Happy Ending

I love happy endings, don’t you?  I hope so, because I have one for you.  India was adopted yesterday! Yes, that adorable, sweet girl is now in her true forever home. 

A lot of people shared her story and really networked, and it paid off for India.  Her new family took her home yesterday.  She appears to be settling in beautifully and is being showered with the love and attention she needs.

I just love it when a shelter pet gets their happy ending.  

India

India is a foster dog staying with us temporarily until an adopter or more permanent foster home can be arranged.  She’s an eleven year old golden retriever who was taken to the shelter by her former owners because they got a new puppy and India ate the puppy’s food.  She was very stressed in the shelter, so my friend/co-worker Beth asked if she could spend a few days with us. 

I cannot think of many worse “reasons” for giving up a lifelong pet.  I know I shouldn’t judge, but I have them pegged as the villains (at least in my book) who view pets as possessions; India is registered and has papers, and they’ve had her since she was a puppy.  It sounds a lot like trading her in for a new model to me.

I just can’t begin to comprehend abandoning your dog after a decade of their companionship.  I’ve had Emma for over nine years, and I think about all of the life changes she has been though with me.  I couldn’t abandon her. 

India is proving to be a mostly agreeable houseguest; she’s house trained, doesn’t get on the furniture (even though we’ve invited her to) and is beyond patient with the quirky quartet of cats, even though Milo seems determined to find her breaking point.  Fortunately, she just walks away from him when he does things that would make more than a few dogs turn him into a snack!  Emma and India have a somewhat uneasy truce; they are both older dogs, set in their ways.  Their ways just happen to be different, but for the most part they seem to have agreed to live and let live. 

We have yet to make the leap into becoming full fledged foster parents.  We toss the idea around semi-regularly, though we just don’t seem to quite be there yet.  We have done some temporary fostering that has worked out well.  We are comfortable with that, and like to think it helps in some small way.  So India has been with us since Tuesday evening and will remain with us through the weekend. 

I have shared her story with nearly all of my rescue friends, many of whom have shared with their rescue friends, so we are very hopeful that the right person will hear about her soon.  I am truly amazed by the devotion and energy that some of these people have for helping pets (I keep saying I want to be like some of them when I grow up), so I am sure that her story will have a happy ending.  

A Very, Very Belated Happy New Year

This is why I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions anymore; they seem to lead me to failure and disappointment.  For example, if I did still make New Year’s Resolutions, one of them would have been to get back to regular blogging, which clearly hasn’t happened yet.  In my defense, I did manage to contract some sort of Plague (not really, The Plague, but after being sick and tired for almost three weeks I feel better calling it The Plague) right around the holidays.  I fought it and took lots of cold medicine and we managed to have a nice Christmas, and Nick’s birthday party was wonderful. 

By the Sunday before New Year’s Eve, though, there was no more fighting it and no amount of cold medicine to make it through the day.  I worked a grand total of one full day that week and spent the rest of it in bed feeling miserable.  I did go to the doctor and get various medications, including a cream for the cough syrup-induced rash.  (Cough syrups are apparently full of dyes, which I am allergic to.)  I’m now almost rash free, and down to an amount of coughing that isn’t leading to gagging and headaches, so I have decided that I’ve officially rejoined the land of the living, and it’s time to catch up on everything.

How many of you make New Year’s Resolutions?   I used to every year, but I pretty much never stuck to them, so I don’t so much anymore.  Every year I tell myself that I will get organized, keep the house and yard neater, be a nicer person, focus more on my writing, exercise more, and volunteer more.  Every year, I tell myself this will be my year.  There’s just something so hopeful about the beginning of a new year.

I think each year does seem to get a little better; last year I started my blog, we short term fostered one cat and one dog, I did some rescue transports, my purse was cleaned out and organized for almost a month, I did the Memory Walk with my mom, we planted an herb garden, we went to some water aerobics classes for a few months, and the guest room was habitable for my sister to spend the weekend after Christmas with us.  I don’t think more than two, maybe three, of those things went on at the same time, though. 

So of course, this year I plan to get organized, keep the house and yard neater, be a nicer person, focus more on my writing, exercise more, and volunteer more.  We’ll see what happens with all of that. 

On the getting organized and keeping the house neater front, the house sort of looks likes a set from a disaster movie right now.  It’s awful.  That’s what happens when you’re sick for a few weeks I guess.  I intend to start tackling that (probably starting with the mountain of laundry, because that’s what is driving me the most insane) this week.  Assuming that I can stay awake long enough in the evenings, that is.  The coughing seems to be much worse at night, and the cough syrup knocks me out.  I feel better sleeping 9 – 11 hours a night, but it doesn’t lead to getting much done! 

On the volunteering front I am sorry to say that absolutely nothing has happened so far.  I blame The Plague.  It’s hard to volunteer for much when you can barely get out of bed.  I am hoping that will change over the next few weeks.

Ditto with the exercising.  The idea of getting into a cold pool right now just makes me cringe.  Once again, hopefully this will change in the next couple of weeks. 

Being a nicer person is a little more intangible and harder to quantify, I think.  I equate that a lot with volunteering.  I think helping some organization, working toward some greater good, something bigger than yourself makes you a nicer person.  But there are other things too, I know that.  Now I just have to work on finding them and practicing them. 

On the writing front, during my feverish haze during The Plague, I decided that I would write and self-publish a cookbook this year.  It still sounded like a good idea after the fever was over, so I’m going with it, even though typing it here is making my stomach do some crazy flip flopping around.  I’ve talked about it for years, so I’ve decided it’s time to stop talking and starting doing.

I told my husband about this plan, and he has been incredibly supportive.  He’s helping me round up all of the scraps of paper I’ve jotted recipes down on, and has agreed to let me experiment on him.

I normally don’t tell anyone about my plans to do something big like that, and then I don’t usually accomplish it, because no one knows I failed.  But I’ve realized that there’s some accountability to be found in telling people what you’re trying to accomplish, so I’m putting it out there this time.  I haven’t set a more firm deadline for myself than this year, but I’m thinking before the holidays, so I don’t have that hanging over me during the holidays.

So how about all of you?  Did you make resolutions?  Are you sticking to them?  How is 2013 shaping up for you?