make sure I am following him.  When he drifts off track, he makes a point to NOT look at me and not hear me.  He lets me call him a couple times before he turns around.

Mocha on the other hand stuck close to me.  Sometimes so close I turned to find her and didn’t see her….only because she was right up under me.  She would periodically jet off behind Bear to see what he was sniffing or rolling in…….but when I called her she would zoom straight back for me with this big smile on her face. 

Once when I called Bear….. and he played deaf while sniffing something interesting to him, she zoomed back up the hill and barked at him.  She only headed back my direction when Bear turned around and headed back.  She clearly knew I was yelling for him to head my way and went to get him for me.  I couldn’t do anything but laugh.  (She is so bossy)

The dogs and I slept well last night after walking miles and spending the better half of the day outside.  I think we all needed it!

xoxoL

It is above 60 degrees today, the sun is out and I am thrilled.  So thrilled in fact I am going to take half a personal day, go to the lake with one or two of the dogs and walk on the beach.  Bask in the sun and watch my dogs run and play…….

It has been a long winter…..lots of really crappy weather, a ton of snow, ice cold rain and gloomy day after gloomy day……..Today is a total relief from that.  Sunny and warm, ahhhh.

I have also decided to take a trip this summer…….a real trip to someplace warm and tropical.  I am in the initial states of planning but I almost have it figured out where I will be going and staying.  I am so excited about going I cant stand it!

I just wanted to touch base and let everyone know I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth.  Its just that along with the two properties I already manage, my employer and saddled me with a 3^rd property……..a tax credit property.  I am so busy I cant tell you most days if I am coming or going.

But today…….I will be going to the lake for a break.

XO

 Laura

Lupus:

Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease that can affect various parts of the body, especially the skin, joints, blood, and kidneys.

I have Lupus, or so the Doctor says……I have spent the last few months in lots and lots of pain, exhausted but trying to push thru.  To be honest, some days I felt like I was dying.  It was just so hard to get up and get dressed, let alone go to work but somehow I managed.

I guess a diagnosis is always good…. so you know what you are up against but it is also frustrating.  Frustrating when to your diagnosis; there is no cure, but I am also relieved that its not something worse……and trust me, I do feel blessed for that.  I am very aware that it could be much worse.  So I have made a pact with myself to complain as little as possible and to face anything that comes my way with as much grace as I can muster.  I will take each day as it comes and do my best to get better for my family and for me.

~~

I have had an ad running for the puppy for the last week and have talked to more IDIOTS than I can even mention.  The only person I felt good about was a man who lives about an hour away but will be in town Friday for a funeral and would also like to stop and see the puppy at that time.  He had to have his dog put to sleep due to old age and has 3 boys who would like another dog to grow up with.  I pray this works out!  It is time for the puppy to move on, I am growing too attached to him. 

~~

My oldest twins turn 17 today so yesterday I took half of the day off of work and we had a girls day of beauty……hair, nails and foo-foo-girlie stuff.    We all had fun.  I must say it is amazing to watch your children grow up….even more amazing to watch them turn into wonderful young adults full of promise.  I can’t explain how proud of them I am, both working and doing really well in school.  Really, really good kids……I love them so much!  Happy Birthday Girls…. Mom loves you and is SO, SO proud of you!!.

~~

With my part of my tax check I decided to purchase my sister new furniture.  She recently got a new apartment and moved along furniture that I gave her over 5 years ago….that wasn’t the best to begin with, and is now broken down and in need of being retired.  (Retired to the trash bin.)  She had a piece of cardboard under the cushions to try to keep people from falling thru the middle to the floor.

I decided to surprise her with all new furniture!!!…. and it will all be delivered today.  She is going to be so shocked and happy.  I cant wait for her to call me and tell me its there.  J  I feel better about buying that for her, than anything I could have bought myself.  I cant wait for her to call me!  I am so excited!   

Me

Remember:

 When you are down to nothing…..God is up to something.

Meet Simbeau.

He is a Rottie mix, 4 month old puppy in need of a forever home.  He is already neutered, housetrained, up to date on shots and smart as a whip.  He has short, soft hair and will be a medium sized dog.  He loves the company of other dogs, but will need either another pup to play with or a tolerant older dog as he is rambunctious and loves to romp and play. 

He needs to go to a home where he will get lots of exercise; mental stimulation and can sleep in the bed with his humans at night.  (He is already spoiled.)  He loves to ride in the car and is extremely focused and obedient for such a young dog.  He would excel at obedience or other advanced K-9 training.

This photo was of him sitting intently looking at me after I asked him to sit.  He wanted his treat!

This weekend I walked Murphy, Bear and Mocha at a local park, off leash.  The park is almost void of people except for a few gay men and an occasional biker, jogger or dog walker that emerge from a local historic neighborhood full of 30 something, 9-5ers who live in houses I can only dream of……it is understood that gay men go to this park to meet one another so I guess most people simply avoid the park. 

Everyone except me!  The dogs and I love it. 

I find great joy in letting my dogs run off leash.  ~~  Bear loves to run along the edge of the woods and sniff….stopping only to linger on certain scents or mark on an occasional twig.  I imagine he picks up the scent of all the little creatures that pass thru the brush at night.  (All of whom he would love to give chase to.)  He zig zags in and out of the tree line (I take the dry road on the walking path) looking up only occasionally to check on me.

Murphy just loves to zoom around random like a rabbit…it is almost amazing to see how fast his little legs will carry him.  He also makes a valiant effort to try to pee on everything in site.  Every few minutes he will zoom back towards me with a giant smile on his face and request I throw his ball for him, all the while dodging Mochas fly bys while she does giant figure 8’s around him…playfully taunting him as she swoops past. 

Watching the dogs run free always brings a smile to my face but watching Mocha run along with a huge smile on her face, made me feel great inside.  It is times like those when you see this little creature that was lost, abandoned, neglected…. miserable in a shelter, near the end of her life if someone didn’t come along soon……finally feel joy again. 

 Its times like those that renew my spirit and remind me of why I continue to do rescue work with animals. 

 Me

Take your dog on a walk today! 

What a week it has been for me.  Well honestly I have spent the last week and a half on vacation…..a much needed vacation. 

While away from my offices multiple things have happened at my apartment communities…….among other things, one of my residents who I adored passed away, another resident stabbed a male visitor in the face with a knife during an argument and our security guard was robbed at gun point of  his gun, money and wallet.  After all of this happening I have decided to at least carry mace. 

~~

I took Sierah to Indy (1.5 hours away) Saturday and on the way I said, “Lets drive past the Shelter in Marion and check out the dogs.”  Sierah kind of shrugged her shoulders and said, “Okay.”  The shelter in Marion is where all of my housedogs came from and I do rescue work with them.  They have a new director and I thought I could just swing by and meet the new director, check out the dogs and return to the highway to deliver my oldest child to her boyfriend’s house. 

Umm….lets just say it didn’t work out exactly like that.

I must say I love this shelter and staff and what I am about to say is not to degrade the shelter in any way but it is the cold hard truth.  It is a rural shelter that is over populated and under funded.  They always have a staff of caring individuals who do the best they can but it is an old building and it is busting out at the seams with animals. 

It has always been overwhelming to me to visit the shelter.  When there, I feel a huge sense of despair.  Not of my own, but of the animals.  It is an almost overwhelming feeling to me.  I move so slowly past all of those faces and cages that I must appear I have lead in the bottom of my shoes....

The first room Sierah and I entered is a long room that houses a section of the shelter that has kennels for large dogs, each kennel partitioned off by high chain link fence, cement floors and a built in drain that runs along the front of all of the kennels for easy cleaning.  The dogs each have a platform bed at the back of the kennel to get off of the ground.  This section of kennel housed a bunch of hounds that had all came from the same abuse case.  They were beautiful, obviously full blooded but very thin dogs and all of them baying and barking at the same time was almost comical.  They were all waiting transport to a hound rescue. 

The second room we entered is a make shift kennel where all of the dogs in this area are in crates…..crates on top of crates and in the center of the room were the young dogs and/or puppies.  In the very back was a little dog whose face looked just like my little Murphy looking thru those bars at me.  (Murphy Moore, who was out in the car with Bear waiting on me to return.)  When I started talking to her, she wiggled her entire body pushing herself up against the cage door begging me to take her out of her crate and love on her.  ~~  The dog next to her was an adolescent dog whose spirit appeared broken.  He looked so sad, and almost didn’t make eye contact with me……I opened his cage and hugged him and kissed him and then his tail finally started to thump. 

Sierah was at the opposite end of the room smoozing with another dog and requested I come look at him.  He was a full grown pit bull who was happy and smiling at us both.  We moved along at a slow pace, talking to the dogs, letting them sniff our hands, walking in and out of endless rooms that almost seemed like a maze of crates and cages.  The staff was diligently cleaning and moving about and we did our best to stay out of their way.

Its dark, damp and loud at the shelter.......and the smell....Oh the smell at the shelter is foul, yet it is a familiar one to me.  All of my dogs arrived at my house with that same stinky smell and slowly after baths, doggy cologne and living in our house the smell diminishes.... but until it does it is a hurtful reminder of where they came and a smell I will never forget. 

I think we went thru the shelter twice and a man said, “If you find one you like let me know and I will get you a leash and you can take it outside.”  (He must of missed me when I first came in and announced I was a “Rescue person” from Fort Wayne, I just stopped in to meet the new director and look at the dogs, while on the way to take my daughter back to College.  I wasn’t there to actually GET a dog…..Or so I thought.)

When he suggested we walk a dog we were interested in, I was standing back in front of the crate that was holding the little speckled dog that wiggled her whole body when I talked to her and had a little darling face with liquid black eyes just like Murphy’s.  I said, “Sure, lets take her out for a walk.” 

I actually should of said, “Bring me her shot record and paperwork, she will be coming home with me” .....because about a half hour later she was in a crate borrowed from the shelter, and in the back of my Honda on Highway 37, headed to Indy with Sierah, Bear, Murphy and myself.

On the way home from Indy I decided to stop at a rural truck stop with a large field that I could let “The boys” go potty.  I put them back in the Element and got the rescue dog out to go potty alone.  She took care of business, wiggled and loved on me and when done marched past the crate and went straight back to the car door……No more crate for her.  The boys sniffed her, she sniffed them, everybody curled up and lay down and away we went. 

~~

Once back to the house she fit into our household seamlessly and I knew then without question she was going to be a resident dog and not a rescue dog.

The last 4 days, she has been with me non-stop, even riding along in the car with the boys and I when I run errands, etc.  She loves to go “bye-bye”, has adjusted to wearing a little purple coat when we go for runs at the park, looks darling in her pink sparkly collar, smells good after two baths and the removal of more dirt on a little dog than you could imagine and has found herself a new home where she will live out her days and will now know what it is like to be a spoiled house dog.  She is smart, housetrained and has known love at some point in her life.  She already knew good stuff comes from the frig and sits at the site of a treat.

The only ghost that I have found from her past that haunts her is her fear of a broom.  I grabbed the broom to sweep the kitchen and she cowered, yelped and ran away.  She wouldn’t come near me as long as I was holding the broom.  It made me feel horrible but I know that after time that too will diminish just like the smell of the shelter.  She will learn that no harm will ever come to her at my house. 

In just 5 days she is almost unrecognizable now from how she looked at the shelter…….she is now happy and spews joy with every fiber of her wiggly little body.  (New photos of her tomorrow.)

She is happy and I am happy and I simply adore her.......

She now has a new dog Mommy....

 me!

I woke up this morning at about 4:00AM….I stood in the dark in my kitchen window , sipping my coffee, watching giant snowflakes drop straight down to the ground in an almost deliberate fashion.  As if they only had a limited period of time to fall and cover the ugly mounds of dirty snow left from last week’s blizzard like conditions and the now visable green grass that appeared after yesterday’s 45-degree day.

I stood there thinking of my blessed Holiday.  I enjoyed spending time with my family and children.  Sierah is home from College for a few weeks and my entire family got to meet my niece who my sister adopted out at birth.  She is now in her early 20’s and this Christmas was meeting her biological family (my family) for the first time.  There was something so magical about all of it.  I know she was happy and overwhelmed at the same time but I was more than happy, I was elated.  This was the baby who I sat outside the nurses station the day she was born, balling until they let me see and hold her…….I counted her fingers and toes, ran my fingers thru her fine hair and promised her I would find her again one day.  (I was too young to adopt her but not too young to feel the pain of the loss of member of my family)  And here she is, 20 some years later. 

My niece Steph had not yet met her sister Dawn till Christmas day.  I knew that she would get along perfectly with Dawn…..Dawn is my niece but she is more like my sister as we are the same age she was raised together by my Mother.  She is my “Mothers Child” without a doubt….Loving and nurturing with a perfect house, husband and family.  She is one of those people who could entertain 3 dozen people at the drop of a hat effortlessly, whose beautiful house never seems to get messy and is genuinely a loving, kind soul.  Despite all of her wonderful qualities she is unpretentious and down to earth, she was equally impressed with the “Snowman building kit”, complete with a red wooden heart and wire rim glasses as she was the “Chanel” Perfume I bought her for Christmas.  (We both inherited the love of snowman building AND fine perfume from my Mother! J)

So Christmas Evening when I left Dawns house with all of my kids in tow……I left all of my nieces chatting and sipping wine and catching up on all of those lost years.  That was the best Christmas gift EVER for me.  Right behind the hand crocheted scarf my daughter Taryn made me.

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The cats at my house viewed Christmas time with great joy.  I am sure they decided we brought in two giant trees from the outdoors JUST for them.  AJ loves to zoom up the tree with this wide eyed, crazed look on his face and jet about half way up the tree till someone yells at him “Get down you crazy cat!  Mom AJ is in the tree again!”  He then jumps madly out of the tree while beads and ornaments fly and he zooms off 90mph.  Ms Fiona on the other hand loves to tiptoe around in circles under the tree and let the needles scratch her back while she slowly glides her tail in and out of the branches.  That or lay leisurely underneath the tree as if she needs to find a patch of shade within my house.  Charlie, well he could care less about the tree as long as he has the back of the couch to lay on.

 Princess Fiona will be going to live with my sister Vickie today.  My sister is disabled and lives alone and the company of a cat will do her worlds of good.  Vickie met her at Thanksgiving time and loved her.  Yesterday I braved the crowds at Wal-Mart to purchase her all of the things a Princess Kitty would need to move to new digs…..a litter box, litter, scooper, kitten food, matching bowls, toys, treats and more toys.    My sister is thrilled……Today is the big day.  I am paying for the spay, vet check, food and pet deposit.  My Christmas gift to my sister……

I will miss her little prissy self but my sister will give her one on one and spoil her rotten. Thats exactly what they all need!