More is More

Last week was an adventure in the Sibley household.  It started out to be a challenging week as I was just feeling better after two full weeks of being down with a nasty virus and nowhere near 100% yet,  and the Rocket Scientist woke up Monday morning with a seeminlgy different, but equally wicked nasty virus.  It was Release Week at TE which is always particularly busy for me in combination with my job in the church office.

Then Tuesday morning, as I headed out the door to work while hubby was sick in bed, as I got to my car in the driveway I thought I saw a dog’s tail under our 5th wheel trailer.  I walked around and around the trailer until I finally saw this dirty white dog hiding under there.  Oh my!  If you know me at all, you know I try to resscue every stray dog I ever see.  You know this is how we ended up with both Tessa and then Roger.

This is not the first stray dog I’ve found in my front yard as we live on a fairly major street.  I went in the house to get some food and water, knowing that there would be a good chance he would be gone by the time I got back which is what usually happens.  Only he wasn’t.  He was right there under the trailer looking so pitiful. I put the bowls down, spoke softly and stepped back.  He did come out tentativley and the wolf down the food and gulp down some water.  Now what?

I picked up the dishes and told him to follow me, that I would get him some more.  I spoke sweetly and coaxingly and he did…he followed me into the backyard.  I got him some more food and a towel to lay on.  I went in and told the Rocket Scientist that we had a stray dog in our backyard, so not to let our dogs out and that I would figure something out when I came home for lunch.  I’d have a plan.  And I left for work.

I came home for lunch…still no plan.  The pup was a sweetie pie, but very lethargic and oh so filthy dirty.  I changed my clothes – into some old jeans and t-shirt – and ran him down to the vet on the corner to check for a chip (he had no collar)…but no chip.  Brought him home and decided he really had to have a bath immediately.  Curt helped me.  He’s much bigger than our dogs at 20 pounds and stands so tall!  Here he is after the bath – still quite dirty.

We were guessing he was a cockapoo or something similar.  His curly coat had been very badly/unevenly cut off with scissors/shears and his skin had been nicked in a couple of places.  His ears and tail were matted.  And…well…let’s just say, he was a mess!

We brought him in to stay in our laundry room with a blanket and plenty of food and water.  We introduced him to Tessa and Roger.  Suffice it to say, they were less than thrilled.  We put signs up at Petco and some groomers and some vet offices.  I was planning to do a lot more when I got off work at 1:00 on Thursday.  We also registered him on some on-line lost dog websites. We spent as much time with him as we could.  He was a love sponge!  He wanted to cuddle like crazy!  And by the second day, he started to be very playful as well.  Yep, Tessa and Roger were NOT thrilled.

At some point, we began calling him Wally.  We had to call him something.  Wally is a name that goes back many years among Curt’s buddies and I think that Curt just called him that and it immediately stuck.  He learned his name in a couple of days.

On Wednesday I called around to find a groomer I could take him to and I got him a Thursday afternoon appointment at Your Elegant Pet in Lakewood.  I had not been there before, but they had excellent Yelp reviews and had an open appointment time.  Oh my goodness! Christy, the groomer, did such a wonderful job on him.  He was like a comepletely different dog!

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Is he a cutie or what?  By this time we decided that he had NOT been well-cared-for and there wasn’t much point in putting a huge effort forth to find his owners.  Rather, we felt that we should find him a new forever family ASAP.

At this point, I want to say that I felt very strongly that the Lord brought Wally to us for a reason.  I didn’t find him somewhere on the street and coax him into my car.  He was in our front yard, under our RV.  {And in fact, Curt had seen him on Monday afternoon when he came home from work sick in the middle of the day.  He though he saw a dog when he pulled into the driveway, but couldn’t find him when he got out of his truck and looked.  We now realize Wally was hiding behind our old motorhome at that point.}  I knew with all my heart that the Lord had a family waiting for Wally. I prayed that the Lord would guide us to them and that He would please do it quickly.  While Curt and I never once considered keeping Wally, I knew that the longer we had him the harder it would be to let him go.  Also, did I mention that Tessa and Roger were NOT thrilled with this situation?  There was tension in the house.  So, as blessed and privileged as I felt to be caring for Wally, I knew finding his family sooner rather than later would be for the best.

I’m really not sure why the Lord brings stray dogs to us, but it is a blessing. {One of our friends at church yesterday was joking that we must have a secret mark on our house like the old underground railroad houses had, but in this case only the dogs know about it!} It was so wonderful to see this guy transform.  It breaks my heart to think of what he might have gone through, but just look at him now!  He’s going to bring so much joy to someone!

On Friday morning, I sent an e-mail blast to practically everyone I know and I posted on Facebook as well.  I included photos and gave all the details I could.  I asked people to forward Wally’s info to everyone they could think of.  I knew, without doubt, that there was a family waiting for him.  I said a prayer as I hit the send key.  Less than 10 minutes later, I got a response from my Mom that said “you have a taker”.  She followed that up by forwarding me the response she had gotten from a co-worker that said “YES! When can we go get him?”  Happy Dance!  Praise God for answered prayer!  Amazing answered prayer!

I called Debi, Wally’s new Mom. immediately and set up a time for her to come on Saturday to get Wally.  Just a few minutes after we hung up, my Mom e-mailed again to say that they had already set up a vet appointment for shots on Sunday.  Yep – this was Wally’s family for sure!

I asked my Mom – is this the same lady that wanted Roger?  Yes, it is.  Oh my!  You may recall that we found Roger on a Saturday.  I think on Monday or Tuesday we began trying to find a home for him.  Debi wanted him, but couldn’t come until the following Saturday.  We had a time set up.  On Friday night, we decided we couldn’t part with Roger, that he must stay with us, and I called Debi and canceled the appointment.  We felt so bad, but she was very understanding.  And now, a year and a half later, she was coming to get her pup from us.  WOW!

I made a grooming appointment for Roger and Tessa, so they wouldn’t be here when Wally met his new family.  Debi came and brought her daughter Arianna.  As soon as they came in the front door, Wally went right to them.  They stayed for a little while and Wally was happy as could be.

They are dog-people.  They thought Wally was the perfect size!  They were so happy!  My heart swelled with joy!

I got a text from Debi yesterday that the vet agreed that Wally is probably a cockapoo and that she estimated his age to be between 1 and 1-1/2 which is kind of what I had been guessing.  They are enjoying him so much!

So, yes our week was an adventure.  It was a challenge in many ways.  It was a joy.  It was stressful, but  I had the constant sense that the Lord had a purpose in it (as He always does) even if I wasn’t sure what the purpose was.  Saturday afternoon our little family was exhausted and all crashed out…but oh so content and happy.

I know this was a long post.  If you got through the whole thing, thanks for sticking with it and going on the adventure with me.  And now it’s Monday and a there’s a whole new week ahead!

Happy Sunday! I held my monthly stamp class yesterday and I still need to photograph those cards so I can share them with you.  In the meantime, I thought I’d pop in to share just a little bit about what we did last weekend.  We took a 3 night trip in the 5th wheel trailer up to a beautiful RV park called Ocen Mesa.  It’s just about 20 minutes north of Santa Barbara.  This was Roger’s first road trip and he did great!  Tessa already loves the trailer and we were hoping he would follow suit.

Despite taking 2 cameras and a video camera with us, the few photos we got were snapped with our phones.

On the road:

Tessa and Roger each have their own carseat and they love them.  Tessa’s seat attaches to the console between us and Roger’s hooks into the middle of the backseat.  They are each latched into the seats with a strap that hooks to their harnesses.  If you have a small dog, I highly recommend getting a carseat for their safety.  If the airbag were to go off with your pup in your lap, they wouldn’t survive.  Plus it’s not safe for the driver to have a dog running around loose in the car.  OK, getting off my soapbox now.  LOL!  The Rocket Scientist thought I was crazy when I first proposed getting a car seat for Tessa.  He thought she would hate it, but he has since admitted that they are great!  Both dogs will run straight to the car and hop in their seats waiting to be hooked in!

Here’s the trailer all set up:

We are so thankful to my parents for this incredibly generous gift.  It’s so awesome to be able to drive less than 3 hours (we have lots of options in that range) and totally veg out for a few days.  Those of you who know me, know that I am not a “camper”.  I have never been tent camping and never intend to try it.  In fact, I even told Curt that on our 2nd date in case it was a deal-breaker for him.  LOL!  But this is home away from home!  The internet is often sketchy at these RV parks, but sometimes that’s not a bad thing.  😉

The dogs got on board with the program pretty quickly:

Then, of course, Curt had to join them:

We’re fans of the tv show Fringe, but we started watching toward the end of the 2nd season.  We wanted to go back and catch up so we bought the first season on dvd (it was pretty cheap on ebay) and we bought a $25 dvd player for the trailer (needed that anyway.)  So this trip we watched a bunch of episodes of Fringe in the evenings.  Have I mentioned that I’m NOT an ourdoor girl…at all?  *snort*

Ocean Mesa has an awesome huge dog run where the pups can be off leash.

Pretty awesome view, huh?  Would have been perfect if we had that view from our trailer, but we enjoyed bringing the dogs over here to frolick.  Here they come…can you see them?

Just before we left to come home on Sunday, we took them for a romp to expend some energy before the long car ride.  While the dog run had been perfectly dry the day before, everything was totally wet and muddy on Sunday.  When we got back to the trailer we realized a simple paw-wiping with a towel was not going to do the trick.  Fortunately the shower in the trailer includes a small tub and sprayer, so we just threw them in there and washed them up before we headed out.  I so wish I had gotten a photo of them in the tub.

On our next trip maybe I’ll try to get some more “people pictures” too.  LOL!

Thanks for stopping by.  I hope you’re having a great weekend.  I’m off to church soon with a very full day ahead.  And tomorrow is the BIG DAY when I officially start my new job as Office Manager at Bethel Grace Baptist Church!  Say a prayer for me if you think of me tomorrow.  Thanks!

Happy Monday!  We had quite the eventful weekend here!  If you read my last post, then you are aware that we had an appointment for someone to come meet Roger on Saturday and most likely take him home.  Friday was Curt’s day off and I swear all we did all day was discuss Roger and what we should do.  In the afternoon we ran some errands that included buying some toys and food to go with Roger.  Each purchase we made seemed to stab at our hearts.  And we recognized that each day Tessa seemed to get along a bit better with Roger and maybe it would indeed be ok.  We questioned if perhaps God really meant Roger for us, in the way that I am absolutley certain that He intended Tessa for us.  Finally aorund 7:30 pm, Curt uttered the fateful words “I think we should keep him.”  I called and cancelled the appointment.

So…please welcome Roger Dog Sibley!!

You might notice his tag.  🙂  On Saturday, we bought him a new collar and a tag with his name and our phone numbers on it.  We also bought him a bed.  We took him to the vet for a check up and to get his shots started.  The vet believes he is between 1 and 1 1/2 years old and gave him a clean bill of health.  He seems quite happy to be staying.  And Tessa seems pretty ok with it too…except when Roger wants my attention when she is in my lap…LOL!

So…ok everyone…now you can say “I told you so!”  Gosh that was an agonizing and emotionally exhausting week!

That was Friday and Saturday…now on to Sunday!  I was registered to take a Configurations Class at the Inspiration Emporium Warehouse in Anaheim on Sunday afternoon.  Although I was excited about the class, truth be told, I didn’t really want to go when it came right down to it.  I had to rush to get there from church, it was pouring down rain, and I was tired and just wanted to chill with the pups.  But, boy oh boy am I ever glad I went.  IT WAS A BLAST and I am beyond thrilled with the outcome of my project.  Here are several photos –

Michelle Fowler was an incredible instructor and I look forward to taking more classes from her in the future.  It had been so long since I had taken a class, I almost didn’t know how to act.  LOL!  Here are some close ups –

Yes, that’s a little Tim Holtz birdcage with a sprig of holly inside and a vintage Monopoly piece!  Here I am with the teacher, Chelle.

And here I am with friends Rachel Stzonyk (fellow TE Sketch Crew Member) and, of course, owner of Inspiration Emporium the sweet Joy Kennedy.

I think the class was scheduled for 3 hours, but we were there for 5 hours.  It was the fastest 5 hours EVER!  Can’t remember when I have had so much fun crafting. And of course the photos just don’t do it justice.  I would highly recommend everyone get a Configurations box, some Tissue Tape and 12 x 12 papers and try one of these!

Thanks for stopping by and sharing in my eventful weekend!  We have a short week ahead with tons to do, and then hopfully some fun and relaxation over the holiday weekend.  I hope you’re having a great Monday!