Moving

Well, a lot has changed since I last posted. I moved back in with my friend Carissa - in a different house where I have my own room. I have mixed feelings about it, I spent the last year living alone for the first time in my life and I really liked the freedom to do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted without the concern of disturbing a roommate. However, with all the pet sitting I have been doing, at times if felt like I was paying $500 a month for an oversized storage unit and I almost felt guilty for taking up such a nice little house that somebody else could really use - especially in Kanab, land of overpriced, craphole rentals. So, I have bid farewell to the solo living thing for a while and am actually enjoying the company of a roommate, and her dogs. Since I last wrote (I know, bad blogger!), there have been a lot of adoptions from the Garden. While I was on vacation over Christmas, three dogs, including two of my favorites, were adopted. Bo Bo went home on Christmas Eve to a family here in Kanab, he was one of the Spindletop dogs that came to the Lodges last February (Sweet Freedom post) and then moved over to the Garden a few months ago, where he quickly became a favorite of visitors and myself. Jimmy went to his forever home on Christmas Day, he was a very special little guy to me; he had developed a tendency to run in a large circle at the back of his run, probably to deal with the stress of the shelter life. If made me so sad to watch him constantly circling in his run, so I decided to start taking him to the staff room with me for lunch every day. It was a good way for him to get out of his run for a while and be around people, which is all he ever wanted, I am so happy he is home, but since he left on Christmas Day, I didn't get to say good-bye. We also had a little three-legged cattle dog mix, Penny, that got adopted between Christmas and New Year's Day. And on top of all that, a dog that arrived at the Garden while I was gone, Yadon, was adopted the day I got back to work. I have been taking a new girl with me to lunch since I got back. Cassie is a very high energy dog and we are having a difficult time getting weight on her because she spends so much of her day running along a fence line. We have a new program at the sanctuary training dogs to be Search and Rescue dogs, there are a lot of guidelines that the dogs have to meet in order to be considered for the program and I think Cassie would be a great candidate, as do many of the other people that know her. She has an incredible toy drive and very high energy (evidenced by all the running), she is young and, other than being skinny, she is healthy. At this point, the only variable that we don't know about is her hips, which will need to be x-rayed before she can be admitted into the program. Originally, she wasn't going to be able to be in the program at this time because there were already two dogs in the program, but one of them isn't doing so well, so I got a call yesterday that the trainer running the program was going to come by the Garden today to assess Cassie as a potential candidate today. So I have my fingers crossed for her that her assessment went well today and her x-rays come out clear. She needs a job so badly and it makes me so sad to watch her running all day long.

I know this has been a weird, rambling kind of post, I will try to do better next time. I have Internet access at my house now, so I should be able to get more regular about posting in the future.

(All photo's copyright Best Friends Animal Society.)