Well, we're into the dreary days of mid-winter...blech.
The skies are gunmetal gray (I love that term, even though I hate the color). Winds are picking up, but most of the snow has melted because of a lovely couple of days with 60-plus degree weather. I know we all loved it; well, most of us did.
Enough about the weather. Let's talk dogs.
Sarah Jane will turn 2 on the 25th of this month. She's still a handful, and we love her to pieces. Snow wasn't a problem for Sarah this year, thank goodness. She walks every day with hubby, around the park, around the house; she can take the cold pretty well, but she doesn't much care for rain and sleet. Who does?
I still miss our Max. That dog had a wild ride in Life. She came up from Texas, and though she was a pup when she arrived, we didn't have much of a hand in her initial upbringing. I'll always wonder if she would've been a bit different, more tolerant of other dogs and people and even cats if we'd raised her from the get-go.
For a short while, a very short while, she and our dog Cujo got along reasonably well. One night Max just suddenly decided she wanted to be the boss and she attacked Cujo. For the next five years we had to keep the pooches separated and that took a toll on everybody.
Cujo tore up the floor in the back room where she had to stay while Max was out. Max was stressed inside her pen (where she spent far, far, far too many days) while Cujo was out. Max did try to make friends with one of the cats, but Spook scratched the dog once too many times and after that, we worried that Max would kill the cat.
Max was such a good dog after Cujo died. She didn't seem to have any ill effects from spending so much of her life in a pen. When she suddenly became ill and died two days later (on Mother's Day almost two years ago), we were devastated. We loved her so much.
Max had a way of looking right through you. She understood certain words and phrases, and we knew our house was safe with her inside. And, she was beautiful to look at, very much like a wolf.
We have Sarah now, a yellow lab-mix, a much more active dog than we're used to. Cujo and Max couldn't care less if we were home or not, as long as there was food and water in their bowls, and someone let them out to go to the bathroom. They weren't the cuddly type.
Sarah, on the other hand, thinks that she should be the center of everyone's world. And she's huge - 90 pounds, and we've never had a dog that big. But her heart is just as big, and we love her, too.
Guess I'll go now. I hope with all my heart that if our son is out there somewhere he will see this blog and it will give him one way to keep up with his family. We miss him, and wish he would at least let us know that he's OK.
