There have been changes around here since I lost Sam.
First, there's a foster under my roof:
His name is GRA Peter, and he bounced from his previous home. He came home with me 31 August, and he'll probably be here until he finds a home. He's been a wild man since he came through the door, but he's calming down and doing better. Peter's blog is
here, his racing history (awful!--31 races, most spent going backwards) is
here, and his link on the SEGA site is
here. For the record, his adoption write-up is from his arrival in Atlanta back in February. We know more about him now, as his blog makes clear. (He arrived in February, was fostered until mid-May, in a home until the end of August, and back to us.) Three-year-old Peter is very much like my Sam was in the beginning. If I survived that, I can survive this.
I found his "off" switch. It's called "a pillow."
But Peter is only a foster. My finances are a wreck right now, and I can't afford to be on the hook for vet care for another dog. (Silver's bills have been plenty, but she's finally healthy
~knock wood~) If I foster, SEGA pays vet bills and heartworm meds; I pay food and flea/tick prevention. Also, I'm looking at the long view. I'm 60 years old, and if I adopted a young dog now, in ten years I could be a little old lady with a big old dog. There were times in the last few months that I had to lift Sam; I don't want to have to give up a dog I've adopted--or have it suffer--because I can't care for it properly. So as long as I'm physically able, I might eventually adopt older dogs that bounce to SEGA. For the foreseeable future, though, I'll be fostering.
Chloe, a local greyhound, got lost last Friday evening--bolted, trailing a retractable leash. (Retractables are no-nos for greyhounds under any circumstances. They're also illegal in Cobb County once you get off your own property, which she was.) We turned out dozens of searchers Saturday, Sunday, and Monday morning, and she was caught by her daddy early Monday afternoon. The terrain was terrible--woods, culverts, streams, the Chattahoochee River, stables, a polo field, power line towers, a water treatment plant, curvy and hilly roads with very short sight-lines, and an active railroad track. Making things more fun, we had orange air quality alerts and orange pollen counts (ragweed), and swarms of mosquitoes.
A lovely Google map. All that green means a rough search area. Google maps on my phone are the only reason I'm not still out there somewhere...
I spent 14 hours on the actual search, another five hours driving to and from the search (30 minutes each way), and a final hour and a half or so pulling flyers off street signs once Chloe was safe. Chloe wound up with raw paw pads from running on asphalt the first night, when she bolted. We had very few sightings of her during the search, and I'm betting she did most of her traveling down the cleared track that houses the big power towers between the polo field where she was captured ("horse chocolates!" --her favorites) and Log Cabin Road, where we had a couple of sightings. At some point the retractable snagged on something and broke, and Chloe was found wearing just 6 inches of the leash.
There has been some knitting going on here--but not nearly enough of it. The baby blanket I'm making (shown above--baby arrived Friday the 6th) is just a little over half done. There's no way I could have it ready to enter in the local fair since entries are due this next weekend. I do have one item to enter for the fair, which makes Saturday a bit busy: Marietta Farmers Market Saturday morning, Acworth meet and greet Saturday at noon, and turn in my fair entry after that. (I'll post photos of the entry and details about the fair in a future post.) SEGA has another shipment of dogs arriving this Saturday, but I'm bowing out of the Dirty Dog Posse (the dog bathing). No Pope football game this weekend. Silver's blue toenails didn't work their magic last week, as Pope got thrashed for the second week in a row.
(Oh, great! I'm typing away on this blog entry and not paying attention to Peter, who decided to get up from where he was sleeping. He got in a few licks of the raspberry vinaigrette dressing left in the bowl my salad was in. I hope the taste was what he wanted.)
The construction is finished at my sister's house, and Mother is getting her things arranged the way she wants them. I need to get a little billable work done and submit an invoice so there'll be money for bill-paying later this month. I also still have work to do on my kitchen to get the dehydrator and crock pot set up. I'm going to try to make healthy treats for the dogs and snacks for me with the dehydrator and do some cooking with the crock pot: hoping to save money and eat better than all the frozen processed dinners. (I went with Mother to the doctor last week, and he had diet recommendations for her. I'm 19 years younger than Mother, but it wouldn't hurt me to start eating better now.)
The knitting schedule from here to Christmas is packed: baby blanket, hats for sailors (ship by 11 November), chemo hats, baby sweater for a cousin's impending grandchild (due early November, but I won't knit newborn size), snood and pointy hat for some greyhound people (they're making charitable donations to SEGA in return for the knitting), then scarf, cowl, and hat as Christmas presents.
