Dogs

This past week had been weird in my house with only two dogs instead of three. Julimae has been good and I don't think she has noticed that Rina is gone. Cruiser, on the other hand knows that she is gone. He was very sad last weekend but has been getting better. He does look for her when we get home, I think he thinks that she has been at the vet again. We've been taking him for a lot of car rides to cheer him up. 

We have already started thinking about another dog. I feel bad because it is so soon but we know we will be getting another, it's hard to keep us away from animals. We decided that if Julimae gets career changed we are going to keep her. If not we are going to get a German Shepard. I think we are waiting until we hear news of Julimae before we make a final decision because if we adopted a dog now we would have two pet dogs and a PIT and our city limits 2 dogs per household and then if Julimae did get career changed we wouldn't be able to keep her or to puppy raise anymore. My mom and step dad have also talked about raising a puppy of their own. We don't know yet. 

Anyway, there's an update of our pet dog situation. I'll post some Julimae stuff later today.

Rina

My little Rina girl

My little rat terrier, Rina, passed away this morning. She was my first dog. I got her when I was six for Christmas. She was a great little dog and I love her to death. Her liver started failing two weeks ago and she was slowly improving until yesterday. She started bleeding from her mouth and she was very weak so we took her to the pet urgent care. They did a couple tests and gave her some medicine and they thought she would be fine. On the way  home she died in my arms in the car. That was the toughest thing I have ever been through. The worst part is she didn't get to see her favorite people (my mom and step dad) in her last moments.

She was such a great dog and I miss her very much.

Graduation Trip Part 4: Going Home

On the way home I started thinking about Meade and how I didn't feel like I missed him anymore. I felt like there was closure and our lives are all the way they are supposed to be now. I still love that dog, but I don't feel a need to be with him anymore. It's a good feeling! He has a wonderful purpose in life and I'm proud of him!

The morning after graduation I made this:

I chose this song because it is one of my all time favorite songs and I think it really does describe puppy raising, even if it wasn't it's original intention. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. :)

Graduation Trip Part 3: Graduation

Meade!

Meade in his Harness! He wasn't very happy because Rob
had just left...

When we got to the GDB campus we went to the visitor center and everyone there instantly knew who we were. We had called ahead and told them our situation. They were all glad to hear that we were ok. Someone took Julimae to the kennel and another person took us to the dorms! We got to wait in the library while someone else got to go get Rob (Meade's partner) and Meade. While we were waiting we talked to Meade's trainer. She said that he was a great dog and once she got some of the stuff through Meade's thick skull he was perfect. Then Rob and Meade came in. Meade walked in and didn't see us. Then he walked up to my step dad and sniffed him and started jumping and wagging (Meade was never a big wagger) Then he turned and saw me and practically jumped in my lap. Then he turned to my mom and went over to give her kisses (She was the only one he was allowed to lick because I hate dog kisses. Julimae is being trained the same way) then he came back to me. After he settled down we introduced ourselves to Rob. He is a great guy and in his 50s or 60s. He is the perfect match for Meade and Meade already loves him! Since we got there so late we only had time to tell him that we did get him and Meade a present but we left it at the hotel because of the whole hostage situation, before we had to go and take pictures. During the pictures it took some work to get Meade to look at the camera. We eventually ended up saying BZZT to make him look. He recognized the word but didn't howl. But he did look at the camera and our pictures look great!

Meade's class on the training board!

After our pictures we got ready for the graduation ceremony. Rob went with the other students to go wait in the visitor center and I got Meade. Meade was not too happy when Rob left though. We went into a little waiting room once they were ready and graduation started. They showed some videos and then we got to start presenting dogs. Meado was first and when we were offstage and he saw Rob go on stage he got really excited. I went up and gave the leash to Rob and Rob talked about how grateful he was for me and Meade and how wonderful Meade was and then I talked about... Well I don't know. I think I was babbling about what an amazing dog he is.... Not the greatest speech ever but I think I got my point across.
We went to sit down and watched the rest of the graduation! There were some pretty good looking dogs in Meade's class.
After graduation one of the GDB employees came up to us and said she looked online and the whole hostage situation was a hoax. :-P How wonderful. Then we took a tour of the campus. It was so cool! After the tour we got Julimae out of the kennel and went to introduce her to Meade. Meade was jealous when he realized she was his "replacement" and didn't like her very much. When we decided to take Rob out to lunch because we didn't get much visiting time before, we put Julimae back in the kennels because we hadn't grabbed her jacket on the way out of the hotel. We went to lunch and discussed stories about Meade and our personal lives. And had a lot of fun. After lunch we went to the hotel room, which was pleasantly void of police, to pack up our car and get Rob and Meade's presents.
We went back to GDB and went to Rob's dorms to give them the presents. We gave Rob his first, we got him a green leather leash with Meade's name stamped on it! He thought it was great! (Thank you, Megan, for making it for us!) Then we gave Meade a couple of ropes and a brand new Goughnut Stick! He thought that the Goughnut was the best thing ever and stopped paying attention to us to chew on it. Right then I remembered that I wanted to try his BZZT thing so I took the Goughnut (he was not happy) and I attempted it. He was confused at first but when he realized he wouldn't get his Goughnut until he howled he howled for us! Rob thought it was really funny and told us he would go home and show his wife. Then, we said our goodbyes and departed...

Graduation Trip Part 2: The Hotel Conundrum

Remember this?

Want to know the whole story?

Well......

It all started when I woke up. I heard my step dad take Julimae out to DYB and he came back in and put her back in the kennel. I fell back asleep and woke up again and took her out myself and fed her. After she got fed my mom took a shower and my dad ate breakfast and I played with her for a while. It was about 8:30 at that time. I took her out again and I came back in and my mom was out of the shower and they were starting to pack up because we weren't going to come back to the hotel room after graduation. My step dad got the first couple things packed and prepared and he went to take them out to the car. When he didn't come back after about ten minutes we started to wonder. Right after our wondering my mom got a call on her phone from a number that she didn't recognize. She answered the phone and it was my step dad, he borrowed someone's cell phone. He told us not to come out of the room and that the hotel was surrounded by police. So I went to look out the window and lo and behold, there were police around our hotel. So we stayed in the room.
A little while later my step dad called again. He had figured out some more stuff. Someone had robbed the hotel and taken the manager hostage and they had a gun. So we stayed in our hotel room some more. I got bored and decided to see if the police had shut down the hotels wifi. They did not, so I posted my depressing blog post and talked to people on Facebook for a while.
 Don't you think the police would want to shut down the wifi so that the gunman doesn't have as much access to the outside world? I mean, they could IM some of their goons to go do something or something... I just think it would have been smarter to shut it down. Just in my opinion...
After a little while we got a call straight to our hotel room. I answered and it was the police. They started by asking if my mom and dog were both in the room. I said yes. Then he told me to put a leash on my dog (No, I was just going to let my dog roam free and sic the lunatic with a gun.... :-P) and to come straight out of the room and turn right and they would give us further instruction then.
Me and my mom didn't know if they would want to search our stuff so I stuffed my camera in my pocket and we just left. When we went out of the room and turned right they had a SWAT guy with one of those huge shields and a blinding light. They told us to walk forward and go past them on the right. Behind the shield guy were about twelve police officers with huge guns. Julimae happily trotted by all the men and stopped to sniff the guns. She thought it was a lot of fun. She was even so distracted by the guns she didn't notice the big German Shepard who was very anxious to do some police work.
After walking past the SWAT team we went to the neighboring Wendy's and an officer asked us some questions about if we heard any yelling in the morning, or if we knew anything... etc. We went and met up with my step dad and we told the police that we would rather go to graduation than wait around and do nothing for another two hours. It was about 11:30 at this point, by the way. So he was polite enough and went to get our car for us and we left......

Fun stuffs.

Graduation Trip Part 1: The Drive to Oregon

As you may know, Meade is an official guide dog now!!! My family and I got to go to his graduation on September 11th. We decided to drive because it was cheaper and we also decided to take Julimae with us so she could meet her big brother :) 

Julimae in the car. She is looking at the camera between the two back seats

A couple of days before the trip I went to Costco and got her one of the nice big cedar beds! I originally wanted a round one but all they had was rectangle so I decided to get it anyway, but it turns out it fits perfectly in the back of our SUV. Julimae REALLY likes this bed. She would not leave it for the first couple nights. She thinks it is the best thing ever. She was really happy when we put it in the car for her before we left.

The first day of driving we decided to stop in Boise to see my mom's biological mom and have dinner with them. This was Julimae's first restaurant outing. And, of course, she was perfect! She did want to get up and leave half way through but I made her lay down and she didn't protest again. After that we went to our hotel room and she thought that was THE BOMB DIGGITY. I let her roam around the room the whole time and she was wonderful. She thought that running around with her toys was a great pastime in the hotel. The next day we started to drive to Oregon! She was brilliant and rode in the back of the car like she did before. When we got to Oregon we went to dinner with my mom's cousin. She was great during dinner there too. After that we went to Voodoo Doughnut and she was also great there. She impressed me a whole lot. 

Julimae in a hotel room. She is laying near the bed and has several toys around her while she chews on a pink rope.

We went to Pok Pok in Portland because we had seen it on TV and heard great things about it. I wasn't too impressed with it. It was my first time having Thai food and since I'm a fan of very hot food I ordered the hottest thing on the menu. It even said it was the hottest... It was good but it wasn't that hot. A bag of flamin' hot cheetos is hotter. I was very disappointed. We all shared our food so I got to try some duck (bleck :P) and I also accidentally ate a cube (yes, cube) of pork fat. Who cube's animal fat and puts it on a beef kabob? I thought it was a pineapple piece, but I was way way wrong. It was the worst thing ever! Anyway, Voodoo Doughnut wasn't all it was cracked up to be either. We have also seen it on TV and thought we would try it... Eh. If they were fresh doughnut they would've been better...

Julimae curled up in Pok Pok

We had a good first part of our trip and Julimae had a lot of fun!