Rescue Dog Blog: This is a rescue dog!: Weekend Warriors

How did Wiley and I (and Jenny) spend this beautiful weekend? Why thank you for asking! The Northeast finally had a bit of a thaw, and we did our best to take advantage of it. While Hubs was away at Kutztown University's first baseball tournament in Newport News, VA (they won of course), it was up to me and the furkids to take care of business. It started with dealing with the large slabs of ice falling off of the rubber roof.

As the temperature climbed to a balmy 45 degrees and the sun shone unobstructed the many layers of snow/ice began to slide en masse and land right outside our door. I didn't want Wiley and myself to get crushed so I had to knock it down as best as I could.

We also took advantage of the nice weather to actually hang out some laundry! Wiley was thrilled with anything that kept us outside and involved me throwing his ball.

Another project I had to tackle was painting the bathroom. Jenny helped me by sitting in the bathtub scratching insanely for a long time. This is a little snippet, but you have to watch it just to see the look of death she gives me at the end.

The weather offered a good chance to get Wiley down to the pet store for a bath. Good news for me, bad news for Wiley!

He is just so dejected when he has to get a bath, even though we were using lovely homemade soap that Carrie gave him for Christmas.

He especially hates the blow dryer.

Oh heck, who am I kidding? He especially hates everything.

Giving him a bath alone gets tricky. You can see how wet my sleeve gets from trying to maneuver him while washing him, even while wearing their huge plastic apron. The light gray at the very top of the picture is the dry part. The rest is soaked.

Here's a picture of him doing the patented dog shake.

After it was over I told him to pick a treat. Now, I always tell him this, and with each successive trip he calms down more and more and is able to show a bit more interest. This time he actually knocked a box off the shelf. Sorry it's blurry but i didn't expect him to be moving.

It was a type of treat he's never had before, and at first I thought it was a coincidence so I pointed out some other ones. He sat down right in front of them! Ok, then. I guess those were the ones he wanted. BOL.

I had to run into Lowe's to get paint rollers. I was gone less than five minutes (I know people get ornery about dogs in cars-it was 45 degrees out and all four windows were open like you see here. He was not going to overheat.), and when I came back I sneaked up to the car from a different direction and quietly said his name. This was his response. Awwww.

Also I want to give a shout-out to Lowe's for having this rescue dog magazine in their checkout line! How cool!

The best part of the weekend came today when Wiley went for a walk with Rosco.

Now, I've already shown you their first playdate. It went about as good as it could given Wiley's neuroses about anything new and all other dogs. So today I told him we were going to go with Rosco, and we had to go outside and wait for him to get here.

Wiley was vigilantly on the lookout.

Imagine his surprise when Rosco showed up with his brother Owen. Owen was surprised to see Wiley too.

Rosco and his dad Matt led the way, while Katie, Owen, Wiley, and I walked side by side.

Wiley doesn't do well with other dogs behind him. Occasionally during the walk he was almost side by side with Rosco, but I was having such a good time chatting with Katie and Owen that it didn't even occur to me to take a picture.

After the walk I wanted to take some cute pictures of Rosco, but he was still so excited. Here you can see him say "But I don't want to sit down Dad!"

"Ohhhh, okay."

"Oh hi buddy! Were you with us this whole time? Cool!"

Check out Rosco's tongue.

Finally the moment came for Wiley to meet the baby. A real bonafide baby. Wiley did well with Charlie (click here to see), but she was starting to toddle around. Owen is not quite six months old. Katie is pretty dog savvy so she gave Wiley time to come up to Owen on his own.

He was very interested.

Katie made sure Owen couldn't grab Wiley or scare him with his hands in any way.

Then there were many kisses.

"We ever gonna get one of these Mom?"

Wiley and Jenny did a great job of keeping me company while their dad was away. Wiley even insisted on crawling up on my lap late at night when I was passing the time by doing a jigsaw. He did not fit, but he sure acted like he did. That would be his back you're looking on on the left of the picture. Both he and the laptop are sharing my lap.

I couldn't have really asked for better company. It's hard to get lonely with him on my lap and Jenny grooming my head as I try to sleep. Yes, that happened. She is so weird. I do not have pictures though. haha. Would you settle for this picture of her lying on the shower curtain (currently down due to painting)?