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.

Long ago trip to Fayetteville

After I turned in my last paper and took a silly Latin final, I hopped in the car with the doods and drove to Fayetteville for a couple of days to see my family before starting this grueling summer of French and reading (but not reading French).

In the car. Notice their fancy new harnesses!

Abby and Buster love riding in the car! They don't bark or whine, but every once in a while, Buster nudges his nose rudely up onto the armrest, but for the most part, they just curl up together and sleep the whole way. Pictures taken over my shoulder. I snapped a bunch, and just happened to get a few decent ones.




Kickin' it in the backyard


Ana came to my parents' house for dinner one night, and the dogs were VERY happy to see her. She was great with them, and Buster actually listens better to her than to me sometimes. We would never have thought he'd be so good with kids, but he's fantastic!





Buster's tongue is ridiculous.

So much catching up to do! So little done here...

Well, I have lots of fun stuff to post on here. However, literally all summer long, I have to average about 1,500 pages/week to have a hope of being ready for exams in September, so it'll be slow updating. In the meantime, for your viewing pleasure, Buster learning to play frisbee. As you can see, he's got some mad ups.