Update: Our Week

We've been so busy - it's nice to have a little time to breathe today.

On the weekend, CAPS held its annual dinner and auction. We helped with food preparation late last week, and helped to set up on the weekend, and also brought Neville the cat to the dinner to display him for potential adopters.

Oh, and also? My parents and Mark's mom came to town for the dinner. And they all stayed at our house. And they brought their dogs.

It was a bit of a wild weekend. We had five adults, five dogs, and five cats squashed into our house for the weekend. The dinner went great and we all won various things in the silent auction. Neville the cat did not get adopted, but a few days later Cooper the Foxhound did! He went to his new home on Tuesday, and we foolishly believed we might be able to rest easy with only our own two dogs for at least 24 hours.


That didn't happen, of course. We don't have a new foster dog, but we do have Mark's mother's dog Robbie for a week. Robbie is a reasonably easy dog but is keenly aware of what rules will be enforced if he pushes limits, and which ones he can get away with ignoring.

Some of you may know that I'm not very much of a pushover. I don't fight many battles, but I always plan on winning the ones I choose to engage in. In the words of the immortal Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, "I am hard but I am fair". Robbie can sleep on my couch, or my bed. He can rip his toys apart and spread the bits from one end of the house to another. He does not have to heel on walks, but pulling is not acceptable. Robbie likes to bark a lot and loudly when he's excited, jump up on people, and go on like a baby when left home alone. The barking and jumping up has greatly diminished in the two days since he landed here, and he is dealing with the separation anxiety he seems to have. I definitely wouldn't call it extreme, but it won't disappear in the week that he's here, and he'll fall back into familiar habits a bit when he returns to his own home and interacts with his owner's energy levels. For now though, we leave him home alone whenever we have somewhere to be, and it's as simple as that, and the world will not end. Because I believe this, Robbie will be much more likely to believe this.


Ah, but wait, I've left out some of the most important details: Robbie is here because Mark's mother needs to deal with her mother. Her mother (Mark's Gran) is in the hospital. She had a heart attack over the weekend, and a number of Angina attacks which have ranged from mild to severe. Being 88, there's not a lot they can do for her other than changing her medication. She's been in the hospital for a number of days but we expect her to be released tomorrow. It's not great news. It kind of seems to me that this Angina thing is not going to go away.

I think Gran is ready for whatever may happen. I don't think anyone else is, though.