5:30 a.m. Arghf Arghf!!
5:31 a.m. whine whine…
5:32 a.m. Kamikaze dive into side of bed with paws landing on top of the mattress. Include a very loud “YIPE!”
5:32 and 5 seconds a.m. Feet hit the floor, walk to the door, open. Brown fur waddles to the porch with a rickety blonde ball of fur walking out as well. Find flip flops (hidden from brown fur ball) and walk down the steps of deck to yard…avoid “surprises” and make sure pups are good to go. Turn around and head back to kitchen. Start coffee.
5:45 a.m. Bring in and feed pups.
6:00 a.m. Grab coffee and head outside with pups. Play in yard.
This is pretty much a typical morning around here these days. Miss Stella Rae joined us one month ago today. It actually seems as if she has always been a part of us. She has melded into our family as if she has been here all along. We are still able to pick her up, barely, and we know that these days are numbered. We will be so sad when those days are gone!
She is such a sweet and affectionate pup. She continues with her “velcroness” as well as drinking water while her head is IN the water bowl rather than FROM the water bowl. We have not had to deal much with the shedding or drooling yet, but do now have the standard “newf towel” on hand for when she finishes drinking and decides to saunter over and say a quick hello. Yes, she does indeed saunter. It cracks us up as she is this large presence of brown fur wiggling her way across a room with not a care in the world but to get to the water bowl, toy, our feet, or the marble.
Sadie has become even more tolerant of this chaotic ball of fur. She used to seem to watch her from a distance, sniff on occasion, but no real “buddy buddy.” Lately though they are playing some and Sadie will let her lay nearby and even occasionally right next to her.
Like raising my twins, I have noticed that one bone is not good enough; two is necessary. Sadie has not really had, nor wanted a chew bone, for quite some time. She could literally eat a Kong or shred the fur on a tennis ball within an hour, but no bone. She would pretty much ignore them. However, Miss Stella had hers laying on the floor and Sadie discovered her love for the chew toy. She adopted it as her own, and was not too thrilled about having to share it much less give it back to Miss Stella. Miss Stella thought this was a fun game of keep away, whereas Sadie thought of it as ‘mine…all mine’. Therefore, we now have two bones and two tennis balls (one shredded…one not). This is similar to how we did our twins’ water bottles. One labeled and one with the label peeled so we could tell which bottle belonged to which twin). The rest of the toys, a rice filled butter bowl, a rice filled 2 liter covered in a sock, and a rice filled gallon milk jug Sads seems to be able to live without…for now.
In one of my earlier posts, I talked about wondering what we were thinking “starting over” after all of this time. What were we thinking considering bringing utter chaos back into our lives? We were on the edge of calm, peace, serenity even. We were through the puppy years, the toddler years, even through the teenage years, and moving into the “empty nest” years as our twins started college. I was thinking we were crazy to think about taking on this new challenge, this crazy chaotic brown furry challenge. But every time I see her waddle through the room, saunter by, sashay her way to the porch or her marble fireplace (yes, it is now hers…I no longer own it…it has been “newfed”), I know why. Like spring brings change, so has Miss Stella. We had been dealing with such a sense of loss, having lost my father the previous spring, losing Maggie Mae back in the fall and our twins starting college. I did not really see how much energy was in just trying to deal with all of the loss. Even Sadie Lou was much quieter. I was thinking that some of that was due to losing her buddy, but mostly her actual aging, which was another sense of loss on the horizon.
Miss Stella has brought so much positive energy and happiness back into our home. We were not in any way this “black cloud of doom and gloom” but it was quite somber around here. Enough so that it was becoming the norm and we could not even truly see it for what it was. People may say that she is just some silly dog, a pup. Yes, she is. She is silly and she is a pup. She is also showing me how easy it is to get lost in your own world and that we really need to step outside of ourselves, our own emotions, and refocus our energy. Sometimes it takes a nudge, even from a silly pup, to remember that there is more than just loss in this world. There is living. Living in the moment. Even if it is chaotic for the time being.
