Sunday, December 16, 2012

Hanukkah

We just concluded the festival of lights, Hanukkah. It was a beautiful eight days filled with many adventures. It started out with a bang at Steven's first horn recital. It was such a blessing to light the first night's candle with Steven's mom and sister, Michelle.

The middle was a little sad as we had to give Ohana back to the vet to find another home more suited for her needs. She was a wonderful, sweet dog but couldn't handle sharing our love with anyone else and Copley was suffering because of that. We knew that we couldn't do that to him or her, so we thought it was best to let the vet find another family, without any other dogs, for sweet Ohana.




The festival concluded with a potluck at the temple. It was a fun affair filled with 27 chanukiyot and a klezmer band. This was the first time I got to hear the songs and watch the children run around screaming. And, of course, the latkes were fantastic!

Sunday, December 9, 2012

The Story of Ohana

(side note, I've run out of storage on Picasa so it's not allowing me to put anymore photos on the blog. For now, I'll use facebook until I decide if I want to bite the bullet and pay for storage)

I saw a post by a friend the other week on Facebook that had a picture of the cutest Yorkie and a story about a vet in Waverly, NE that was rescuing adult dogs from a puppy mill. The vet essentially had the backyard puppy mill shut down and agreed to place all the dogs. She also incurred the cost of spay/neutering all the dogs and doing any other medical treatment needed. After hearing the story, I felt compelled to get more information and see if they might have a dog that would fit with our current situation. It so happened that a family who had adopted Ohana had an emergency of some sort and had to return her. The vet tech thought she might be good for us since she was already house trained and a very calm dog. These dogs had never been out of kennels for their whole lives and had really lacked any human interaction. That made us both nervous, but the glowing reviews of Ohana made us feel a little more at ease.
I went and met her several times and then we decided to bring Copley for a little visit. Copley is usually the life of the party at the kennel he goes to so we weren't too worried. They got along really well, so we decided to try a play date at home (which, must to Steven's dismay) turned into a permanent visit. Little Ohana hasn't left since.
There are a few little kinks to be worked out, but we're all doing great. Ohana is having a little trouble doing all her pottying outside. We don't know if it's age/mother related that she leaks a little, but we're hoping to get it taken care of. She has found her night-time spot, which makes the night so much smoother.
The next task is to get her groomed and get them both switched to another food. We're having some allergy issues and hoping the switch cures it.