The Servant's Quarters

As the late Paul Harvey would say, now it's time for the rest of the story.

When we left off, Rita and I had just surrendered our beloved Jenny back to the Humane Society due to her health issues. Afterwards, we went to the Adoption Center, and we immediately zeroed in on a beautiful chocolate lab named, "Bianca." In the Get Acquainted Room, she was a bundle of energy but very manageable. She settled down when she was told to, seemed very smart, and knew several basic commands. We had promised the kids that we would not adopt a dog without them, so we asked the staff if we could reserve Bianca until later in the day. They agreed, probably because we had just gone through such a bad experience with Jenny.

When we returned, the kids liked what they saw. We played with Bianca for a few minutes, and almost everyone was in favor of our choice. (We did have one notable exception. One of the kids who is still struggling with the choice of this dog.) Only one more hurdle remained - introducing Bianca to Walker.

Well, that went off almost without a hitch. The dogs didn't display any hostility towards each other. There was only one moment when Bianca tried to play too harshly with Walker, and he growled at her in return. (Little did we know, Bianca's attitude towards play would be a difficulty that we are still struggling to overcome. But I think Walker is finally getting the message across to her.) So, we adopted her right away.

While the adoption was proceeding, the little boys wanted to know where Jenny was. I kept telling them that she was in the building but the doctors were taking care of her and we couldn't visit her. (So sad.)

Well, Molly (as we renamed her later that day) is doing great. She is energetic for sure. In fact, although they told us at the shelter that she's 5 years old like Walker, we believe she's actually younger. We hadn't realized how much Walker had slowed down in his middle age until we got to see him side by side with Molly. She's not nearly as affectionate as Jenny, but she loving enough. Also, she's very protecting of the family. Apparently, the chocolates are the most protective of all the lab varieties. Whenever there's a noise that she doesn't recognize, she perks up and often barks until she figures out who or what it is. Some people might think that that's a problem, but I like having a dog who's willing to make some noise when there's a problem. Now, I've got two of them, and it definitely helps me sleep easier at night.

Molly only has two problems, as far as I can tell:

1) She's not Jenny. We all still miss our big, old, fat stray. Molly's a great dog, but bonding with and then losing Jenny is definitely a hinderance to building close ties to our new dog.

2) Gas. Molly came to us with some type of intestinal problem. I am not exaggerating when I say that we have adopted the most flatulent dog in southeast Michigan. The first evening, she was breaking wind (with disasterous consequences) every 3 minutes. It was horrible. At one point, I took her out into the yard to relieve herself. What happened next was like something from a horror movie. In Smell-O-Vision.

When we turned in that night, Molly parked herself on the floor on my side of the bed right under my pillow. Right where Jenny slept. Oh boy. This was going to be a fun night. Fortunately, I fell asleep right away and wasn't disturbed by rank smells, monsters under the bed, or anything of the like.

That is, I wasn't disturbed until about 6:00 AM. At around that time, I awoke to a very rank, overpowering odor in the room. Our dogs bowels were definitely on the scene and making themselves known. I buried my face in my pillow. No avail. I could STILL smell her. She finally let loose with a roar that woke Rita up too and made us both sit straight up in bed. Knowing that sleep wasn't going to happen without breatheable air, we climbed out of bed and each took one of the dogs for a walk.

Later in the day, Liv and I took Molly to Specialty Pets to be measured for a training collar and some other doggie goodies. We had to keep rolling the windows down in order to breathe. If you saw a gold Focus on I-275 this past weekend with windows that kept going up and down and two people inside looking like they were being gassed to death, you may have seen us.

Fortunately, Molly overcame her..... infirmity. We tried to moderate her meals a bit and gave her yogurt after each meal. (That last suggestion came from http://www.dogflatulence.com. Yes, there's an entire web site devoted to dogs with this issue.) She came out of it after a couple of days, and we are happy to say, she is now pooping normally. It's a good thing, too. At the height of our distress, I told the whole family that I couldn't live like this and if Molly couldn't get things under control, she was going back, too.

Yeah, that was pretty drastic. But you try living in a house where the air's so thick from dog farts that you think you're lost in a London fog.

It was not pretty.

(Please excuse the lack of photos of our new doggie. We've just recovered from a huge computer crash, and it'll take me some time to download the pictures I've taken of the girl.)