Abby is two years old!

Well, our Halloween doodle had her second birthday yesterday. I thought she would look really cute in a witch's hat, but we had neither the time nor the occasion.

As some of you may know, we've been training the dogs to have jobs around the house. Abby is the drawer and cabinet closer, and hopefully by the time we come home for Thanksgiving she'll have generalized beyond our types of drawers so she can be everyone's kitchen helper. She'll take her compensation in turkey, thankyouverymuch.

Another foster come and gone

Well, Caroline went a couple of weeks ago to a family in Carmel (near Indianapolis) to be "fostered" but I hear they fell in love with her, and she's likely to stay. It was so hard to see her go, since we'd helped her through such a dramatic transformation, but we had our hands and house full with another foster, whose name is now Rudy. Rudy had a really, really hard life, and he's been on death row more than once, in various circumstances.

When he came to us a month ago, we knew that he was not good with other dogs, but we also knew that he did not deserve to die for it. So we brought him in, divided the house in half, and started looking for a better equipped foster home. Out of nowhere came Georgia, a wonderful woman actually in Bloomington who was an ideal fit. She applied for a doodle thinking she wanted a blonde Goldendoodle, but when she met Rudy (a charcoal Labradoodle), it was love at first sight, and they're a great match. Last I heard, without the stress of having other dogs around, he's quickly coming out of his shell, showing off the happy waggy guy we got to see from time to time. He's totally terrified by cameras, but he's usually much happier than he appears here.







So, Rudy was placed last week and we've heard nothing but good things from his new mom.

Update on Blanche (who is now named Caroline)

Blanche has been renamed Caroline after a wonderful little girl who found out that there are doodles who don't homes and asked the people who came to her birthday party to not bring gifts but money to donate to IDOG. Blanche needed a new name (obviously) so it fit!

Some pictures from when she first arrived. My mom and sister were here on their way to take Suze to DC (she's sounds like she's doing great!), and Caroline was so shut down that they thought she was going to die--just waste away. Oh, how much that little girl has changed!






And some pictures from yesterday! She's a whole new, happy, bouncy doodle! I have a bunch of video I need to edit together, but it's just fascinating to watch them play together.












We listed her on petfinder today, so she's taken the first step toward finding her forever home. We'll be sad to see her go, but she's going to make a wonderful addition for the right family!

New Foster!

Her name is currently Blanche, but I anticipate that changing soon. She's teeny, underweight, freaked out, and sweet. Fascinating pack dynamics in the house.

Full lunar eclipse

Early this morning (5:00am ish) we went outside to watch the eclipse. At 5:52 the moon was fully eclipsed, and between 6:01 and 6:10 we took the sequence of photos in the video. Most of the frames were taken 10 seconds apart, with a couple of 30-45 second gaps as we reset the camera. If you look closely you should be able to see the branches of our neighbors' Mimosa tree. We're always amazed when we see first hand how quickly the moon moves across the sky!

(We went back to bed at 6:30 and proceeded to oversleep.)

Austin foster (another Kentucky puppy)

Meet Austin (previously Frizz), an 85 pound lug of a Goldendoodle from a horrible high kill shelter in Kentucky. A couple of weeks ago I drove to Louisville to pick him up "for a couple of days." This guy is sweet, sweet, sweet. Super cooperative, friendly, mellow, affectionate, and a very fast learner. An all around great dood! He goes to his new home tomorrow. Luckily, I was able to get a few pictures of him before he goes.



He doesn't especially like going into his crate, but once he's there, he settles right in!


He looks an awful lot like Buster.



Once his hair grows out (I've been dematting slowly since he came, so he's a bit scraggly looking), especially his facial hair, they'll look really, really similar!




Abby continues to be a benevolent leader, making sure Austin doesn't confuse her bones with his bones, and enforcing a "no humping the queen bean" agenda.






Buster and Austin had one significant squabble, over a Nylabone, which was pretty much entirely my fault (unwittingly created a high tension situation soon after Austin arrived, then missed some fairly obvious signals), but, luckily, they seem to have worked out their differences:


Getting around in the kitchen is kind of treacherous these days. You could step in something furry at any moment!



Austin fits in really well with our pack, and if he weren't going to an AWESOME family that I just adore, I would be super tempted to keep him. Fortunately, his new family lives just a couple of miles down the road, and they've said that they want to keep in touch, so I think we'll get to see more of Austin, as well as his new brother, a Golden named Pete. :) Even so, I'm going to be very, very sad to see him go.

My bizarre, funny, little doodle bear

We'd been playing fetch normally, with direct lines to and from the frisbee, when this started happening:

Oh, and PS, I sound like a total hick. What's up with that?

Dogs, dogs, and more dogs!

Hanging around on a Friday evening...






"Oh, mom, hahaha, you are soooo funny! No one but Kate appreciates your humor like I do!"






Emmie:




Gretta:



Toby:

Ithaca is Gorges

Yeah, it took me embarassingly long to get that pun, even after having seen it on Matt and Katie's fridge for nearly a year.

So, Chris is at a physics REU (summer research program for smarty pants physics majors) at Cornell until August. Sigh. But, to make the transition easier, our friends Matt and Katie, who used to live in Ithaca, suggested we make a weekend trip of it and spend some time camping, hiking, and kicking around on the Finger Lakes Wine Trail (one of their favorite activities from their time in NY). While I was sad that Chris was leaving, we had a really, really good time. We learned some new stuff about wine (mostly that our tongues are not all that discerning), learned the true meaning of gorges, and got Chris all settled into his dorm room, which he described this evening as appealing to his "monastic side." Well, fair enough.

We left the dogs and puppies with our wonderful neighbors, who were very cool about all my neuroses and not at all insulted by the three page single spaced document I provided. Yeah. Let's speak no more of that. I came home to five wagging tails, twenty paws, four damp noses and one slightly runny nose, so I'm happy.

So, here's a pic of our traveling companions, Matt and Katie Shepherd:
And one of us! A rare gem!




And, FYI, the bumper stickers are correct--Ithaca is gorges. Really, really gorges. And waterfalls.

Birthday gift from Cat's folks

For my birthday, my folks got us new counter stools, to go with our awesome new kitchen. They're the first items of actually new furniture that we didn't put together ourselves that Chris and I have owned. Very exciting, and oh, oh, so comfy on the tukas.





There's some gunk on the lens messing up this one, but Miss Gretta, one of our foster pups, is being unusually social in the picture, so I wanted to include it.

Teaching Buster to ID the food bowls

The amazing fostering experience, or, I got my puppies in Kentucky

Well, as some of you have heard, on Thursday I drove three hours each way to Evansville, IN to pick up three 5 month old labradoodle puppies who were about to be put to sleep in a Kentucky shelter. Snotty nosed and scared out of their minds from three weeks in a concrete kennel following a life lived entirely outdoors, I brought these little dears home, showed them to Chris, who fell in love with them, and our adventure began. We've been using a very specific method for socializing them, under instructions for IDOG's amazing director, Beth Line. Every single thing she's said has been totally accurate, every prediction, even ones that seemed weird, came to pass. This woman really knows her dog behavior! Abby and Buster love having the puppies around, and their interactions with the dogs are almost as rewarding to watch as the development of the dogs themselves. Until we realized how much socialization and emotional work these puppies needed, we'd planned to get them distributed to other foster homes by the end of the weekend. Now, however, it's clear that they need to be together in a controlled environment for awhile longer, so we'll have some additional family members for the next couple of weeks (at least).

More on their antics and development as I get caught up on my work!

All three. (L-R Toby, Gretta, Emmie)
Toby. Named "Lieutenant Dan" when he came into the shelter.


Gretta, named "Forrest" when she came into the shelter (seeing a trend with their old names?)
And, finally, Emmie, named "Jenny" by original owners. She has stolen our hearts and will have to go to a family that appreciates her for how wonderful she truly is.