Annie

So as I said before, Annie went elsewhere when Rick had to adopt her out.  When we couldn't take her, she went to (I think) a friend of Rick's assistant's family.   It was never intended to be permanent, but she was there quite awhile.  A couple of years later or so, my secretary's dog ate some human medication and got very ill.  My secretary's little daughter was a little blind girl.   I told the story to Rick and his assistant, and the assistant was so moved by the story she phoned my secretary and offered Annie to her. 

It turned out that the sick dog pulled through, but my secretary had been planning on getting a second dog anyway, so she took Annie.  So now Annie was in home number 3, not counting the home she was born into.  Another couple of years went by, and my secretary was dealing with some issues in her life and realized that having two dogs was more than she could properly handle.   She searched and searched for a home for her, but couldn't find one.  Finally, our local Humane Society agreed to take her in to their no-kill shelter.

In October, 2007, Syd and I went to a fund raiser at the Humane Society.   We saw Annie there, and of course knew her.   Syd went kind of crazy, seeing Annie in the cage.   She even crawled in the cage with her and petted her.   After that, she browbeat and armtwisted everyone she could think of trying to find Annie a home.   Finally, one night I woke up in the middle of the night to find Syd up and pacing around.  I asked her what was the matter and she said, "I just couldn't sleep thinking of Annie up there in that cage."  I said, "For God's sake, let's just adopt her!"  Syd said that since we already had three dogs, she didn't want our dogs to "do without" because we had too many dogs.   I just laughed and asked if she could think of when our dogs ever went without anything.

We had a vacation planned for Thanksgiving that year (we spent Tgiving week on the beach in Oregon) but when we got back, I phoned the shelter and told them we'd take Annie.  But now, it seems that they'd discovered she had an injury, and Annie was scheduled for ACL surgery in a week.   So we took her home for that week, in mid-December, 2007.   She was then able to come back to our house, and was used to the house and our other dogs, after her surgery.   She had to recuperate for 3 months.  During that time she had to either be crated or on a leash.   She couldn't go outside unless someone was with her and she was on a leash.  Guess who was elected.   We had a wonderful three month long bonding period and we're now very good buddies.     Sadly, in March after we got her, Gracie passed away.

So that's our little family now.    Our longest resident pet is our crazy bird Ollie.  He's a blue crown conure, and talks up a storm.   He's very silly.   He's been with us since October, 1998 when he was about a year old.   Next is Ernie.  He came to live with us in 2001, and is an quite elderly 14.   Daisy is also 14, but came to live with us in 2002.   Annie, as I said is the newest addition.  If it was up to me, I'd have two or three more dogs, but Syd would probably evict me and keep the dogs.

Daisy

About a year after we got Ernie, I was getting a haircut, and was about half done, when my haircutter stopped suddenly and said "Oh, I almost forgot!"  She ran out of the shop and came back in a couple of minutes with another lady.  She introduced this woman to me and they told me the woman was moving to Nevada the next day.  She had a little dog she'd had for 6 years, since she was a pup, and couldn't take her along.  Her new home didn't allow pets.  She said she'd tried everything she could think of to find her dog a home, to no avail.

I went next door to the office where the woman worked and saw this little white and gray/black dog with a black mask kind of cowering under a desk.   I, and the woman, coaxed her out and I petted her a little, but she was obviously nervous.   She was so cute though (the dog, not the woman) that I couldn't just leave her to go to the pound.  I said I'd take her and find her a good home.

Oh, I found her a good home all right.  She stole my heart like a thief in the night.   After about, oh, no time at all, I wanted to keep her.  Gracie and Ernie loved her.   They acted like, "Oh, look what he brought home.  Can we keep her?"

I took her in to our vet Rick, to get her shots and an exam, and to arrange to have her spayed.   When Rick came in the room, his face fell, and he said, "Oh, no, is this your dog?"  I said we'd just adopted her, wondering why he was visibly upset.

When we moved into our house the year before, we had a big housewarming party.   Rick and his family were among the guests.   His young daughters spent the whole time playing with Gracie, dressing her in blankets, etc. and just loved her.   Rick decided to find a dog like Gracie and in January 2002, found a litter of Aussie/Border Collies in Libby and adopted a female.   Later that year, in August, he had her at a Humane Society fundraiser and introduced us to Annie, who we agreed was a lot like Gracie.

This day, the reason Rick was upset was that it turned out his daughters were allergic to Annie and he was hoping we'd take her.  Of course, we would have, but we'd just adopted Daisy, and couldn't take two new dogs at the same time.   So Annie went elsewhere.

Daisy turned out to be a stressed out little dog.  Once she was attached to us, she developed a pretty severe separation anxiety, and we had a pretty long stretch of her piddling on the carpet.   She also didn't ever want to leave the house.  When we'd take her somewhere, she didn't want to walk, so we'd have to carry her.   While she's short, she's really not a small dog, weighing around 40 pounds.  We didn't know it at the time, but I"ve come to believe that she is all or mostly Havanese, and is at the extreme outside of their weight range and size range according to the AKC standard.

As she's matured, she became the household manager.  She, more than any other dog, is microscopically aware of every nuance of routine, and gets quite upset and very vocal when we depart even the smallest bit from routine.  She'll come and bark at me to let me know that Ernie needs to go out, when she doesn't have to at all.  She's really sweet, but assertive.   She has a loud sharp bark that can pierce right through you.  But I'm just complete mush around her.

We bought a motorhome in 2007, 5 years after we got her.  To our surprise, she loves the motorhome.   She's happy just to go out and sit in it.  She's ecstatic when we travel in it.   Thanksgiving 2007 we took the motorhome to the Oregon beach for a week.  This little dog who HATED to go out in the yard for the first few years we had her, suddenly LOVED walking in the sand on the beach.  She's become our most adventurous dog, always up for traveling somewhere new.

She has pink skin under her white fur, and loves to play a game where I grab at her muzzle and she makes this sort of snorting sound.  We call her the "piggy dog."

She doesn't seem like it, but she's about 13 now, same age as Ernie, who also doesn't seem that old.  Thankfully, Havanese tend to live fairly long lives, and Ernie seems to not have the early aging tendency of his Lab side.   We hope they'll both be around for quite a while more, as we love them both dearly.