Ready for Summer!!

After this weekend and tonight trying to get 2 boys who napped nearly the whole way home from my mom and dad's to go to bed, I am ready for several weeks without a place to be early every morning. Don't get me wrong, I love my job and the boys love going to school, but this weekend (which should have been the end of the school year but for the "Storm Days" and "Snow Days" we had to make up from September and February) were nothing but a teaser of summer break. Memorial Day weekend was a bit earlier than usual and she school year is going a bit later than usual... only 2 more weeks!

We had a good weekend, overall. Safe travels, relaxing time with family. The boys and I took the huge step and went to the Bowling Green/Warren County Humane Society on Saturday and adopted the dog I had been looking at on their website for about a week. His name was Gravy, but we changed it to Goliath, Davey's chosen name for any dog we might adopt. He's the perfect dog for us: calm. housebroken, obedient, quiet, and a beagle that looks nearly exactly like the dog I had when I met David (Tino, our family dog we adopted when I was in high school in England). [A little side story: I used to joke with David that he met Tino, fell in love with him and decided that I came with the package and if he wanted to hang with Tino, he had to take me, too.] We brought Goliath home to my parents' house and attached him to the chain we always used for Tino. The boys cuddled him (Max "fluffs" animals instead of petting them), played with him, walked him around on his new leash and showed him the play house. He followed me "off lead" down to the play house- I was so impressed that he didn't run off. I went in a bit later to help with preparations for dinner (my parents had invited the associate priest from their church to come over for dinner). When Fr. Anthony arrived, the boys were excited to introduce Goliath. The only problem with that was that they had run inside to help make dinner and had forgotten to hook the chain back onto the collar. So Goliath had likely wondered why these people who were so interested in him vanished and tried to find us. We looked everywhere we could think of as things got darker and darker. Davey was crushed and couldn't stop apologizing. He feels so responsible. It wasn't habit yet to remember that dogs like to follow and often wander. We hadn't heard him bark and he didn't run anywhere in the time we had him, he just moseyed. I had already put the tags from the rabies shot and the microchipping on his collar, so we are hoping (and praying to St. Anthony- patron saint of things that are lost- and St. Francis- patron saint of pets) that some kind person finds Goliath and calls the toll free hotline on the tag that says Goliath is microchipped so we can have him back with us.

We arrived back home tonight, WISHING we had smelled wet dog all the way home. We now know we are ready for a dog in our family. Maybe we will have Goliath or maybe another beagle boy will be the lucky one, either way, we all learned a lesson in diligence and attention required to keep pets safe.

Enjoy your next few weeks and I hope your summer is ready to begin and will be full of many fun and relaxing plans!!!