Transplanted

Ben and Sophie have successfully migrated to their new home, but not without a couple of hitches. However, I think the perks of the new place far outweigh the slight problems we had acclimating at the beginning.

The Stairs

Ben frequently sprints up stairs even if he's told not to, but this seems to have been Sophie's first experience with second-floor living. Her first few days she took a lot of convincing to set make the long trek to level 2, and had to be carried a few times. But she's finally warmed up to them, or at least tolerates them. I guess they are a little intimidating if you're only a few feet high.

Going down was never a problem, especially when motivated by bladder issues, or in situations like the one pictured here:

To see why the dogs would have no qualms about decending the steps on this day, you have to look down to the right. This is also perhaps one of their favourite things about the new apartment:

The Arena

Reenacting the contests of the ancient dog gladiators, Sophie and Ben love the spacious living room area.

Squirrel TV

All Squirrels, all the time

Probably the favourite feature of the new apartment is the non-stop squirrel entertainment, made available by very low windows, or, where very low windows are not avaible, by feats of agility.
Squirrel Channel 1:

The most popular squirrel channel can be watched laying down in the living room. Squirrel Channel 2 does not afford as a good a veiw, but sometimes it's needed to follow a squirrel's progress as it's basically a continuation of channel 1:

It usually takes the appearance of a person and/or other dog to drive the pooches to the bedroom to watch Squirrel Channel 3, since they have to stand on their hind legs to get a good view, but it's sometimes necessary to warn off the neighbor beagle who might be contemplating scaling the back of the apartment to break in:

Squirrel Channel 4 is currently off the air because there's just too many things (people) to bark at out there, so for our peace and the peace of the neighborhood, we've limited access to Channel 4:

And for a special treat the dogs occassionally get access to the Squirrel Observation Deck:

But they don't have 24 hour access to the observation deck, so they generally have get their squirrel fix the hard way.

Rockabilly dogs

Ben's first concert was at the St. Patrick's Day parade, which he celebrated by gnawing on the bamboo pad we were resting on. Things went a little better this time, when we loaded up the dogs and took them to see the Straight 8s in the park last Sunday.

Still, this was Sophie's first concert ever, and the combination of rowdy children, rambunctious rat terriers, and rockabilly caused her to temporarily forget that she is no longer at a size where she could be considered a lap dog.

Still, everyone was well behaved for the most part, so hopefully this will be the first of many group outings in which the dogs fail to have a nervous breakdown and/or eat any small children. Especially children who are not organically-raised and pesticide-free.

No more fostering

So we tried to adopt two dogs, and failed at both of them, so we tried to foster Sophie, and we couldn't do that, either. That is, we couldn't follow through with the second part of our fostering obligations, the part where we turn Sophie over to another family so that they can adopt her. Just to illustrate how lovable she is, we decided to keep her in spite of the fact that:

• She wouldn't "go" her first day here until she woke us up at about 3:AM needing to go outside
• In her first week she got diarrhea resulting in a very unpleasant suprise at the end of one workday
• Worms, which caused the diarrhea and which had to be treated, but just as she started to get over that
• A urinary tract infection caused her to start peeing in the living room
• She pulls Jenn's hair
• She chews shoes
• She chews furniture when there are no shoes handy

But even with a very rocky first few weeks with us, we wanted her to stay. We're still waiting to make sure her bladder issues are sorted out, because if not, she may need a home where she has constant access to the outdoors, but she seems to be mostly better, so I expect we'll have to keep her, and you would too, if you were in our (slightly chewed) shoes because, seriously, who could say "no" to that face?

Doggone

Aunt Carol is once again pointing out my inadaquacies when it comes to updating the Dog Blog. The temptation is to respond with some scathing insights into Aunt Carol's shortcomings, but, never having met her, I'm left with some really lame insults like, "She's Canadian." Which is problematic because a) It's not really insulting, and b) It may not actually be true. So I guess all that's left is to admit that she has a point, or backdate this whole post and pretend like Aunt Carol just failed to read it properly. Perhaps I'll do both.

The problem is that no one wants to post bad news, or admit their utter failure as a dog owner, so this site goes un updated when that's all I've got to say. Our second attempt at a second dog fared little better than the first attempt. Well, that's not actually true. The result was the same, but actually Katie/Sterling went back into foster care without having driven us completely crazy, which was a bonus, but she had also failed to quite adjust to apartment living as well. Currently Katie is under consideration by another family, and she's a real sweetheart, so I hope she and her new family match up nicely.

Best Friends Pet Adoption has been very nice about everything, and I can only hope, should I ever have children, I meet the same understanding attitude:

"This second kid, he's just not fitting in."
"What seems to be the problem?"
"Well, he doesn't like to take a bath, and the first one doesn't like to get out of the bath. The new one cries when it's dark, but the first one cries when it's too bright. We can handle problems, we just need them to match up better."
"Perfectly understandable. We'll send the second back where he came from right away."
"Great. I mean Jenn's not going to enjoy that too much, but I think it's for the best. Maybe we'll try another one later on."

Now we're trying something new. Instead of trial adoptions, we're fostering a dog for BFPA. This way we won't freak out about how the new dog isn't fitting in. As long as no one is actually traumatized, we can rest easy knowing that we just have to keep the new dog happy and healthy until they find their permanent home. Or until we decide we're not giving them up. Either way, the second dog delima will be solved. Our first foster we just got yesterday. Her name is Sophie, and she's a little angel. I don't know exactly what kind of angel eats shoes and hair, but whatever kind that is, that's the kind angel Sophie is.

So that's the story up till now. We'll be posting more on the adventures of Young Mr. Sanders and saga of New Dog along with pictures soon. And by "soon" I mean "when Aunt Carol points out that we've been slacking again." I'll see you then.

Because I'm not typing all of this twice

Sorry about the typos

Rob E.: We sent the second Ben back.
Cyndi: yeah but i though you got a couple more dogs yesterday that you were thinking about
Rob E.: We went and saw Sterling the other day
Cyndi: yeah you showed me that one
Rob E.: Then yesterday we went and saw Mack and Mollie.
Rob E.: They're brother and sister, and they were way out near Asheboro. We me them about half way in Silar City
Rob E.: Siler, not Silar
Rob E.: And the adoption agency wanted them moved closer to Raleigh so they could be placed easier, and also because the woman that had them just took in another litter of puppies.
Rob E.: So we brought Mack and Mollie home with us, and then passed them off to another foster person.
Rob E.: They were cute, but we weren't really tempted to keep them.
Rob E.: They were scared most of the time, and the both kind of freaked out when Ben tried to play with them.
Rob E.: I think they need another home without a rambunctious dog.
Rob E.: So we decided to go with Sterling,
Rob E.: but then, when we called to make arrangements to get rid of Mack and Mollie,
Rob E.: The woman told that a dog we had originally wanted to see had become available because the guy who was going to take him just found out he's going to be leaving the country soon.
Rob E.: That dog is Berkley
Rob E.: Jenn and I both had Berkley as our first choice, but we were originally told he was about to be adopted.
Rob E.: So we got in touch with Berkley's foster mom last night to see if we could meet him today.
Rob E.: We're up against a deadline, because there's an adopt-a-thon on Sunday, so if we hold out for Berkley, there's a good chance that Sterling will be gone after the weekend.
Rob E.: This is a long story.
Cyndi: well i would think that if you miss sterling,you'll find another later
Cyndi: you already have a dog anyway, you need a bigger house with a yard
Rob E.: But Berkley and his foster family are going away for the weekend, so we can't meet him until next week.
Rob E.: Yes, but I think that's beyond my control now.
Cyndi: welcome to married life
Cyndi: or the equivalent
Rob E.: And Berkley's foster mom says that he's very cute and laid back, but likes to play with other dogs, and so on and so forth -- that's he's a really good dog.
Rob E.: But he can't go more than 4 hours without peeing.
Rob E.: And she's been talking to the vet to find out if there's something wrong with him.
Rob E.: But her and her husband work from home a lot, so we don't know if they actually know that Berkley can't wait more than four hours, or if it's just that if they're home, he'll want out every four hours.
Rob E.: So we talked about whether or not it was worth the risk.
Rob E.: And Jenn's concerned that even if there's nothing wrong with him, he's nine months old, and that's a little late to start trying to train him to stay in the house all day without peeing.
Rob E.: So I said, "Berkley's our first choice, but basically we're trying to figure out if it's worth passing on Sterling just to get the opportunity to meet Berkley and find out if he's as good of a dog as we already know Sterling is."
Rob E.: So we decided to go with Sterling.
Rob E.: Probably.
Rob E.: Jenn's supposed to call today and talk it over with the adoption people.
Rob E.: Aren't you glad you asked? Actually, I don't think you even asked.
Cyndi: you people are strange
Cyndi: there's a whole web log entry for you
Rob E.: which page should it go on?
Cyndi: yours
Cyndi: b/c ben probably doesn't really care
Cyndi: he probably doesn' twant to share his attention
Rob E.: Ture, but he's going to have to share his website with the new dog.
Rob E.: I can't do one dog per page. I already hardly get around to updating Ben's page.

Yes, it's Square One, but at least it's quiet

The Double Ben problem has been solved. New Ben really needed constant access to the outdoors, which we could not provide him, and he needed attention to the exclusion of Other Ben, which we could not provide him, and he needed to shut up every once in a while so we wouldn't get evicted, which did not seem to be in his nature, so New Ben went back into foster care where he will be better able to find the type of home he needs.

But the fires of A New Dog have been lit, and cannot be quenched, it seems, with one little set back. The search for a second dog continues. We are meeting other dogs, and in days we could have a new new addition to family. May God have mercy on us. Or if not God, then may Mollie, Mack, and/or Sterling have mercy on us. Also our upstairs neighbor.

The Marklars

So other Ben moved in yesterday. We still haven't figured out how to overcome the fact that we now have two dogs with the same name. But so far we've been very lucky to find that name problem hasn't been an issue because it turns out that whatever you call him, Other Ben doesn't listen.

He does keep the original Ben busy though, and after twenty minutes in the dog pen, original Ben was the muddiest we'd ever seen him. I just hope he isn't looking at each mud bath as an opportunity to outdo himself. And New Ben keeps us informed of his needs. Here's an easy-to-follow translation guide:

Ben Means	Ben Says
I need to go outside	Loud barks alternating with a whine/howl/moan and nipping at your knees.
I would like you to pet/play with me	Loud barks alternating with a whine/howl/moan and nipping at your knees.
I'm out of water	Loud barks alternating with a whine/howl/moan and nipping at your knees.

More translations as we learn them. In the mean time, here's some pictures of our happy family. I can't wait until they double team the vacume cleaner.