The Dog Saga

We have this dog, Margo, that we haven't been able to get puppies from. She wants to be a mom, but it just hasn't been in the cards for her. Poor thing. We found her a home in New York, and then held her for a while until the family was done vacationing for the summer. In the meantime, we found a replacement dog for her. In Minnesota.

So Sam volunteered to work the early shift on Wednesday so that we could leave when he got off work at 3:00 to go pick up this new dog. Her name is Cooper. Kind of. The owner, via all emails, called her Copper. Her registration paper says Cooper. We like the latter, so that's what we're calling her.

Spoiler alert: We have a new dog.

So we drove to Chicago Wednesday evening to crash at a virtual friend's house. You know what is 58 kinds of awesome? Talking to total strangers online for so long that they become such good friends that you have no hesitation asking if you can crash their pad at 11:00 at night. (But not midnight, as originally stated, because there is a time change difference that I did not take into consideration. That was good. Not the part where I don't think clearly, but the part where we crashed earlier than we feared we would.) Also awesome is meeting those virtual friends and making friendship real. Except we didn't visit at all because traveling 9 hours and getting in at 11PM makes one tired, so we crashed, and then left at 8AM because we had a lot of traveling to do.

We decided that we are not fans of Illinios. At least not at this time in Illinios' history. They are incredibly proud of the fact that they completed 37 miles of road construction in 2014. They failed to mention that every other mile of their toll highway is currently under construction. It's a lot more than 37 miles, too. We were not amused.

Wisconsin, however, was nice. It's green and has rolling hills up at the Dells, and dairy farms. I could totally be a Cheesehead. I am finding a trend in the states that I love. They're much like my small niche in Pennsylvania, and also get a lot of snow in winter. I have got to fall in love with warmer states. Wisconsin is also fond of their water parks. We counted 5 as we drove by on the interstate. Who knows what they had going on that we couldn't see.

Minnesota wasn't much to write home about, but then again we really only saw the Twin Cities, and we're just not city people. At least not when the traffic is.... okay we're just not city people. Dealing with all those drivers every day would probably make me stab someone. Our destination was just on the other side of Minneapolis, and as the owner met us on a lunch break and needed to get back to work, we exchanged the things we needed to, grabbed fast food to take, and headed right back into the traffic mess of early rush hour.

It kind of felt like a relay, this trip did. Run to Chicago, crash. Run to Minneapolis, touch the goal, and sprint right back to Chicago. We crashed our new friend's house at 10PM. We did, however, get to visit with her until noon the next day, which isn't long, but was fabulous anyway. I just love meeting virtual friends and finding out they're far more awesome than you really thought they are. But sadly, we had a long trip still ahead of us, so we loaded up our new dog (who really didn't want to be stuffed into the dog crate again) and headed home. It was a longer trip with all the rest stops, but we managed to get in before midnight. I also managed to strengthen my right arm on the trip. A certain new dog decided that she didn't want to get back in the car after every stop, so I had to carry her. She's a heifer. And she also likes air conditioning, so we had to keep the car set at Sub Zero to keep her from panting heavily. At one point I had to chip Sam's frozen hands from the steering wheel.

Cooper still isn't as happy with me as all that. First I stuff her into a crate for 15 hours, then I put her in the outside kennel in quarantine. I just want to be sure she doesn't bring any germs into the house while we have puppies. One can't be too careful, you know? She loves me, because she licks my feet like Louie does, but I'm not sure she likes me all that much.

And she really just wants out.

Also, this dog Margo that we haven't been able to get puppies out of? Her owner decided not to take her, so we get to keep her. Which is kind of okay since we weren't sure if it was all Margo's fault that she couldn't have babies and if it was, indeed, the dad's fault instead (we decided after taking a deposit on her). Now we'll have the opportunity to find out I guess. So yes. We just added a dog to the establishment. We didn't replace anyone.