No More Pets!

So this is Mitsey.  We were downtown on Saturday and saw her with a few other dogs the animal shelter had at a fundraising event.  She was very calm and sweet.  She did not push and did not jump up on Kassi.  We decided we would try and make her a part of our family.  On Monday they called and said we could pick her up.  When we got to the shelter I asked lots of questions.  Where did she come from, why was she surrendered, any known issues, any aggression etc.  They said she was an owner surrender, then said well she was a court ordered owner surrender.  They did not say anything about how she acted when they brought her in.  They did after several questions say that the file did say she snipped at someone, but had no other record of biting.

Mitsey is very sweet and so very well behaved.  She sits, she stays, she is quiet, she knows lay down, she is house trained, she is amazing.  I had some concern of why she would be court ordered to be surrendered.  I noticed as Kassi got more and more wound up last night that Mitsey seemed agitated and did not want to be around Kassi.  Part of the reason for bringing Mitsey home was for Kassi to have a dog she could love on and play with that was not jumping on her and knocking her down.  (Nina would never intentionally hurt Kassi, but she is still all puppy and plays very rough.)  Seeing how Mitsey would turn away from Kassi and come to me I had my suspicions that this was not going to work out.  Last night she slept on a dog bed right next to the bed and stayed there all night.  She is very well behaved.

I still had my concerns though on how she reacted when Kassi was being "a kid".  She was great when Kassi was being calm and quiet.  So I began doing what a protective mom does and began to doubt the decision to bring her home.  Wes also asked a few questions and we found out more about her past and had to make a very hard to decision to tell Kassi we were going to have to take her dog back to the shelter.  Kassi was heart broken for a little while, but seems to be okay with it now.  If it was just Wes and I there is no doubt that I would have kept this dog, but I cannot take any chance that she might hurt Kassi or one of Kassi's friends.  Why the shelter did not provide me all the information on the dog I do not know.  Maybe they did not get the entire story or maybe they just chose not to, but my recommendation to them was that she not be placed in a home with children. 

If anyone is looking for a dog and there are no kids in the picture she is great.  She just is not right for our family, or in my mind any family with smaller kids.

I guess it just goes to show that I was right when I have said that I am just not ready for another dog.  It was September when we had Daisey put down to end her suffering.  I still have not healed from this.  Having Mitsey in the house made me think more about Daisey, how Daisey was, and how I was expecting another dog just like her and made me realize that I will never have another Daisey.  So once again I say no more pets.

What a weekend!

What a busy weekend we had!

Since it was finally warm outside we decided to get started on painting the outside of the house.  Thanks to my dad, LuAnn and Uncle Mike we made short work of that little project.  Wes and I will go back through and put on a second coat, but we are not in huge hurry so we make take it in stages.  I think we will also paint the doors a darker shade of green.  This color is Cleary Sage and at first I wasn't sure what I thought of it, but it kind of grows on you.  The really nice thing is it a completely different color scheme than all of the other houses in the neighborhood.

Along with painting the house our weekend was full of other activities too.  Maybe even a little too full...(I think I could sleep for a couple of days straight.).

On Saturday morning I took a break from the "painting party" to take Kassi to her first surprise party for one of her friends.  This was the first birthday party she went to for someone other than her cousins.  She was really excited and I think she had a really good time.  Unfortunately we had to leave a little early to get back to painting.  Since Kassi was very good while Wes and I continued painting we decided to get cleaned up and take her to the carnival.  She had so much fun.  I know she enjoyed it last year, but this year she really enjoyed it.  She also decided she was big enough to ride without mommy :(.  After awhile we ran into some friends of ours and then she got to ride with her friends, which she loved.  Some of the big highlights of the carnival for her were getting to run around in a ball that floated on water and getting to pet stingrays (Yes real live stingrays.)  She pet them the first time we went in and then the second time she fed them, but did not want to pet them or feed them the way you are supposed to, you are supposed to hold the shrimp between your fingers near the hand and flat on the bottom  of the tank and then the stingray will suck the shrimp off of your hand.  Overall we spent nearly 5 hours at the carnival this year, who would have thought that one little girl could have that much fun for that long!

Driving her friend Claire.

Having fun in the floating bubble.

Carousel ride with mom.  I think this is the last year she will let me ride with her:(

As if all of the other things were not enough...Kassi decided that she needed to throw a surprise party for "Annie" the otter and break the pinata.  On Sunday afternoon she had 8 of her friends over for a pool/pinata party.  They all had a lot of fun and played for nearly 4 hours.  The pinata survived two hits by each kid and then they decided it was time to just rip it open...it had fallen off the string it just hadn't broken.  As a note to self the pinata would be plenty strong for this age group with only three layers.  Kassi's friends were even nice enough to play along with surprising "Annie".  It was a lot of fun, but we are all very tired now!

The super strong pinata.

First Bike!!!!

We have been telling Kassi that in order to get new things she was going to have to either give away some of the things she was too big for or did not play with, or she could sell them at our yard sale.  I was so proud of her she gave her tricycle and a little four wheeler to a friend of ours for their little girl.  So I had to hold up my end of the deal and last night we went to Walmart to get her first bike.  She had already rode all of them around the store last weekend and she knew which one she wanted.  When we got there last night they did not have the one she wanted, but she did find one that she liked so off we went with her first bike.

There was no hesitation on her part and as soon as dad got her lined out off she went and she rode a very long ways for her first time.  She even figured out how to use her brakes!  I'm so proud of her!

Growing

Kassi has had an incredible growth spurt here recently.  Even to look at her you can see her legs have stretched out and her feet are finally catching up with the rest of her.  So much so that we had to go and buy all new shoes last weekend.  She had just moved into an 8 a couple of months ago.  She hadn't even worn some of the shoes we had bought her for summer.   That will teach me to be buying things for different seasons!  This is the first time this has happened her feet have always been very small and have grown very slowly, until now.  For whatever reason in the last week or so he had noticed some of her shoes were starting to be a bit tight, then on Monday I went to put on a pair that had been too big and they were too small.  That was it we had to go shoe shopping.  After trying on all of her 20 some odd pairs of shoes (I know that is insane, right!) we found two pair that still fit properly and then we were off to the Memorial Day sales.  We were able to get some nice shoes on sale at good prices.  Hopefully these ones will last a little longer than the 8's did!  Since we bought all new shoes at once we did cut her back to one pair of each kind of shoe, a dressy set, a pair of sandals, a pair of cowboy boots, a pair of tennis shoes, a pair of hiking boots and a pair of snow boots that are two sizes too big, I'm hoping big socks and she can wear them next winter.

We also had to go through all of her clothes as she now had high waters with most of her pants and her dresses were getting a bit too short for mom's standards.

My baby is growing up!