4 dogs

The above photo is of my wife (thankfully she never reads my blog so won’t yell at me for posting her photo) and two of our four dogs.

During Thanksgiving we adopted a new pup, Gracie. She’s the black and white one – maybe some corgi, maybe some jack russell, who knows, who cares. She needed a home and a single mom in Brunswick Maine was keen to find the right home for her. The other one in the photo is Gimli, our little terrier mix of some sort. We adopted him a couple years ago when an elderly lady decided that a 1 year old pup with a lot of energy was not the best idea. We got the DNA test done, just for fun and it came back with 17 breeds (is that a record?)

They are now the best of friends, playing all day long and sleeping together at night (in our bed, of course).

They join the other two – a couple of elderly rescue labs, one black (Surrey) and one yellow (Rooney). Here they are. They are about 13 years old now. We adopted Surrey first, from “Adopt-a-Lab” a now defunct rescue society. She was the sweetest, most perfect dog we had ever had. So we decided to adopt a second, from the same organization. so it figures….Rooney was the worst behaved dog we had ever had. It took a good two years for her to settle down and get over whatever trauma she had been through. Now they are old ladies. Surrey is about 6 months older, but Rooney is the one who looks oldest now. Last year, on January 4, 2023, our vet did an x-ray and found a tumor in her chest that was and is inoperable. He said she probably had 1-3 months to live. Rooney was ill-behaved when she was young, as I mentioned, but she grow to become a loving weirdo, a “kook” (as our vet calls her, and says she is their favorite). She is also stubborn. We watched her closely over the next few months and as I write this – December 12, 2024, she is still with us. She goes for at least one and sometimes two walks a day. We feed her 3x day now and she gets babied. She doesn’t seem to give a shit what the vet said almost a year ago.

We love them all. Gracie has fit into the pack and acts like she belongs and has always belonged here. My daughter was telling her friend the other day that we have adopted a 4th dog. Her friend asked “are they crazy?” and my daughter pointed out that we are retired now. “Oh, then they should get some more!”

I don’t see how we could live without them – they are great company and almost like ‘replacement kids,” but don’t tell my real kids that.