GirlTalk

Mazie came to live with my husband, Jim, and me Monday night. We picked her and her loot up from Kay’s friend, Jane, and brought her to our new home (we just bought it Dec. 4 - I guess we’re not visitors any longer. Does that mean we’re locals?)

We had a bunch of things to bring in besides Mazie and her belongings. But at one point, Jim was out by the car, and I was about to go into the house. I expected Mazie to be at the door because she’s a runner. She used to always take off on Kay and then Kay or someone else would have to try to catch her.

Mazie wasn’t at the door. I opened the door more, seeing that the coast was clear. I didn’t hear anything either. So I turned to Jim and said, “Do you have Mazie?“ and with that, she bolted out the door. Aaaahhhh! I tried running down the ramp from the back door to catch her, to no avail, while yelling to Jim to catch her. (Duh, he wasn’t anywhere near her, plus when she finally did run by him, it was dark and he really couldn’t see her. We don’t live in the city - we still are able to see the stars above our house! Yea!)

So there Mazie went, off into the darkness and the woods around our neighborhood. Ugh. How was I going to call Jane and let her know we’d already lost her???

I didn’t know what to do. I walked around the inside of the house racking the swiss cheese and cobwebs in my head for what we could do.

I’m going to have to invest in a hair dye company (I’m already somewhat gray, but this will do in the rest of the brown and reddish ones!).

I have to say, I have mostly been a cat person. Not because I don’t like dogs; I do. But mostly because I was a single mother for so long and my two kids wanted a pet, and a cat was the easiest to handle. Maybe the second easiest. Our parakeet wasn’t too much work really. But we didn’t really get to enjoy our parakeet like we did our cats. And we’ve had plenty of cats. There was Tiger and Patches (the ones that really made impressions on us). There was Tiger’s brother (I can’t remember his name. It’s probably because we had to give him back to his original mom due to him making me unable to breathe - I’m allergic to cats and I couldn’t take enough Actifed to get unstuffed and stop sneezing.) and then there was the big gray one we had when the kids were very little.

I have only ever had two dogs in my life. When I was a little girl, in elementary school, my family had a bassett hound named Tiny. She had been the runt of her litter. Tiny died in an accident at my uncle’s house in upstate N.Y., that it tooks years for me to forgive myself for. But that’s for another time.

Our second dog was Razz, short for Razzamatazz. He was a keshond (kind of looks like a little german shepherd/collie mix). He was all black and he was about 8 weeks old when my two kids and I got him. The kids were in elementary school at the time.

I had no idea what I was doing getting a dog. I didn’t know anything about dogs; not really. They need so much care; they’re definitely not self-sufficient like cats are. Dogs have to be washed and brushed, walked, toileted and played with. Cats, well, they do that all by themselves.Anyway, Razz went back to his owner because he growled at me one day for telling him not to do something. And really, it scared me.

After about five minutes, Jim came back into the house. And he had our new family member with him! Ugh…. Mazie was back! Whew!

Too much drama! I must’ve been crazy for letting Kay talk me into this! She must not have realized I’m a total novice when it comes to dogs. I can’t wait for Rick to send me Mazie’s papers so I can learn more about her.

Since then, Mazie has settled in somewhat, as our new shadows. She follows us everywhere, into the office, the living room, the kitchen and the bedrooms. Funny though, she’ll come into the bathroom, take a look around and then politely leaves. She has manners.

And Kay has her well trained. She knows to sit, to stay (unless the back door is open), go out, get down (except off the couch). And I found out today she loves vegetables. I happened to mix some in with her Rachel Ray kibbles (Hey! I didn’t pick those out! They came with Mazie!) and she wolfed her lunch down. It was amazing, because yesterday, her first daytime with us, it took her until dinner time to eat anything.

Well, time to run for now. Got to finish my pages, so I can go home and feed and walk Mazie again. I’ll post pix here when I get a minute to take some!

Just wait until you see her face!!!