Deja vu all over again

As has been the case with the other puppies we’ve gotten from Betty Ann, this one arrived

Withdrawn,

Shy,

And sad.

These were taken about 30 minutes ago, in a Trader Joe’s parking lot outside the city. The trip in was AWFUL; it usually takes 45 minutes, we left ourselves an hour, and it ended up taking almost two. I-93 was a parking lot from three towns north of the city all the way to the airport. I spent more time in tunnels than I ever want to again.

So we were late picking her up and by the time we got her she had been in that crate for six hours. Poor baby. As soon as her feet touched grass, though, she walked over, saw Tabitha, and said “Well, heck, there she is.” She could care less about me right now; she just wants Tabitha. We’ll see how long that lasts once she realizes that mine are The Hands That Hold Out Meat. She’s a happy, waggy, happy, did I mention happy puppy.

And! Her name is Friday. Everyone was right – that’s what she looks like.

Safe and sound

Joanna

on our way!

pics to come!

Name feedback

First of all, you guys come up with some GREAT names.

Here are the “Other” suggestions:

—–

Orange You Bad…call name Squirt

South Sea, call name Bali

Black Label (call name Whiskey)

South China Sea (call name- China)

Bittersweet Symphony “Sweetie”

Smoke on the Water, call name Geneva (or, then. Neve/Niamh)

South Sea (call name Poly)

Trouble the Water (call name Maya)

——-

I absolutely LOVE Orange You Bad and I am totally going to use that someday. The Sea/Water ones are awesome too. And I’ve been singing Bittersweet Symphony ever since I read that suggestion.

Looks like the frontrunners are Summer of Love (Paisley), Friday I’m in Love (Friday) and Short Skirt Long Jacket (call name TBA). I too have a weakness for food/alcohol names, but as a Baptist pastor’s kid I can’t use Whiskey :). Somehow I’d feel sinful every time I called her name!

I’m leaning toward one or two but I’ll let you know what she looks like when she gets here. Many pictures to come!

Seeing how high I can push my page click count :)

Some eye candy for you:

New concrete step going in.

And new puppy pic from today (Betty Ann said “sorry she’s dirty – she was out digging in the mud today”). T minus less than two days!

Name Joanna’s puppy! Win valuable prize!

All these are after the kennel name, of course. I am guessing the kennel name will be Pecan Valley, but the mom is Sunkissed Nothing But Trouble so Sunkissed could be in there as well or in place of Pecan Valley.

If you come up with a different one that I end up using, OR if you come up with a call name I end up using, I will send you a small token of my appreciation. It may or may not be a bottle of puppy breath. No promises.

In the pink

It’s like the law that you have to take a picture of your one-year-old in a pink tutu before she gets old enough to object to it.

Over at the house today to measure and plan for fencing; our biggest challenge is making sure that it is absolutely safe and impenetrable to the dogs, looks decent from the street, but doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars. Or, for that matter, ones of thousands of dollars. I have some ideas, but we’ll see how they pan out.

The kennels are all in and, seriously, they could not be better. They fit perfectly, which is nothing short of a miracle, and they seem to be well-built for the price. Tomorrow we will go over to make final plans for containment and hopefully get a start on installing it.

New puppy arrives at the end of the week! I don’t have a firm day yet but I expect to get a call tomorrow or Wednesday with the flight time and number. So we’re down to the wire and we need to get those dogs moved. And, if all goes well, that means Bramble comes home from the kennel too. That poor thing has spent more time being boarded than he spent with us; more than half of his life has been being boarded. I know we’ll have some serious training to do!

Juice

As some of you may recall, for the last nine months we’ve had a giant pile of debris in our back yard. When the house fire was put out, the firefighters threw all the smoldering stuff (furniture, bedding, clothes) out the windows; this was later joined by the tear-out debris of burned drywall, flooring, insulation, etc.

Under one corner of the pile was a large white shape, hidden by snow and ice and then by four-foot weeds and a big drift of plaster muck. That shape was our dog freezer, dragged out of the basement the day after the fire and allowed to become buried by what came after it.

This last week, the pile was FINALLY taken away. It took three guys and two and a half gigantic dumpsters, but it’s gone. Which means that today the dogs could go out into the back yard for the first time in all those months.

Bronte eagerly trotted out, nose to the ground. She frolicked out to the new fenceline and rubbed her shoulders and neck luxuriously all along the ground, waving her fat white feet in the air and groaning with pleasure.

We all laughed and nodded at each other; I think I clapped a little. It was just as we had imagined! The dogs are so happy and isn’t it lovely that they can finally be off their leashes!

And then Bronte scrambled up and shook, her mouth wide open with the joy of it all.

And then all six of us FELL OVER DEAD.

There was absolutely no other possible response to the BILLOWING WAVES OF RUIN  that came off that dog. We tried, but death overtook us before we could get back to the basement door.  And then Ginny danced on our heads. The end.

.

OK, seriously, we did start yelling and fighting each other to get back inside, while holding our noses and trying to grab the baby and shedding shoes and socks at the same time.

What Bronte had discovered was that the dog freezer had been quietly leaking an effluvium of chicken backs, venison, thirty pounds of beef liver, and a big sack of lamb lungs, and had been doing it for the last three-quarters of a year. So a not inconsiderable section of the new dog area is not fit for anything but bleach and/or a flamethrower.

New Plan: Move dog fence over and pray that Nature’s Miracle works in a yard sprayer.

Dee comes to visit

I’ve talked about my sister Delia (the much-adored perfect aunt) before. Dee came home from Ohio for a visit, so we took the opportunity to go get some pictures of the girls and their aunts. The result, as usual, was 850 terrible pictures of Tabitha picking her nose and Zuzu crying and yelling “Fries! Fries!” at the top of her lungs, and 15 good ones.

This one I think I’ll take.

Along the path to a perfect basement…

When last we left our hero, the basement dog room was painted but empty. On Friday, a gigundous truck showed up and dumped four big boxes in our garage. So today was a day of a lot of progress.

BEFORE

RUBBER STALL MATTING INSTALLED

BUBBLE WRAP REMOVED

KENNELS COMING TOGETHER

HONOUR SHOWS HOW BIG THE PUPPY PEN IS