Laurie, Fudge, and Vern's Blog (342)

Finally, after two weeks of waiting, the boat people called on Friday (5/11) and said our pontoon was going into the water and we could meet with them that night and get our first instructions with Tim, the boat guy.  Tim was going to go over everything and take us out on the water for our main lesson….how to operate a pontoon boat.  One of the hold ups the past two weeks was the mechanic had to figure out a way to secure the dog ramp to the boat and make it feel secure enough for two big…

We have two daughters.  One is married and one is not married.  Before we got Fudge and Vern, when one of them went out on a date, we asked all the usual parent questions……is he nice?...does he have a job?...does he believe in supporting parents in their later years?....is he a good driver?”  After we got Fudge and Vern, my first question now is, "Does he like dogs and have a sense of humor?"  I also think I did a pretty good job of talking to my daughters about sex and tried my best to…

It happened again last weekend.  I lost my husband in Target.  We walked in together and proceeded to the back of the store to the books and magazine section.  I always like to swing back to that department and load my cart with my educational and informative reading for the week.   How else am I going to stay informed about Kim Kardashian’s divorce hell or the 25 stars who ride skateboards if I do not get the latest edition of People or Us Weekly?  At some point, I could find…

My husband and I are not extravagant people.  Our vacations consist mostly of driving home to Indiana to see family or to North Carolina to see family.  The people I used to work with always teased me about our vacations, but I didn’t care. “To each his own,” I would say and mean it.  I drive a beat up van with over 200,000 miles on it and enough dog nose prints to make it almost virtually impossible to see clearly out the back window.  In fact, it appears as if a jar of Vaseline went…

This morning I called my mother like I do almost every day and got her just before she had to leave to go exercise.  The times you can call her are very specific because she is either leaving to play Bridge, watching Matlock, watching The Price is Right, or out the door for some other reason.  I could be in the middle of telling her I was having chest palpitations and could she hang up and call 911 for me and I can assure you I would be screwed if it happened during one of her…

I have had this blog written for a long time, but I did not want people to think Fudge was sick now.  This happened shortly after we brought her home and goes to show that having a sick dog/puppy can be very scary. Since we have lots of new puppy owners, I thought it would be fun to share.

When Fudge was pretty small, she got sick. She stopped eating and drinking, was very lethargic, and I was beyond…

I can already tell this is going to be a bad season for ticks.  We had five this weekend and that was after a walk in the park.  They are almost always on Vern, which we believe happens because he likes to do his business in tall grass and if he swims, he gets out of the water and rolls himself, with such joy and abandonment, all the way to the car. I love watching him roll, because he thrusts his legs up in the air and kicks like an upside down frog trying to right himself. …

This week has been a tough week.  I know I shouldn’t complain when there are people so much worse off, but that has never stopped me before.  My husband has had something wrong with his foot for almost three weeks and will not go to the doctor.  He says it is sprained and I think it is broken.  

While he pops Advil, I pop M & M’s and neither one are helping…

It started with a whiff.  I smelled something strong and unpleasant in the air and after double-checking that I hadn’t forgotten to apply my deodorant, I started focusing on the most likely suspect, Vern.  I was sure it was Vern, but he didn’t smell any worse than usual, so next up was Fudge.  At last, I located the smell and sure enough, it was Fudge. The only explanation that I can think of why my clean Fudge ended up smelling badly was that maybe Vern rolled over on her one night while…

When we got Fudge, I don’t remember what research I did on the computer regarding Doodles, but I remember the no shedding was the icing on the cake.  I had spent years vacuuming up after two Labs and for a short haired dog, those dogs shed like nobody’s business.  A Labradoodle seemed like the best of both worlds for our family.  The wonderful personality of a Lab combined with no shedding just seemed perfect to me.  Luckily for us, without knowing what we were doing, we decided on…

I worked almost my entire adult life.  I took a small break when I had my first daughter, but still worked part time, and after we had our second daughter, who had some very major medical problems, I could not go back to work until she was three.  We needed the money, but our youngest daughter had a Tracheostomy tube and a feeding tube and it wasn’t until she was about three and stabilized, that I could find anyone willing to watch her.  Luckily, I had a great boss that allowed me very…

Last year around this time, I fell in love with a cranberry leather sofa and since our living room couch was almost twenty years old, worn, and faded by the sun, we decided to place the order for our new couch.  My kids will tell you that when we bought that sofa in 1992, I guarded that sofa like a mama bear does her bear cubs.  Up until that point, most of our furniture was hand me downs and that sofa represented our first major, expensive purchase.  I knew there was not going to be another…

Sunday started out like any other weekend day.  I was in my bedroom when my daughter came in and she and the dogs piled into bed with me.  I asked her what she was doing and she told me she was playing a game called Words with Friends on her Ipad2.  Never having played this game before, I watched her play for a bit and told her to let me play.  Big mistake. I hate to admit this, but I am actually a Scrabble virgin.  I have never played the game in my life, yet I have seen it…

As most of you know our daughter lives in Oregon.  We live in Pennsylvania, so we are trying not to take it personally that she moved just about as far away as possible as she could from home.

She claims she loves her job and good jobs are hard to come by in these tough times.  We have told her she could live in our basement and we would go back to giving her an…

My husband and I took our dogs for a training walk today and we are now “this close” to signing divorce papers.  We always start out with the best of intentions and then it all starts to go bad.  I can’t pinpoint exactly what the problem is, but my best guess is it is my husband.  After all, I have tried explaining to him that I have taken both dogs to their puppy classes, I read the DK training group’s advice religiously, and I have attended at least eight more…

I had gone almost eight months without having a dog.  I would have been the first one to laugh in your face if you had asked me if I wanted to start over with a puppy at age fifty-one.  Of course, I didn’t want to be tied down to a puppy/dog when my husband and I could travel and finally get away without worrying about kids.  Only a real nut would trade a life of leisure for a dog.  So, what happened?  Well, I started looking on the Internet at puppies, just to see what was out there, and we…

I have a couple of hand holding, or should I say paw holding, Doodles.

When we brought Fudge home, she would often sit by our side and extend her paw. I had never had another dog that did this, so I started reaching out and holding her paw. She seemed to like it and take comfort in that simple gesture and I have to admit, I like it too.  Even now, she likes when you stroke her paws when she is lying beside you and sometimes, I watch TV just holding her paw. Lots of times, if you are…

I just got off the phone with my daughter in Oregon and somehow, the topic got around to our dogs.  My daughter does not like me to give her any advice when it comes to her dogs and if I mention that I learned it on DoodleKisses, it just starts trouble.  Why I don’t learn to keep my mouth shut might be a whole other blog, but tonight when she said they might have to switch her dog’s food due to allergies, I did it again and offered her some advice.  Basically, both my kids think I know very…

Four weeks ago, Vern went back to training class. We are in a group class with the same trainer we have worked with before. He is a breeder of Belgian Malinois dogs.  The trainer is a macho kind of guy, loves to tell his “war stories”, and thinks his dogs are the best breed of dog ever produced by man.  Privately, I call them Mallomar Bars, but feel it is not necessary to publicly agitate a man who trains police dogs. 

 …

Last night, it happened again.  Vern got up in the middle of the night and started barking.  These were not ordinary barks, either, but enough to wake the dead.  The only person in our bed that did not seem to be bothered by all the ruckus was my husband.  I followed all the noise out to our foyer and there was watchdog Vern standing at the window, looking out at something, and determined to get outside.  Fudge was not barking, except for an occasional…