Uffda is home!

Last Monday, we went into Anchorage in the evening and I suggested we call the couple we had purchased Uffda, our Newfie puppy, from to see if we could visit her.

They had the puppies out on the lawn and let Uffda out so Logan could meet her. He sat on the ground and she immediately settled with her head in his lap and went to sleep. Logan's eyes lit up like a kid's on Christmas morning.

We were informed that she had seen the vet recently and had her hips and heart checked out (two areas of known trouble for the Newfoundland breed.) She was all good and healthy and ready to go home at any time. Logan looked at me and said, "You wanna bring her home now?"

We had originally planned to bring her home after this weekend, since I'm working long hours and have Grand Opening still to get through. I didn't want her to be neglected during her first days settling in with us. But Logan had the next two days off, so we stopped at Pet Zoo on the way home to get the things we still needed for her.

She's piddling everywhere, inside and out, she likes to gnaw on boxes and shoes and countless other things, but she's so mellow and sweet. She's also slow moving, so we don't have to worry about not being able to catch her at the moment. She's so mellow, she slept all the way home, and in the cart at Pet Zoo, and when she walked, she reminded me of zombies in the old movies.

Then she and Bruno met.

Bruno, as some of you may know, is the complete opposite. He is very hyper and can't sit still for long. He loves running around and his feet and tail are always moving. We have to watch them very carefully because we didn't want him damaging Uffda in his exuberance. And exuberance it was.

Those two adore each other now. They can't stop playing when they're together. They chew on toys together, play that weird face game that dogs do when play fighting, and couldn't ignore each other if they tried. It's so cute. Bruno just needs to get over his habit of bowling her over when they're outside together.

But Uffda is teaching Bruno her brand of doggie zen and Bruno is drawing Uffda out of her shell. She's moving around with more speed and courage than we've ever seen. She actually seems to know what her legs are for now. We can't wait until she's big enough to really play with Bruno and stand up to him when he tries to run her over.

Still debating on whether we're going to allow puppies to happen later or not. Right now, thinking not. We really don't want the responsibility at this time. So we'll probably get Uffda fixed soon.

Anyway, here's a few pics of our new member of the family.

Amazing stories

Not too many amazing coincidences and hilarity enters my life in such rapid succession. But these two recent stories I just had to share.

This past Wednesday after I was released from prison, er, work, my husband and I had a late night out, even though I needed to go to work the next day. I was going to have some time to sleep in before my very late shift for our first evening with open doors to the public, and Logan and I haven't had any days off together since I started working more hours. So we went to a restaurant in Palmer that we were introduced to by some friends of ours, open 24 hours with decently priced yummy food. It's called the Valley Hotel and it's the coffee shop inside. We lovingly call it "The Valley Ho." (One friend called it the V-Ho, but her boyfriend called it the Valley Ho by mistake. We couldn't resist keeping that name.) When family and friends come to visit, we will certainly take them there, as the food is really good.

Anyway, we also drove the half hour to Eagle River because their movie theatre was the only one in town playing "Crank: High Voltage" with Jason Statham. It was a kick in the pants. It crosses many shock lines, and I don't just mean electric ones.

Anyway (two), we've had absolutely gorgeous sunny weather lately, thanks to a high pressure system in place over Alaska. (Californians curse that high pressure, Alaskans revel in it, especially after last summer where there were only 4 warm days that reached 70 degrees.) The roads were completely dry, which made the grooves in them from winter tires seem more pronounced, as there was no snow or puddles of water to obscure them.

Just for fun, Logan, my insane chauffeur, decided to take his hands of the steering wheel, as the tires were well settled within these deep grooves. I didn't realize how deep the grooves really were ... until we approached a corner and the car TURNED ITSELF. Without Logan's ever touching the wheel with hands or knees. I don't think you can even do that on Highway 80 in California! (I could be wrong, but we never did.)

The car cruised around the corner all by itself without any assistance, and straightened out to boot. At the next corner, the grooves lessened, so Logan was not able to repeat the experiment, but once was enough for me. It just shakes me up to see him drive without either hand on the wheel for any amount of time, let alone THAT long!

So that was pretty funny and amazing, at least to me. Almost seemed like a magic trick at work. "Nothin' up muh sleeve ... Presto!"

And now for something we hope you'll really like ...

So by now you've probably read that we are getting a new puppy, a Newfie named Uffda. We did a lot of research on all the different breeds, trying to decide what kind of dog would be a good match for Bruno and also have the kind of disposition we want. I know there have been demands for pics of the puppy and of the new house, and I'm working on that. But here was an amazing coincidence that Logan pointed out to me today.

We bought an older model Toyota Landcruiser not long after we moved here. We needed two vehicles and one of them needed to be a truck for going camping and such. So we bought the most decent one we could find. It had a sticker in the back window which we didn't pay any attention to and never bothered to remove.

Today Logan was out in the garage with his exercise equipment, sweating away, when he looked out the window and happened to glance at the back of his Landcruiser. And noticed what the picture on the sticker was.

It was one of those black and white silhouette pictures of a specific dog breed. When people own a type of dog, they can get this sticker showing what kind of dog they like and/or own.

This sticker was a Newfoundland.

Isn't that eerie?!