No longer an e-bay virgin...

I won my first auction on eBay.

"Won," of course, is a complete misnomer since I'm paying for the privilege. And I was the only bidder.

Believe it or not, I didn't order it for the dog sweater pattern. (I wanted the teddy bear pattern.) I found a dog sweater pattern on another site. The largest size--"X Large," they called it--is supposed to fit a dog with a girth (i.e., chest measurement) of 24 inches. Well, Jacey's chest measures 26+ inches; Sam's, 30+. I don't hold out much hope of this book having a sweater that will fit either of my dogs. And my dogs have polar-fleece coats that I made years ago. Jacey will inherit Oreo's Winnie-the-Pooh coat.

Oreo in her jammies:




I'm taking it easy on the crocheted greyhound. Work on it is proving to be hard on my hands (I wind up with aching hands the next day), so I'm only working on it a bit at a time. But I have a couple more pictures of a sulking Sam with bits of his "rival":

A flashback

I've been cleaning up e-mails and old stuff on my old computer. I came across a copy of a message board post I made in April of 2004, when SEGA was looking for stories about adopting "bounces"--dogs that get turned in to the kennel after a brief time in an adopter's home:

I never had dogs growing up. I thought long and hard about adopting a dog and was trying to figure out what breed would fit in well with my lifestyle. My neighbor has an Australian shepherd so one thing I knew for certain was that I didn't want a dog that "needed a job."

Then I saw the Animal Planet episode about the greyhound named "Go." (It's the episode with Maggie McCurry.) I started reading up about greyhounds and decided that was the breed for me.

I didn't know of any adoption groups in the Atlanta area, but I got one of those "Clipper" flyers in the mail. At the top of one page was an ad for electric fences. The bottom half of the page was an ad for Adopt-A-Greyhound Atlanta. So I called Carl and made an appointment.

When I got there, there were two females I was looking at. (Too many of the others were barking--a no-no for a condo-dwelling dog!) One was a light fawn named Calypso Pretty, the other was a black 4-year-old named Oreo--a bounce. Oreo's coat was still in good shape, and the idea of a dog that already was used to a home appealed to me as a first-time dog-owner. So Oreo won me mostly on her looks, and partly because I figured the behavioral kinks were already worked out. (It doesn't seem to have occurred to me that she might have been returned because of a problem that I should be worried about. The story was that she was owned by an older couple whose son looked after her, then the son moved out of state and the couple couldn't cope.)

Oreo has turned out to be a prima donna. And a mama's girl. And a delight, with smiles and helicopter-tail-wags for her favorite people.

In looking for a group that had activities I could take Oreo to, I found SEGA. And because Oreo was so well-behaved at home from the beginning, she gave me the confidence to take on fosters who hadn't lived in a home. And because Oreo was so easy to handle--and most of the fosters were, too--I didn't hesitate to adopt a second dog. (See, Oreo? It's your own fault that you've got to share with Sam.)

These days, Oreo is too often in diva-mode, and isn't well-behaved around other females; this means she's missing some outings that Sam gets to go on. But she still meets us eagerly (even frantically) at the door ("Where have you been? Do you know how worried I was, relying on *him* to protect you?"). She wakes me in the morning with kisses if she thinks I'm sleeping too late. When she wakes up from a nap, she comes over and lays her head in my lap for kisses and cuddles (which she just did while I was typing this message).

The people that let Oreo get away don't know what a gem they lost. But I do. And finders, keepers...

...losers, weepers.

Jacey at the vet's

Jacey went to the vet today. She's got either a bladder or a vaginal infection, and my money is on the bladder thing (she's always peed "funny"). So she's on antibiotics for two weeks. If there's not an improvement, she goes in for them to take a urine sample with a needle to determine what the problem is. (Jacey, trust me, you really want to get over this now--without another vet visit.)

The very minor incontinence issue might be from the infection. But it might be a "known minor side effect" of the Clomicalm she had to take. If the incontinence continues once the infection is cleared up, the vet might put her on some hormones that would have the effect of tightening things up "down there."

Meanwhile, she was a good girl at the vet's. And she's four pounds lighter than she was on her first visit, when she was still overweight from her stay at the greyhound kennel.

Greyhound update

The crocheted greyhound has a body (not stuffed as yet; pictures later) and about a third of one rear leg. My hands were very sore after last weekend's marathon crochet session, and since I need flexible hands to earn my living, I've left the crochet hook alone until today. I've adjusted my grip on the hook and yarn--partly to alleviate the sore hands and partly to eliminate the unfortunate corkscrewing tendency produced by too-tight stitches. (I'm planning to redo the front leg I did last weekend because it corkscrews too much.)

Greyhound-to-be

Sam points out he's much better looking than his rival...and he has ears, too.




A foreleg and a Sam-leg.

Greyhound-to-be

The cornmeal-colored yarn I ordered arrived today. It's going to make a lovely afghan...but it's not a greyhound color. So I'll use yarn the same color as the teddy bear I made for Creeklyn.