Rainy Days!

Its been raining here all week and oddly enough I'm glad. As backwards as it sounds, I think if it was sunny and people were running around outside and playing in our neighborhood, it would be harder on me. It makes me feel like the world is mourning with me. But it has gotten easier throughout the week and hopefully we will all be adjusted to it soon. We are telling stories as we think about them and doing more. We walked Lola down the street yesterday because it stopped raining for like two hours and met some neighbors that we hadn't met before. They have 3 kids and a little dog. The smallest girl of theirs was 5 and she loved Lola. Lola let her pet and pick at her and also let their little dog hop around and yip at her. She had fun, but after about 30-40 minutes Lola was ready to go, we were too.

The rain reminds me of one of the times Bleu ran off when we were living on Jackson in Fayetteville with his uncle Ben Dye, he's the one in the middle.

Bleu actually ran off a lot when we were living there, we tried a hundred different ways to keep him in, but if he wanted out, he got out. Of course back then Bleu still had his nuts so he was always on the prowl. But anyway, every year in Fayetteville they have a dog parade at Gulley Park and I decided Bleu and I were going. I told him Friday morning about it and thought he would be excited. I went to work and came back and he was gone. I called the Humane Society, per protocol back then, they new him and I on a first name basis and loved it because they got $35 off of me every time they picked him up. But they hadn't seen him that day. I looked all over for a couple of hours, but finally got to the point of saying "He'll come back when he's ready." And he would several times he would just come back to the front door several hours later. But this time he didn't and that night we had a rain like a monsoon, I was worried sick. The next morning I got a call from a lady saying she had Bleu at her house. They lived probably 5 miles away, so I imagine Bleu took off, it started raining and he got lost. This lady had a husband and a couple of kids and lived in a real nice house with a large, covered back deck that over looked a back yard that was about .5 acre with an 8 ft tall privacy fence around the perimeter. So apparently her and her husband were sitting in their den drinking wine, looking out the back door as it was open an listening and watching the storm, when Bleu just walked right in soaked and exhausted. She said he must have heard them or the radio, jumped the fence and walked up the deck. He walked right up to her sniffed and laid on their rug. He was so tired she just let him sleep and gave him a T-Bone steak! I think that the way people treated Bleu when he went on his adventures encouraged more of them. He never ran into anyone who was annoyed by having him, he always got first class treatment. So the lady let Bleu stay the night and decided to wait until morning to call me. She was going to call me first thing but her kids woke up and thought Bleu was a present, she let them play with him for a couple of hours then called me. Bleu stunk to high heaven and a bathed immediately after another stern talking to. But we did not make the dog parade, Bleu obviously thought that was gay.

Ben actually started the "Hello, I'm Bleu." thing. He would just look at Bleu and say it over and over. Bleu would talk back to him and give him guff until he couldn't stand it any more and would just jump at Ben in his recliner. Funny stuff, you could watch it for hours.

Another rain story involved Ryan Hodson and his lab Lucy.

Ryan and I decided it would be cool to walk the dogs down to Dickson Street one morning and eat breakfast at Common Grounds. Neither on of us thought it would be cool to check the weather. We walked them down there, tied them up to a bike rack and sat right inside the windows so they could see us. Not 30 seconds after getting our coffee and ordering it began to pour. We checked on them and Lucy was fine and as usual if there was another dog with him Bleu was fine. It may have appeared awfully cruel, but they really didn't seem to mind. We ate as fast as we could, slammed our coffee and ran all the way back home through the rain and the dogs had a freaking blast!