New Foster

The latest foster is a little Chihuahua with a stupid name. I've got her because her owner is in a domestic violence shelter. She'll go back when the lady gets a new safe place to live. I feel like maybe I shouldn't blog about her cuz what if the bad guy is doing google blog searches looking for the dog as a link to the lady, and he finds my blog and then somehow he figures out where I live and then comes to steal the dog and kills me in the process? So for the welfare of my life (I've still got to bowl a 200 game and go to New Zealand or Australia, you know), I'm not going to tell you her name.

This gets me to wondering... let's say the bad guy IS doing google blog searches? What would he search for? How would he go about finding out where his girlfriend/wife's little dog is? Hopefully he isn't searching for "Domestic Violence + Chihuahua". This blog will come right up for sure.

Anyway, this foster is a mess of a dog. Given her life situation up to this point, it's no wonder, but still. She's a mess. For the first two days she wouldn't move. She'd stand in one place and quiver until I moved her. Moving her was a challenge because if you picked her up, she'd bite the shit out of your wrists and hands. If you put a leash on her, she wouldn't walk. So I tolerated the bites and I dragged her on the leash into and out of the house. We'd be outside for hours (literally) and she wouldn't pee until I gave up and dragged her in the house. The first 5 of 6 times she peed, it was inside. Ergh. Not surprisingly, she wouldn't eat.

Surprisingly, she was not scared scared of men. Weird. She wasn't scared of the dogs either.

After a few days, she has warmed up to me and to living here. Now she likes me a lot! When I come home she gets all cuddly.
She's not biting anymore. She willingly goes in and out, and she pees outside. She's eating. She's still really timid and now she's become co-dependent to boot. When you're around, she wants to be held...no matter where you are. I was in the pool yesterday and she was being all antsy around the edge of the pool. I finally figured out that she thought I was too far from her. So I brought her on the raft with me (look closely, she's there!) and she was happy as a clam.
Mo gets really possessive when I bring home fosters. She's nice to them, but she starts being a little clingy with me. This was her reaction to the little chihuahua:

I claim thee in the name of MoLand.

Maybe she's worried that she'll be replaced.

Hey! Hey! I'm right here! Don't forget about me!

I will rest my paw right here on your shoulder so you don't forget about me.

I'm still your favorite, right? RIGHT?

Don't tell the wreck of a chihuahua, but yes, Mo, you're my favorite. Well, tied with Frankie and Georgie, of course. :)

Funny Math and a TITLE!

Ok, I know everyone has seen that mass-forwarded email with the funny answers from math tests. It's been making the FW: rounds for years. However, no matter how many times I see this one, it cracks me up every time!
While I'm here on the blog, I guess have a second or two to tell you that I can almost die now. One of the few remaining items on my to-do-before-I-die list is to get an advanced agility title on a dog. Since we've been at it for almost FOUR YEARS now, it was looking unlikely that Frankie would be that dog. Oh, ye of little faith! (Or maybe that should be: Oh, me of little faith?)

YAY! He did it!

There was a mini-trial over Memorial Day weekend and Frankie did amazingly well!! He got the 2 Q's he needed to earn his Specialist Jumpers Award!

Jumping:

In other exciting Frankie agility news, he finally got enough Q's to move up from the intermediate level into the advanced level in standard agility!!! This is pretty damn close to a miracle, folks! But to make sure that everyone knew what was what, on his very first standard run as a high-falutin' Specialist dog, Frankie pulled the usual crack-boy routine and ran around like crazy instead of doing the course I was asking him to do. Welcome back, Frankie! We missed you for a minute or two while you were out there behaving!

Wussy-boy hiding from the rain from the misters (but still very optimistic that a treat might be coming his way from somebody!):
Now I just need to bowl a 200 game and get my ass to Australia or New Zealand...and then it's off the glue factory for me.

Echo! (echo...echo...echo....)

An echo comes and goes pretty quickly. You shout out something....the echo is there...and then it's gone, just like that!

I shouted out "Hey, I need a new foster dog!" Thus, I got Echo, and then she was gone, just like that. This is (was) Echo.
She is (was) a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. She was turned into the Humane Society because her owners were ill. She came in with a brother. Both of them were pretty skittish and scared of the shelter, but her brother got over his fear pretty quickly and was immediately adopted. Hurray, Brother!

Echo, however, did not get over her fear of the shelter. She was terrified, shaking, jumping at every little sound and every movement.
They were worried that she might not be adoptable, so I took her home to assess her real personality. It was obvious as soon as we got to my house that she was a good, sweet adoptable dog. She was immediately friendly with my dogs, she was timid but friendly with all the humans, she let me brush her and even at her first meal with us she maintained her trained behavior of waiting until released to eat her food. Yay! I didn't have to train this one! Despite her manners and her sweetness, she was still nervous and she paced non-stop for the first two days because she was so nervous. After those first two days she finally began to relax.

Except "relaxing" for Echo doesn't really mean relaxing. It means letting her true self shine. The true self that thinks that naps are stupid. Computer time is stupid. Reading is stupid. The only not stupid things are walking the dogs, playing with the dogs and most not-stupid of all, petting Echo.

If I tried to take a nap, I got this:C'mon! Play with me! Play with me!

Then this:Well, maybe you could just pet me? C'mon!! Pet me!!!

It took a whole lot of ignoring her insistent nudges before we'd finally get this:
Echo has a lot of energy. She loved playing at the dog park. When I took her running, she never got tired. (I like how that makes it sound like I go running a lot. Hee.)

Echo went back to the shelter for her second set of shots 10 days after I got her. Though she was still terrified there, the foster folks agreed that she would be okay to go up for adoption and that I'd keep her at my house for the duration. I sent pictures and a description that day and they put her on the website. There were 2 interested calls right away, plus 2 interested people at my work.

She was adopted by the first people who met her. :) Gone quickly like a good little Echo. She will make her people very happy.
As for Frankie, Georgie, Mo and I, we are all happy that we get to nap in peace again!

Boobies!!

Nice title, huh? Did I get your attention?

Sadly this is a serious post about boobies.

Did you know that 1 in 8 women will get breast cancer in their lifetimes? Let's assume these four women will NOT get breast cancer.
So the odds would make it such that that one of these four women will get breast cancer:Me, my sisters and my mom round out the statistical group of 8 women. And yep, you've guessed it. One of us has breast cancer. I know your first thought is that it's me and now you are feeling all guilty for cursing me for not updating my blog for the last month. It's not me, so please feel free to continue cursing me all you'd like.

My sister Amy, one year older than me, not even 4o years old, went in for a mammogram when she found out that a mom-friend of hers was diagnosed with breast cancer. She figured she'd be one of the 7 women breathing a sigh of relief. No such luck. She was shocked to find out that she, too, had breast cancer. Some other lucky 8th woman out there is now counting her blessings.

Who is the one lady in your statistical group of 8 that will be diagnosed next? Maybe it's your sister. Maybe it's you. But we'll never know unless we go get that mammogram, too! So, ladies, this is your call to action. Are you the 1 in your 8? Find out now so you have time to fight it!!

Amy's cancer is super-duper fast growing. There are a bunch of technical words I could throw at you to describe it, but I don't understand them all just yet so I'm going with what I know. "Super-duper fast growing" is an accurate description.

But thanks to that random mammogram, it was caught early. There were positive results from some genetic test she took, so Amy's boobies got to stay, but her hair and her health will be suffering. Treatment started immediately, first with a lumpectomy and lymph node removal. You can see the bandages in this picture. I'm guessing this hat will get a lot of use covering up her bald head this summer. :)
Her chemo starts tomorrow and 4 months after that awfulness, she gets to do radiation, too! Doesn't that sound like fun?? But as her husband says, it sure beats the alternative.

The timing worked out that post-surgery and pre-chemo, Amy didn't have to cancel her trip to come out to Arizona with my mom and Anne to visit me. Or more accurately to eat our way through the city.

Breakfast buffet at the resort:
Dinner at the patio at Bloom (mmmm, yummy!)

Picnicking at the Queen Creek Olive Oil Mill.
More outdoor dining at the Old Town Tortilla Factory:
Pretty much, we only brought out the camera at dinner time. Well, there are a series of photos documenting our various ailments (Amy's lymph node removal, Anne's bunion surgery, Mom's knee surgery and my pretty new Harry Potter scar) but I won't be sharing those pictures. I'm sure both you and my family thank me.

If I'm not too lazy, I'll share with you more about their trip, including our visit to Cosanti. But for now, just remember...No smoking animals! And no unaccompanied children running or climbing visitors after dark!
Oh, and go get a mammogram, ok?