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

This blog has absolutely nothing to do with doodles, except that I own two, and we do all live in a small town. If you blink when you drive down our main drag, you will miss our one restaurant/bar, wine shop, Fire station, and Bingo hall.  Apparently, we like to drink and play Bingo in our little town from this description. 

About once a year, I am not ashamed to say, a group of friends and I meet for Bingo. Mostly, we go around Thanksgiving when my mom and aunt are…

Recently, it seems as if everyone is getting another dog or a puppy and it has made me curious as to why we want dogs at all.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a dog lover through and through, but could I have had a life without a dog and been just as happy?  We got our first family dog, Hershey, because of a dog crazy daughter and I went into dog ownership kicking and screaming. With two kids, one husband, and a job, I figured I had enough to do and did not want to add one more thing to my plate. …

Recently, my mom came to stay for a week and took up residence in our spare bedroom.  Vern and Fudge love their “grandma”. The only problem we seem to have when she is here is that Vern and my mom fight for the same chair in the living room. I have tried telling my 85-year-old mom that it is Vern’s chair, but she just said, “Old trumps dog,” and sat right down.  There she stayed drinking her coffee and reading her book without a care in the world, as Vern circled the chair like a…

We leave for our annual summer vacation soon and Fudge and Vern are not going with us. My sister in law has a beach house, and most of my husband’s family meets there once a year.  To call it a vacation, might be a slight reach, since about 20 people pile into one house, we still cook, do dishes, and laundry, and in the morning when you want to go for a walk, you have to maneuver through the bodies of sleeping nieces and nephews on the living room floor in order to get out the door.…

Lately, I have been looking at the pictures of the Doodles in Need of Homes from the DRC and IDOG on the front page of DK.  From time to time, I see a dog I fall in love with, but I know in my heart that two is my limit. Yet, I can’t help thinking about the luck of the draw. I think it when I drive by my neighbor’s house and see four beautiful dogs chained up outside 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  I think it when I read the sad rescue stories; see the…

As promised, I have been giving a lot of thought to this blog. Summer for me means I have to pull out last years shorts and make sure they still fit. It is always a crap shoot and could go either way. For years, I have been saying the extra pounds are due to the baby weight I put on when I was pregnant, but my baby is 25 now and people are starting to question that theory.  All last year, I promised myself I would lose weight for my DD’s wedding, but I was also keeping my stress…

I hate to be one of those old people who complain about the weather, but I am very sad to report that I am one of those people.  I can’t stand this heat and finally, I have two family members that agree wholeheartedly with me…Fudge and Vern. Frankly, I will take snow and ice over this weather. Today, our temperatures were over 100 degrees and I had to take drastic measures and find some shorts to wear. God knows Vern is afraid of everything and I was worried that one look at my…

After what seems like months of rain, our weather is looking up and my DH and I have started bike riding. He is a serious biker and I am a not so serious biker. Any bike ride I go on has to have a beginning and an end designated BEFORE we start the ride. This is important because my DH can ride for hours and even rides 100 miles every year on his birthday. I could ride 100 miles too, but it would involve about 5 nights in a hotel and lots and lots of stops for…

Most of you know that our Vern is a big ol' chicken. Yesterday, I was doing some training with them up at the state park and both dogs were doing beautifully until Vern spotted a man sitting in a lawn chair. I did not have my camera, so some of this blog will be a reenactment. Here is how threatening the man appeared:

Vern started backing into me and nothing I did could…

My daughter moves to Oregon tomorrow. We live in Pennsylvania. I have been alternating between feeling sad and mad about this since she gave me the news. My best friend said she knew I was upset when I lost my sense of humor. I blame myself and my husband. We were stupid. All the while our kids were growing up, we told them they could do anything and be anything. What we should have said is, “You can be anything and do anything within a 100 mile radius of your parents.  If it is…

When we first got Fudge and she was still a little puppy, I had big dreams of volunteering with her at the Assisted Living Facility where I volunteer. The breeder assured me she was the calmest dog in the litter, and if by calm she meant reactive to every living thing that moves, then I would agree. Before I got too carried away, I decided to take her over to the Assisted Living place and see how she did.  My good friend is the receptionist there and calls herself…

Last year, at this time I was in the middle of planning my DD's wedding. My best friend's daughter is getting married this year on the exact date and her shower was yesterday. It brought the whole process back to me. My DD delegated the entire wedding planning process to me.  She was not kidding when she said she just wanted to show up.  I was in the throes of major wedding stuff when we brought Vern home at the end of March.  When I told my sister that I was getting…

We have had a lot of excitement on DK recently from Donna's post about Naked Doodles to Sharon's post about a Bare Husband and a Real Bear. This got me thinking about a naked story of my own.  We are nearing the end of the school year for some kids and their parents.  I love this time of year now that my girls are finished with school and our household is not in a mad frenzy to get last minute projects, papers, and finals completed. I had…

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there!  For the first year ever on this Mother's Day, I have a brand new son-in-law.  I grew up with two sisters and had two daughters, so adding a son to the family has been fun. When my daughter got married last June, they wanted to know what my new SIL should call me. I didn't really like all the suggestions they were coming up with and I had to mention, more than once, to my DH that I did not want to be called mother anything and finally said I had…

Yesterday, in the POURING down rain, I took Vern to be groomed. I like to have the dogs groomed on separate days, so I can spend individual time with the other. When I came back to the car minus Vern, Fudge was sitting in the driver's seat shaking and showered me with kisses when I told her she had been issued a reprieve until tomorrow. She did not appear to be worried about her brother. Later, we picked up Vern and he looked fabulous. Naturally, I have no pictures, but take my word for…

I am reading the book Water for Elephants and despite the fact that some of the treatment of animals in the book is hard to read about, I really like the book.  For a long time I have considered writing a blog about volunteering at an Assisted Living Facility, and I love the descriptions in this book about how it feels to get old. Many of the seniors I have volunteered with have expressed these same sentiments to me. When I was younger, 60 and 70 seemed so old, but now I am…

Last night, I was already in bed watching Dancing With the Stars, when Vern came running into the room like he had seen a ghost. Most people in my family know not to bother me when my favorite show is on, but from the looks of it, Vern did not get the memo. He looked so scared and happy to see me that I forgot momentarily what was happening on TV.  Pretty soon, in came my daughter to tell me what happened. Yesterday, it got very hot, so I turned on the air…

I have been back from vacation for one week and I am noticing that Fudge has become very attached to my DH. This morning, I got up very early in the morning and took the dogs out to go to the bathroom in the pouring down rain. When we came back in, Fudge wanted to get up on our bed. As soon as she got up there, she walked right up to my DH and just sat and looked at him so dreamily. He was asleep, so she kept putting her paw on him until he woke up and started…

Last Wednesday, my DD and I left for five days to go home to Indiana. I have lots of family there and we also wanted to get to the Vera Bradley Outlet sale. Fudge and Vern stayed home and my DH took the time off work to care for them and put in a deer fence. I might have been a little bossy, but I asked two things of him:

1.) Do something each day with the dogs and by do something, I did not mean allow them to watch him work in the garage.

2.) Keep them on my schedule.…

Recently, I did a blog on our rescue dog, Honey, but I feel like I have to give equal time to our wonderful dog, Hershey. My oldest daughter came out of the womb chanting the word dog.  We lived in an apartment many years before we could afford our own home and I always told my oldest that as soon as we got our house, she could have a dog. Rule #1: Kids never forget. As soon as we got our house, she started hounding (no pun intended) us for that dog. Of course, she…