So for those who may not know, I am nuts about my dogs and my dogs are just nuts!  Both of my dogs have facebook pages Sampson and Delilah and I have written a book about Sampson that I am trying to get published.

Every Wednesday and Friday my dogs go to daycare, yes you read that right they go to doggie daycare.  Sampson has been going for at least six years and Delilah has been going since we got her (almost four years ago.)  There are more and more doggie daycares popping up and it’s an excellent opportunity for your dog to socialize with other dogs and get lots of exercise.  Basically they run and play most of the day.

Here in the northeast we have been pummelled with snow and so lately I have not been putting the dogs on their leashes to go to and from the building to the car and vice versa.  Today when I arrived at daycare to pick them up, the parking lot was pretty empty so I pulled up to the building, opened the car door and went inside to get the dogs.

Delilah goes right into the car, but Sampson usually wants to sniff around and take a quick pee before heading home, meanwhile Delilah waits in the car.  She probably has an ulterior motive like snooping through my bag for food, but that’s quite ok, because there usually isn’t any.

So Sampson did his usual sniff and I said let’s go, he comes up to the car and puts his front paws inside the car and looks at me.  He wants me to lift him into the car.  Not happening.  This dog weighs over 100 pounds and if I start lifting him, it will become a habit.  Not that bad when you are in your early 40’s but early 50’s?  I think not.  So I walk a little bit away and call him to me and tell him to “run it.”  Meaning running your chunky butt and jump in the car.  He doesn’t.  I try again and again, nothing.  So I decide to try a different tactic.

I get in the car and with the hatch still open I begin to drive ever so slowly away, thinking pack mentality, the dog will jump in the car.  So here I am driving and that silly dog still refuses to get into the car, instead I hear his little tags jingling as he runs along behind the car!  Now if we were on our street I probably would have continued driving and let him either finally jump in the car or run all the way home, BUT since we had to drive on some really busy roads I stopped the car and finally got him inside.  At which point he bowled Delilah over trying to get into the front seat, fell down between the front and back seats, finally got into the front and flopped down exhausted. 

Silly dog.

I write about my dogs for a number of reasons 1) I really love my dogs  2) my dogs are like my children and much like people like to brag and share stories of the cute things their children have done, I like to talk about my dogs 3) I found that writing about my dogs can make other people smile and bring a bright spot in an otherwise dark day.

Back in November of 2009 my dear friend Mindy (who was responsible for getting us Sampson) told me about her boyfriend’s granddaughter who at the age of 9 was battling bone cancer in her leg.  Through the hospital they connected with a website called Caring Bridge.  Kristy could post updates about how Alexa was doing with her treatment and people in turn could post messages to Alexa.   So I introduced myself and started sharing a little about myself.  Before I knew it, I was writing about the dogs and some of the funny things they did.  Finally in February of 2010 I got to meet Alexa at a fund-raiser in her honor and her grandmother thanked me for writing and said, at first I thought what the hell is this woman doing?  Then it dawned on me, you were taking our minds off what was going on and for that I thank you.  I hadn’t really thought about what I was doing, I was just thinking what can I say besides, hi how are you doing?  But I KNOW that my posts helped and I am happy to report that Alexa is currently in remission.  When I wrote to Alexa, I wrote almost daily and I really loved it; that is one of the reasons that I gave myself this 365 day challenge, because I really enjoy writing.

So if you are going to follow this blog, chances are you will be reading a lot about Sampson and Delilah and I will ask if you like reading my works, to please share it with others.

Catch you tomorrow!

My sister took offense to Saturday’s blog where I said I came from a one bedroom shack on the lake.  Quite frankly I didn’t even know that she read the blog, but I digress.  So I get a text yesterday morning that says, “We lived in a f*#*#%g shack?”  Ooops.  I had to call her because I simply couldn’t text it all.

To clarify, it wasn’t REALLY a shack; it was a three-season cottage on Coventry Lake that our father  converted to an all season cottage.  Eventually a dormer was added so the two bedroom cottage became a four bedroom house.  But it was a very small house (I drove by it last year and I couldn’t believe how really small it was!)  The house had no basement, just a crawl space underneath for the pipes, plumbing and electrical, or whatever else they stick under those things.  There were always spiders in the house and one of my sisters and I actually got blood poisoning from a spider bite.

The front porch which was enclosed was converted into a living room and there were two bedrooms downstairs.  When we first moved in the three girls were in the back bedroom, which was the slightly larger of the two rooms.  The front bedroom was my parent’s room and you had to go through their room to get to ours.   After the dormer got added, the two younger girls went upstairs and our parents moved into the larger bedroom, while I got the front room.  I can still remember the way the sun would shine so brightly into that room first thing in the morning on a sweet summer’s day.  At some point, I went upstairs but then we moved to a different house and our uncle bought the “baby” house as we referred to it then.

The cottage wasn’t directly on the lake, but the lake was just down the street and we spent many a summer’s day down there, swimming like we were fish.  To be truthful, I don’t have many fond memories of that house or that time period, maybe that is why I refer to the house as a shack but just to clarify for my sister’s sake, it was not a shack, it was a cottage, however I still think my husband would be happy in a one bedroom shack on a lake.