A year of Lucinda the dog

We brought Lucinda home from PetSmart Beaverton / Washington Square Store #1532 on the Saturday after Christmas 2014, on December 27. We fostered her for a week, and then had the option to adopt her from the rescue group that brought her up from Mexico. And we did. Here's the whole story.

So we've now had her for a full year.

It is glorious to have a dog in our home and in our lives again.

I offer this blog entry in particular to those who are thinking of adopting a dog.

Lucy has come a long way in the year she's been with us, in terms of her fear of... well, everything. She doesn't bolt and run as fast as she can away from a loud noise or me falling down, though she's still very skittish of those things. She is no longer bothered by bins put out for garbage day - she no longer thinks they are daleks, about to come alive at any moment and chase her. She's no longer scared of the garage door, and will even sniff it when it rises, as opposed to trying desperately to get away from it as soon as it starts to move. She'll now greet people that she meets for the first time when we're out on a walk even if they don't have a dog - now, we have to work on her wanting to jump on people she likes. She does NOT like clapping in the house, but is fine if you do it at the dog park to call her when she's far away. She'll come about 40% of the time when she's in the yard and I call her, which is up 40% from a year ago. Or even six months ago. But she will NOT come to me in the house unless I have a dog treat and tell her, "Lucy! Want a dog treat?!"

She now sleeps in our bedroom most nights. She did that her first two nights for us, then refused to even come into the bedroom anymore for a few months. It all changed when we kept Harry the dog for a few days; Harry is about 12 or so, small, very laid back, and quite fearless: he's only too happy to go tromping absolutely anywhere, including into the crate in the bedroom that Lucy refused to go into for months and months. As soon as he got in, and then out after a few minutes, in she went. And she's been oh-so-happy to sleep in the bedroom with us ever since.

She sings for her breakfast each morning. She waits for Stefan's alarm clock to go off at 6:15 a.m. on a weekday and, when it does, she begins her Chewbacca / bugle noises as she waits for him to get up and let her out and then feed her. He feeds her most weekday mornings - it's part of our Stefan-is-not-scary campaign, which is ongoing.

She LOVES to go hiking. LOVES it. Most recently we took her to Stub Stewart State Park for a post-Thanksgiving Day Hike. She's also hiked Bayocean Beach in Tillamook, Wilson River Trail in Tillamook National Forest, and University Falls Hike, also in Tillamook NF (that was her first - pictured at left).  We're cursing the record-rain in Oregon in December which has prevented us from taking her on even more hiking trips. We've taken her camping only once, to Gifford Pinchot National Forest, but we're hoping to do a lot more in 2016. She loved all the walking around the campground, and seemed to like sleeping in the tent - but she wasn't happy about just hanging out at the campsite, and would make herself into the tiniest ball on a blanket, waiting for us to either go hiking or go into the safe, cozy tent.

She's skittish but willing to go when walking inside PetSmart or Wilco or Ace Hardware - we haven't tried Home Depot yet - and I make a point of taking her when I go to any of these places, if at all possible. She hates walking to downtown Forest Grove or on the campus of Pacific University - she hates so many people walking and standing around, she hates the cars, she hates all the movement - but I make her do it regularly. We even dared to take her to the Forest Grove chalk art festival. She wasn't happy about it, but she tolerated it. In 2016, I'm going to try to take her to the farmer's market at least twice a month.

Our dog trainer has given us lots of tips on how to get her to be less skittish, and so many of her tips have helped Lucy in certain situations that used to give her a complete emotional meltdown when we got her a year ago. I so highly recommend you take your dog to an obedience class, no matter the dog's age - it will help you bond SO much. But you have to work with your dog every day.

Geesh but Lucinda loves other dogs! And people with other dogs! She plays SO well with other dogs - she's super gentle with smaller dogs or older dogs, and she loves to pounce on dogs that far out-weigh her, like Apollo the Rottweiller or Muree the 200 pound Newfoundland. When she knows and loves a dog and they get play time, she growls as they play like she's killing something - it sounds awful. And the other dog just completely ignores it and goes right on playing with her. She does it only with dogs that really know her and love her, which is a good thing, because if she did it with all dogs, she'd never have any friends - did I mention it sounds awful? For Lucinda, when it comes to dogs, familiarity breeds love - she is ecstatic at seeing dogs she knows, even if that dog has never been all that thrilled to see her, and bounces all around with joy. There are really only two dogs I've found that she doesn't like, and that's because she's scared of them - they're bullies.

I think her love of other dogs comes both from her breed mix and from growing up in dog shelters. She's always been around other dogs - we took her away from that when we adopted her, and of course adopting her was for her benefit, but I feel oh-so-guilty if she doesn't get to play with a dog every day. People will say that her fear of humans comes from being abused, but I don't think she was ever truly abused. I don't think she associates humans with abuse. I think humans are just these strange creatures she wasn't around much at all for the first seven months of her life - certainly not without lots of other dogs also being around. And I think it's in her DNA: when it comes to dogs, some aspects of temperament and behavior are carried on genes, and dogs have been bred specifically to produce certain temperament and behavior - that means that, no, not all of their behavior comes from how they have been treated.

She loves chasing squirrels. "Loves" doesn't really describe what comes over her when she sees a squirrel. Thanksfully, she understands that, when she's on a leash, I get to decide if she gets to chase or not - and when bark-at-the-tree time is over. She will walk away when I tell her it's time - I don't have to drag her away.

May she be off leash? I'm still really scared to let her off-leash much - she still won't always come when called, and until she does that, EVERY TIME, I'm keeping her on leash. I'm also pretty sure she'll bolt after a squirrel or rabbit and become deaf to me if she's not on leash. Inside the dog park or our back yard or an enclosed area or in a house, sure, she's off-leash. There's a big empty field across from us, and if there's a dog there, I'll let her off leash a bit for a bit to play - but I have to watch her like a hawk, because she'll eat just about anything off the ground. But when we're hiking, no, I won't do it - she stays on leash. I still don't trust her not to run away, or to bolt into traffic in pursuit of a squirrel or to run away from something scary.

Just recently, she's started picking up socks or other small clothing items off the floor and taking them in the middle of the living or dining room or into her crate for a chew. I've caught her most of the time - so far, she's destroyed only one sock - and I don't get mad, I don't say anything, I just walk over and take whatever it is she's not supposed to have. And that's been the right approach - she doesn't run away when she sees me approaching her, and just stares as I take away whatever it is she's not supposed to chew. She LOVES to chew up paper, or small plastic things, so we really have to make sure there's nothing on the floor for her to chew up when we leave her alone.

I've spoiled her rotten by working from home. ROTTEN. I sometimes leave JUST so she can remember that, yeah, sometimes, no one is here.

She will go to the back door and bark when she wants to go out into the back yard. That's HUGE. She's trained us in that regard. She won't pee in the house IF we hear her bark and let her out. We put her on a leash and take her out in the front yard after 9:30 p.m., before we go to bed - for some reason, she won't always pee then in the back yard - so that she can make it through the night. During the day, she can't be inside without a pee break more than seven hours. You probably don't need to know any of that... this part of the blog is more for me, so a year from now, I can compare where she is, pee-wise.

She is joyous to come to Stefan when it's time for a walk, though she can get so overwhelmed at the idea of going on a walk, with him or with me, that she runs into her crate, her refuge - but she doesn't shrink away in her box if you reach in to put the leash on, or just to pet her. She has a much bouncier step on walks if Stefan is walking her instead of me. She is happy to come to him and cuddle with him when they are on a walk together, yet, in the house and the back yard, she's still afraid of him, and will come to him only if it's time to go on a walk and he's in the utility room calling her. Otherwise, she runs from him. It's really hurt his feelings at how afraid of him she is inside the house.

So we have a ritual that we started several weeks ago: after Stefan gets home and we've finished our supper, we go into the living room and sit on the carpet, and cuddle with Lucy. I call it worship-the-dog. Because that's what it looks like. We try to say the word "cuddle" repeatedly, because we're hoping she'll come to us eventually when we use that word. She still doesn't respond to the word when called - but she is loving the Lucy worship - and recently stayed with Stefan to cuddle even though I got up - probably because Harry the dog was with us and she wanted to make sure he didn't get petted as well. She initiates cuddle-time, walking onto the carpet in front of her living room bed and looking at me. I walk over, sit next to her, pull her into my lap, and she leans against me as I pet her ears and shoulders. And after a few minutes, Stefan walks over from his chair, and the worship-of-the-dog begins...

She not only loves the dog park (if there are dogs there), she also loves trying out all of the obstacles loves trying out all of the obstacles - except the tunnel. I really should train with her every day - she is soooo trainable.

She and Gray Max the Cat have a love-hate relationship. In the mornings, when I let him in from outside or from the guest room, she nibbles the top of his head, and he loves it, and pushes his head against her teeth. They will even sometimes - though rarely - sleep near each other (usually when supper time is approaching). Max eats on an upper level of his kitty platform, and Lucy doesn't bother him during such, and is fine with him drinking out of her water bowl. They don't play - Lucy tries, so hard, but Max will have none of it. If there's no other dog in the house, Lucy pretty much leaves him alone - maybe a sniff here and there, and he's fine with that. And when she's on leash and we see Max out in the front yard, they sniff each other and then ignore each other as they walk side-by-side to the door. All is well. But if we're dog-sitting Harry, or she sees Max out in the back yard, she LOSES HER MIND and chases after him in an absolute FRENZY. It's scary to see. My first dog, Buster, was the same way - tolerated cats, even liked them, when it was just he and a cat, but if another dog was around, he lost his mind and raced after the cat.

She will play with a laser pointer in the house, or with Harry when he's here inside the house, but that's it; she won't play with a toy in the house, or with me in the house. It's actually really hard to get her to play with me even outside. She'll play with another dog, and she's happy to join in if I start playing with that dog, and she'll even play by herself with a toy outside - it's hilarious to watch her pretend a toy is something fierce - but she seems overwhelmed if I try to play with her outside, throwing a ball or toy for her to fetch.

I say all this because it's taken a lot of work to get her to this stage, a lot of trust-building. I've worked on it every day in some way shape or form. It hasn't been easy, but it's been so worth it. In addition to all that work on our part, so much changed, for the better, after her stay at the dog camp, when we came back from our motorcycle trip to the Yukon: I think that, when we took her to the camp, she thought, okay, another shelter, another new home, that's that. But when we came and got her two weeks later, and she returned to a place, for the first time ever, she realized, oh-my-gosh, I belong to Jayne and Stefan! They are mine and I am theirs! Wahoo! She became MUCH more affectionate. And, okay, more needy - but I love that she is willing to be needy now for petting and comfort - it sure is better than trying to coax her from out from under the couch!

Oh how I love Lucinda the dog. I didn't think I could love a dog as much as I loved my very first dog, Buster. To think I could ever love a dog as much as Boo seemed to mean I didn't really love him as much as I thought I did. But what I found is that I loved each dog I got after I got Buster - Wiley, then Albi - just as much. It was just different.. I've had four dogs since 1990. All were "rejects" - unwanted by their original owners or never owned by anyone. Lucy is my first puppy. It's a LOT of work, but I love it.

Years ago, I decided that I would always have this purpose: to give a loving home to a dog or cat that wouldn't have a home otherwise. If I've done nothing else in my life, I've done this. And I've received so much as a result. Please consider welcoming a dog or cat into your life. Visit area shelters and local pet stores that host dogs and cats from shelters and rescue groups. And PLEASE spay or neuter your pets! Also, consider an older dog or cat: they are often already house trained, and settled - I've had an amazing experience adopting older dogs. If you want to donate money, give such to the nearest animal shelter or rescue group to you, and/or to the wonderful Mayhew International, which I got to know in Kabul, Afghanistan - they not only help spay and neuter dogs in several countries, they also host classes for communities in those countries, like Romania, to help change attitudes about stray animals.

And one last thing: Why I hate ASPCA TV commercials: they never suggest that you spay/neuter your pets, never tell you "Adopt a shelter pet today!," never tell you "Don't leave your dog outside at night" or "Never leave your dog outside on a chain ever ever ever" - they just say, "Send us money because look at these poor animals!" PetSmart does a better job of encouraging animal shelter and rescue group adoptions and kind, humane care of your pets!

Also see:

Video: Lucinda the dog's first video

Video: Playtime with Murree & Lucy (3 short clips)

Video: Lucinda the dog with her toy Olaf

Video: Lucinda & Apollo playing (2)

Video: Lucinda and Apollo playing (1)

Video: Lucinda, Apollo & Ziggy play time

Video: Lucy jumps obstacles in dog park in Thatcher Park in Forest Grove, Oregon

Video: Lucy climbs an obstacle at the dog park

Video: Lucinda sees running horses on Bayocean Beach, Oregon

Video: Lucy in the Wilson River

Video: daisy dog and lucinda the dog

Reasons to Adopt a Dog & Myths About Shelter Adoptions (& please do NOT give up on your dog!)

A broad sometimes abroad: February Lucinda the dog update

A broad sometimes abroad: April Lucinda the dog update

Major Lucy triumph

A broad sometimes abroad: Our own not-so-viral dog videos

February Lucinda the dog update

We've had Lucinda the dog eight weeks now. It's so wonderful, so comforting, so normal, to have a dog at home again. It's brought back so many memories of Buster, Wiley and Albi when they each first came into my life.

Lucy is less skittish with strangers, so much so that people have thought she's grown. One person said to me today, "My goodness, she's twice the size she was when I last saw her!" Um... no. She's gained less than two pounds since we first weighed her on Jan. 3 at PetSmart. I took her to the vet one day just for her to go inside and meet everyone, so her first visit wouldn't involve anything but friendly people and dog treats. When we took her back, along with Max the Cat (he needed his boosters), she handled being chipped like it was no big thing at ALL.

She walks on a leash incredibly well now, and I've trained with her every day - she knows sit, down, and stay from both positions, and I'm working on "go to your bed". But she just does not understand "come" when we are inside the house or in the yard. At the dog park or when she's walking on a leash - yes, she totally gets it, and it's really wonderful to call her name at the dog park and have her bound toward you and lean up against you as you tell her what a good girl she is. Inside our house and in the yard, I use the most delicious dog treats possible, but she will only "come" in the house or in the yard if we are in the middle of a training session - try it when you are on one side of the house and she's on the other, and she'll just stare at you.

But, sadly, we've had a setback regarding trust. Lucy is a bit more skittish, and seems a bit depressed. And I think it all goes back to our horrible scare with her about three weeks ago.

If you are friends with me on Facebook, you know that we had a horrible scare with Lucy on January 29: around 2:30 that day, after Lucy and I had finished our B Street Trail walk and were two blocks from home on 18th, I fell and lost my grip on the leash. As soon as I hit the ground, Lucy BOLTED. She FLEW down 18th street, her leash dragging behind her, making a loud noise because of the plastic holder for her poop bags banging against the sidewalk and street. I couldn't even begin to catch her as she bolted away from me. She ran two blocks as fast as she could, almost getting hit by a car, then I saw her in the distance turn the corner of where we live, on Birch and 18th. And then she was gone. An hour later, EVERY person in Forest Grove with a dog was out looking for her. Neighbors went out in their cars looking for her. I called Stefan at work. He came home and joined the search. I stood in front of the house, looking, calling, crying LOTS, making a general spectacle of myself. I searched under bushes, in nooks and crannies all around our house and the neighbors. Nothing. Crazy reports came in on the Facebook Forest Grove community of sightings as far away as Cornelius - and poor Stefan drove to every one of them, no matter how crazy.

More than four hours later, night had fallen, and temperatures were dropping - it would freeze that night, or come close. I was imagining the worst, and thought, if we don't find her, this is one of the worst days of my life. Stefan and I decided to go on the route of our usual morning walk, backwards, calling for her. About 45 minutes later, we got back to the house and Stefan heard something rustling in the neighbor's yard next to our fence. It was Lucinda. She' hadn't been there or near there until then, as I'd looked there thoroughly earlier. We think that by going out and calling, she heard us from wherever she was hiding somewhere on the block and came home. She bolted away from us when Stefan approached, but stopped in the front grass, sat, and eyed me with a side, terrified glance. I had to approach slowly, with a raw hide, and I talked and talked. She dropped down on her belly, but was ready to run. I stopped before I got too close and she would bolt again. Finally, she crawled tentatively came forward for the rawhide. She was shaking uncontrollably. Still wearing her collar and leash - the sound of it dragging behind her had contributed to her panic. I held her and wept. Stefan came up and held her too. We brought her inside - both her and her leash wet all over. I fainted shortly after we got her inside - everything just kinda went gray and fuzzy. I think Stefan thought I was kidding. I'm just glad I didn't hit anything on the way down.

Everyone in Forest Grove was awesome. Beyond awesome. I cannot believe how many people went out with their own dogs or cars just to look for our dog! I think she would have come home sooner had the Methodist Church playground not been packed for an hour with screaming kids - she does not like groups of children (she's fine with one or two).

Since then, she's progressed well on training and walking on leash, but we've gone a bit backwards in terms of trust, and that really breaks my heart. When it's time to walk, each morning, afternoon and evening, she cowers and crawls under the futon couch and won't come out, no matter what awesome treat I offer her. I have to put the retractable leash on her when she isn't under the couch and isn't expecting it, and then she'll go on a walk just fine - no cowering at all. She rarely pulls now. But she also rarely sleeps with us in the bedroom anymore, on her bed next to mine. Instead, she sleeps in her crate, getting up in the night to let me know when it's time for a pee break (anytime between 2 and 4 a.m.) - and then she is happy to be put on leash.

She's been to a private dog training class, and she will begin group classes in March. And I'm doing all I can to rebuild our trust: I lay in the floor with her whenever she's outside her crate, and pull her into my lap sometimes - she loves to be held. The best days are always when she can visit the dog park, or have a dog over to play in the back yard - all her inhibitions melt away, and after we get back home, she's happy and content. I would LOVE to get another dog - I think it would help her tremendously. But that's a while a way - we've got things to work on until then.

More:

What I’ve learned about Lucinda

The meaning of noises

We Love Lucy

What I’ve learned about Lucinda

What I’ve learned about Lucinda (Lucy), the dog we've had for about two weeks now:

• She does not like garbage day, because she’s scared of the bins. She thinks they are daleks, about to come alive at any moment and chase her. 
• She’s hungry. 
• She’s getting up every day at 5 a.m. for a quick stop outside, then will sleep until breakfast and her real walk at 8:30 a.m.
• She wants to chase cats - just to smell their butts.
• She loves all other dogs. 
• She’s hungry.  
• She no longer fears moving cars, but the UPS truck is still evil. 
• She doesn’t like anyone in a bulky jacket.
• She doesn't understand the word "come" when we're in the back yard, and most of the time in the house, but does understand it at the dog park and most other places away-from-home.
• She’s hungry. 
• She WILL get that laser point moving rapidly across the floor some day. SHE WILL. 
• She loves Stefan when he’s wearing jeans or sweatpants and a work shirt or sweat shirt, but she hates his evil twin, the one in the firefighter uniform that shows up some time, when Good Stefan is not around.
• She’s hungry.  

We Love Lucy

After eight dog-less months, we have restored order to the universe and have a canine again in the house. Her name is Lucinda - Lucy for short. Our house is a home again.

She's a year and a month old, and is originally from a beach in Baja California, Mexico. She ended up with All Terrier Rescue (which doesn't rescue just terriers anymore), here in Oregon. The organization partners with a shelter in Baja, Mexico and another in California, to bring dogs from those shelters to Oregon, with the help of Alaska Airlines and various volunteer drivers. All Terrier Rescue shows the dogs they have available for adoption on Thursdays, 4-7 p.m. and Saturdays, 11-5 p.m., at Petsmart in the Washington Square shopping center on Cascade Ave in Beaverton. Her name, "Lucy," is computer-generated, and she is listed as "Baja Lucy" on her paperwork. We liked the name Lucy, so she's keeping it - but I decided it was short for "Lucinda."

It's been a long wait for our new girl. We were both devastated to lose our Albi, but our sorry at losing her wasn't what kept us waiting this long to adopt another dog; it was our travel plans. Stefan was ready to start looking earlier than I was, back in July, but because we had travel plans to Germany in October, I decided I wanted to wait until after we got back from that trip to start looking. And we lucked out at making that choice, because work suddenly sent me out of the country for most of August and September as well, and I wasn't back in the USA, for the rest of 2014, until mid November. It would have been horrible to adopt a dog and then abandon him or her for so long.

Starting in November, Stefan and I began trolling Craigslist for possible additions to our family, but people I wrote didn't write me back, or dogs were adopted before we could even see one. I looked at the web sites of various shelters in and around Portland, but so many put their pets on PetFinder, an extremely hard-to-use web site (hard to find animals just in your area, search results are often incorrect, etc.), or the photos of the dogs they had on their own web sites didn't really tell me anything about the dog, and the descriptions of the dogs were scant regarding any insights to what the dogs were like.

After a month of searching this way, I realized we were going to have to see a lot of dogs in one location to find our dog. We needed to meet dogs, look into their eyes, talk to them, and have them talk to us, in their own way.

Somehow, I figured out that Petsmart in Beaverton had dog showings twice a week from a shelter in Aloha. And so, on December 27, 2014, we walked in to the pet store, and I promptly fell in love with every dog there. I wanted them all. The rescue organization puts most of the dogs together in a large open kennel, so you can see how they interact with each other, and I was glad to see how wonderfully socialized they were. You are encouraged to take any dog for a walk around the building.

We took one dog on a walk, and he was gorgeous and fun, but so incredibly full of energy, and the volunteers kept saying, "He'll be great for someone who jogs! He's great for people with an active lifestyle!", and I'm thinking, yeah, we don't jog... we both really liked him, but his strength and energy were... a lot. I knew we'd be overwhelmed. Maybe even frustrated. So I suggested we walk another dog: Lucy had caught my eye as soon as we walked in - she was in a create by herself, because most of the other dogs hadn't arrived yet, and she was calmly chewing on a raw hide, uninterested in us. She was put in the bigger kennel once the other dogs had arrived, and she seemed quite overwhelmed by them all. She was super timid. The volunteer I talked to had taken her home recently, and said she did well with other dogs and cats, loved to play, was skittish, and oh-so-sweet. We took her on a walk, and she pulled the leash almost as much as the first dog had. But there was something about her... I liked her. A lot.

We decided we'd foster Lucy for a week. And I promised Stefan I would be more reserved than I'd been when I took Albi home originally, to foster for just one night, and had broken into tears after an hour and said I was keeping her. I would proceed with caution this time, emotionally-speaking.

I tried, I really did... This time, I knew when she slept through both the first and second night that I couldn't give her up. So - I made it 48 hours!

I introduced her to Gray Max the Cat as soon as he showed up that first evening. He ran to the door and wailed. After a day of letting him in then right back out, I kept him in with us, no matter the wailing. It lasted 20 minutes. I kept him in for two hours that first time, and it convinced him he could come in with her and not fear being eaten. But it's taken a week of these forced stays to get him to calm down to his old self when inside. Gray Max now tolerates Lucinda and doesn't completely freak out that she's here. But he still won't sleep overnight inside. We didn't let Lucy into the backyard for a week, so he could continue to feel absolutely safe and dog-free there. I'm going to continue to work on him. We have a cat tree condo arriving in another week that will give him a place high up to sleep and hang out and feel safe inside.


Because of the holidays, Stefan had to work only two full days and two half days for Lucy's first week - in other words, he's been here far more than not for her this first week. As a result, she not only got to get to know him too, we got to take her to the dog park three times, go on a lot of walks, and she's even have some play time with just Stefan in the back yard. In one week, she's gone from a dog terrified of all cars, trucks, and any kind of machine, to a dog really happy to be walking alongside of us, cars or not. But she's still rather easily overwhelmed -- she doesn't like people to come right up to her to quickly, and she doesn't like more than two or three people around. She is terrified of Stefan in his firefighter's uniform - we'll have to work on that.

One week after we met her, we drove her to PetSmart to finish her paperwork. I'm glad we brought her, even though we didn't know if we were supposed to: the rescue organization has to see that she has her own collar, and that you have had a tag made for her with her name and your phone number, and attached it to the collar, before they hand over a dog's paperwork. She was really scared to get out of the car - I'm not sure if it was just being in a parking lot, which is always unpleasant for a dog, or all the people, or going to the place she'd been before us. We went inside, and finally tracked down the volunteer to help us finalize her adoption. I asked a bit more about her, and we both went into major, but quiet, panic when we were told she's actually younger than we thought: she's about eight months old. And we don't know her breed mixes. TO THE GOOGLE!! According to what I've read, any dog at six months, no matter the breed, is at least 75% of its full height. And studies have indicated that a small or medium breed puppy reaches 99% of its adult weight somewhere between nine -10 months. She weighs 38.8 pounds. She shouldn't get to 50 pounds. But we're keeping her, no matter what size she gets.

While still at PetSmart, we met a couple that adopted her sister! Lucy's sister is a bit smaller, and much darker - they showed us her photos on their smart phones. I would have had to adopt them both - I never could have separated them.

So, I've had four dogs since 1990. All were "rejects" - unwanted by their original owners or never owned by anyone. The first, Buster, was from Massachusetts and the second, Wiley, was from Missouri, and they not only went to more states that most people from the USA, they also went to Germany. The third, Albi, was from Hungary, also went to Germany, and also visited more states that most people from the USA. And now, the fourth, Lucinda, is from Mexico. We like our dogs international! Lucinda is our second female dog, and the youngest dog I've ever had.


Please consider welcoming a dog or cat into your life. Visit area shelters and local pet stores that host dogs and cats from shelters and rescue groups. And PLEASE spay or neuter your pets! If you want to donate money, give such to the nearest shelter to you, and/or to the wonderful Mayhew International, which I got to know in Kabul, Afghanistan - they not only help spay and neuter dogs in several countries, they also host classes for communities in those countries, like Romania, to help change attitudes about stray animals.

I'll do my best to keep adorable stories about Lucinda to a minimum on Facebook and in conversations, because I know how those can drive everyone crazy. But I make no promises to keep such to a minimum here on this blog! I'm looking forward to many, many stories... I'm already thinking about our first camping trip!

Franken Kitty!

Franken Kitty! 

He's Alive!

ALIVE!

Actually, I was relatively sure he was going to live. I was just worried about the cost and about the abilities of my mildly schizophrenic and/or bi-polar neighbor to take care of him, keep him inside until I got home, etc. She did, indeed, keep him in the entire time, and while he didn't get along with the other cats, he did get along with the dogs. Which totally fits his personality, in many ways.    

He got his stitches out the Wednesday after I got home from California. I took him to the vet in a cloth cat carrier I bought a while back, hauling him in my bicycle trailer. He howled most of the way, but was a perfect gentleman for the stitches removal. When I returned home and took him out of the carrier on my neighbor's porch, he hopped out and disappeared for hours. He showed up at my back door that evening. I took this photo the next day, after the stitches were removed. He loves me again - that's all that matters.

I've been calling him Franken Kitty, per recently seeing a broadcast of a 2011 staged version Frankenstein by Nick Dear, directed by Danny Boyle, with Benedict Cumberbatch (as the doctor) and Jonny Lee Miller (as the monster - brilliant!).

I love this damn cat so much. He is the most loving cat I have ever been around. He's this big bruiser of a cat, but he mostly wants to be held and talked to and petted.