Second Attempt

Today we went to Billings to meet with three dogs from HeRD of Wyoming, a rescue out of Sheridan.  Things went well we met two older puppies and one older dog.  We had a really good connection with and feeling about the older dog.  This is the Daisy dog I talked about in our last blog. (I did however question that maybe we shouldn't be bringing any of the dogs home.) She is very sweet and Kassi can love on her without her getting upset or trying to get away from her.  We brought Daisy home this afternoon.

Tonight here I am up at 12:39 because I cannot sleep.  I cannot stop replaying everything that occurred once we got home.  Nina and Daisy did fine together in the dog park, here they were horrible together until we got them each in their "own" bedrooms for the night.  Kassi said we picked the wrong dog.  Wes was on edge after the dogs fighting over everything.  Daisy kept trying to run out the door and jump through the windows.  The tension is so bad in this house right now.  I am sick to my stomach to think that I made the decision to bring this dog home and now everything seems to be falling apart...AGAIN.  Maybe I am expecting too much, maybe I need to give it some time.  I just don't know what to do.  I emailed the lady we met with today and told her that I may have made the wrong decision and I would talk to her in the morning.  I hope I know what to do by morning.  Right now I am just sick.

So morning came and Daisy, who I was told did not jump fences, jumped the fence and took off.  I was out with the dogs, came in for a second, turned around to go back out, heard Nina barking and saw a black fuzzball running as fast as she could down the alley.  I went out and tried calling her back, she turned around came towards me and just kept on running, right by me.  After a little work with her and the electronic fence, which she ended up running through.  She once again jumped out and then back in.  Needless to say if she doesn't want to stay here then so be it.  To Powell she went, back to the rescue.

I learned two things this weekend.  Trust my gut, when I doubt something there is a reason why; listen to my very intuitive three year old, Kassi had actually picked a different dog from the rescue which Wes and I were not real comfortable with as he was new to his foster home and not much was known about him.  I met this dog when I took Daisy back and he is a real sweet dog with lots of manners.  We however are done looking for another dog at this time.  It was decided that we will wait a few months, if they still have the dog Kassi really wants we will look into spending some time with him.  If they don't have him we will accept it was not meant to be and then maybe I will give in and let her get a puppy.

July Already...

 Wow, I cannot believe it is already the middle of July.  This summer is going by way too fast.

Kassi has stayed very busy with all her activities.  Last month she took tennis and swimming lessons, now this month she has soccer and super snacks.  She is enrolled in preschool for the fall and is she ever excited.  I think she could be a bit of a handful for her teacher.  She loves being the center of attention and also rather enjoys correcting other people.  It could be interesting.  I am confident though that she will do awesome.  When it comes to her knowledge it is incredible.  She reads several words, counts by ones, tens, forwards and backwards, continues to work on her addition and subtraction and gets better everyday at writing.  Her garden was doing really well until we had hail the size of quarters!  I think her potato's are still doing well and her tomato's seem to be recovering.  The spinach and onions...well we have pretty much given up on them.

Wes has passed two more of his ASE tests.  He continues to work on getting his Masters in both car/light truck and heavy truck.  So far the summer has not been a very busy fire summer, which is nice for us.  He cannot wait until bird season is here.  He and Nina really enjoy going out.  She is an amazing hunter and has so much drive.  On the subject of Nina it seems we have a high maintenance dog.  We recently had her at the vet because she got violently ill in the middle of the night.  She has never gained much weight and does not eat much so when she got sick we really wanted to have her checked out.  Apparently she has diverticulosis.  There are some days she just will not eat anything at all.  With this she has a sensitive stomach and is now on a special wet food for sensitive stomachs and is on a dry food for very active dogs.  She also takes a generic prevacid on the days when she seems worst.  Poor dog.  She is a really great dog just a little too hyper and playful for Kassi still.

I have been so busy at work that I don't even realize the day is over most of the time.  I am very ready for a vacation.  Somewhere that I have no phone or computer access and can just relax and hide for a few days.  The time will come though.  We are going to take some time off and head to the hills in a few weeks.

After our recent incident with a shelter dog I had decided I wasn't ready to bring home another dog.  I think it was more that I was nervous we would go through the same thing.  I mean not only do we have Kassi's safety to think about we have all of her friends and the neighbor kids safety to think about.  It has been a little while now and I have done a lot of looking and reading and have found a rescue to work with, HeRD of WY.  They take in dogs to foster homes and evaluate them and have a good feel for what types of homes they would do best in.  I am really pleased with them so far.  They have picked two dogs that they currently have that they feel would fit well with our family.  Both of which are excellent with children.  We are scheduled to go and meet these dogs this weekend.  Kassi thinks we should meet more than two, but it depends on rather we meet in Billings or Sheridan.  They are based out of Sheridan so if we go there we could likely see more of the dogs.  The kind of creepy part for me is that one of the dogs name is Cassie and the other one is Daisy.  I have to admit it bothers me a bit to think about having another Daisy.  The really weird part is Kassi has said since we lost Daisey that we would have another Daisy dog.  I think this has been kind of hard on her too though as the other day she started crying asking why she couldn't have her Daisey dog back and what did we do with her body and can she see where we buried her ashes.  This of course made me cry right along with her.  I don't remember having so much sadness over the loss of a pet.  Hopefully working with this rescue we are able to find the right addition for our family.

Cassie

Daisy II

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.