It's happened.

We are once again a two-dog household.

Yesterday we spent all day finishing up the makeshift fence around our patio area, which is a lot less makeshift than I certainly had expected! I forgot that when my husband puts his mind to building something, he builds it well and strong and to last.  So we have sort of subtle mesh along our privet hedge, and he built a nice cedar lattice gate-and-fence in the front, which is the only visible part from outside.  Now we don't have to worry about a kid forgetting to close the screen door or latch the backyard gate, since there's an extra section of protection.

Andi (still not sure if we'll keep the name) is a tiny little thing, only about 11.5 lbs, with this delicate little head and the cutest black and tan markings on her feet as well as the normal places (muzzle, eyebrows, etc). She will turn 3 in a couple of weeks, and she got put into rescue because her owners, who I suspect were backyard breeders, had more dogs than the village would allow and animal control was going to confiscate four out of six of their doxies.  So when things with Penny fell through, someone suggested that she might be good for us.  And here she is.

Our Tris started out getting all aggressive on her, which we're trying to curtail, but it was sort of a relief to discover that she has no interest in being the Alpha dog, she's happy to submit and let him be all large and in charge. (Which, at a sort of portly 21 lbs, he is. Large. He looks absolutely mammoth next to her.)  Her MO at the moment is just to stay out of his way, which seems to suit everyone fine. Eventually they'll probably be friends, but for now uneasy truce is fine.

She came to us all the way from South Carolina, in just one day--it's sort of amazing, there were like a dozen volunteers who each took a leg of the trip until finally we picked her up in Merrilville, IN and brought her home with us.  No one really slept very well last night because Tristan was being so pissy about her (every time I moved a leg in bed or something, he'd start to growl), but she was good as gold.  Today has been a lot of fun, just hanging with her, snuggling her (she's a complete snugglebug), giving her a bath (not as much fun for her, but she travelled here with a crateful of kittens, and I'm horribly allergic to cats), going for walks, just a nice quiet afternoon.  Nice. 

And now she's sacked out at my feet.

So I think we'll probably go to bed early, I'll maybe finish The Kite Runner (my real novel of the week; lest anyone think all I read is twinkiebooks) and turn the light out at a reasonable hour.




(I think in this picture she's trying to play "Candy Land" with my daughter...)
--J

Okay, we got the contract for Andie...this looks all sort of Real.

I'm a little freaked out.

I've been asking of the Universe that the right dog be the one who comes to us, and that if we're approaching the wrong dog, to please throw up appropriate roadblocks so that any not-quite-right thing I might attempt in my overfunctioningness would not be successful.  With Penny, it looked right, it felt right, and then it didn't work. With Andie, it's all going incredibly smoothly, but I keep expecting something to go wrong.  And then this new little dog popped up on the adoption site, under a year old and already having had 6 different homes, who sounds a whole heck of a lot like my little Polly (except that Polly was a terrier mutt, and this is a piebald doxie) (plus, this one's name is Buffy, which just tickles me)...

This is incredibly new-agey dorky of me, but I'm wondering if on some level I've been specifically looking for a dog young enough to maybe be Polly's reincarnation. Andie is about a year too old for that.  And I'm dealing with this small bit of guilt that when I think about it, I'm not sure I want or could deal with another Polly right now. I loved her beyond life, I still love her and talk to her and sometimes feel like she's here, and I think I'm just now coming to terms with her gone-ness...but getting another dog is REALLY acknowledging her gone-ness. And realizing I really hope the dog I get is not much like the wonderful, smart, deeply loving and loyal, wounded, lost, separation-anxiety-plagued, panicky creature I spent the first 14 years of my "real" adult life with. And feeling like crap about it. 

Sigh.
--J