Pet Update

I realized I never put an update here about the latest with our pets.

If you recall, we acquired two huskes, Bear and Lupin, last spring from Courtney's teacher. While they have been good dogs, they seem to have a roaming tendency and we had to keep the locked up in our fairly small dog yard or they would just take off (and they did manage to escape several times -- once they were gone for 3 days). Brian was never very fond of the dogs -- they chewed up lots of his wires and other things and he's just not a "dog person". The kids liked the dogs, but honestly didn't spend a lot of time with them because (1) they seemed to forget about them as the dogs were in the dog yard out of sight and (2) the dogs, while very friendly, were still quite big and strong and could easily knock the girls over.

I was doing my best to take them out for a walk every morning -- although usually I think it was more they took me for a walk. One morning a month or two ago, I happened to stop briefly along the dirt trail where we walked when all of a sudden a deer appeared over the hill just ahead of us. Needless to say, the dogs went crazy and took off after the deer. I didn't have my feet planted very well and I ended up getting pulled over (face first) and dragged along for a bit before they finally stopped. (I had their leashes sort of looped around my wrists so I wasn't able to easily let go, and if I had, they would have been long gone.)

Needless to say, this event was sort of the final push to find the dogs a new home that might be a better fit for their energy level and needs. I decided to try posting a listing online on Craigs List, not really expecting much to come from it because it seemed like there were a lot of pet listings. So I was very surprised when I had about 4 responses within a few hours and it turned out that a couple came that very night and ended up taking both dogs. We felt good about where they were going and were glad that the dogs got to stay together.

(And true to form, Lupin jumped right in their car and made himself at home in the driver's seat while they struggled to convince Bear to get in -- finally having to pick him up and stick him in the back seat!)

Whether or not we will get another dog remains to be seen. So for now, we just have our cat, Daisy, who just turned a year old. She is still a bit hyper and is definitely not a cuddly cat to sit contentedly in your lap. She will tolerate the girls when she has to, which usually looks something like this:

And she's found a few favorite new places to curl up recently, like my computer chair:

And the fresh piles of laundry before they get folded:

At least she doesn't jump on our bed in the middle of the night anywhere and try to attack our feet!