Archive for January, 2007

Our puppy Kellogg. Our sweet puppy Kellogg that we loved so much, and we lost too soon.

We had been recording his puppy firsts and his growth in a little written book that Petsmart had given us, but I thought maybe a section on my website would be more appropriate. As I started to write about him, to deal with the pain, it turned into a biography of his life, and I felt like that information was important. We need to remember, we need to remember what it was like to be happy with him, that he was happy, and not concentrate on his last moments which is so easy to do.

So although most of this will be written in retrospective with the best of my memory, it is pretty close to the right dates and what actually happened. I don’t expect anyone else to understand, but Sarah and I will look at this in time, and our hearts will mend. It is for us, and for what Kellogg brought to our lives in such a short time.

Back in September when we were in Chicago, I got another email from another collector who had machines that would be willing to meet me and show me around. Well, as we continued to email some, it turns out that he needed some web design services, and I told him I could help him out, that I could do a design for him. Well, that was sometime in November, right about the time I was leaving for Australia.

Our newest family member, the official “Rodawggie”. We have a short list, but we are still trying to name him. We fell victim to the trap and decided to keep him, scary but true. Click on the photo for more images, but be warned, they aren’t much, just a cute wrinkly puppy doing what he has done most of the time so far, sleep.

Sunday morning after church, we came home and had a decision to make. We were fostering this dog, and we had gotten fairly attached, so we started to talk about how it would work, could we properly care for the dog? It sounded like a commitment either way, but any responsibility requires commitment, and I thought if not now, then it really would have to wait until summer and I didn’t think that was a strong enough reason to wait.

So we hemmed and hawed until we got there, but decided to keep him. Then came all of the stuff we had to take care of, having him checked out at the on site clinic, getting toys, food, and filling out forms. We spent another 2 hours in all at the store, but we did leave with a puppy, and he was actually less cost than I was couting on.

I am also sad to say, that we didn’t do much else for the rest of that night either. I did get to talk to Jen for awhile later on, which was good, and I got to watch my tv shows which are so important to me at 8:00. Sarah and I played a lot with the dog, and took turns taking him out every hour or less. But he is cute, and he is all ours, and his personality is really starting to develop. Now comes the tough part of naming him.

We had made a commitment today to go out and look at puppies. I heard that there were going to be a cute shepherd mix at one of the stores, so we were hoping in particular to see those dogs. We started at Petsmart, they seemed to have quite a few puppies up for grabs. There was one really pretty dog there that I was interested in, but the breed wasn’t something I was interested in for a grown up dog, so we resisted.

In a litter of what looked like boxer lab mixes we saw a puppy that caught our eye. We had been looking for a dog like Lady, and were really drawn to what looked like a little Shar Pei. We spent nearly the next two hours playing with this little guy. He kind of wandered the store, exploring, and wasn’t too interested in us. Then we started to try to get his attention with newspaper, crumpling it up and making noise, and that got him excited. He bounded next to us, trying to nip the paper, and this was what we were looking for, a playful puppy.

Then he took a little break to poop in the corner:)

We talked it over, and decided that we would take advantage of the “foster” program, and take him home for the night. From then on out, he was pretty sleepy. We carried him out of the store, wrapped up in my fleece jacket and took him home. But first we had to make a stop at Walmart, to get some blue Dawn soap. We didn’t realize that this was a good cleaner for puppies, but that is what the rescue told us. After rolling around in dog waste for the past couple of days, no matter how cute he smelled like a fuzzy turd.

The first thing we did when we got him home was to give him a bath. Surprisingly, he was very good and seemed calm through the whole process. But he sure did shiver a lot, his small little bony frame was thin to the point that we asked about his health when we were at the store. Malnourished but normal, we were informed that there was nothing to worry about.

He wasn’t very eventful that first night. He would sleep for very long periods of time, with short bursts of playtime that would last about 15 minutes. We got a lot of photos of him sleeping in a Pampered Chef box we made up for him with some blankets, and on top of us in a blanket.

When he was awake, he was very playful, he would play with anything we gave him. We made a sock filled with newspaper for him to chew on because of his reaction to the newspaper in the store, and that got us in some tug of war matches. He even got his tiny mouth around a tennis ball that we got from the garage and carried it around some. Sarah had a little doll from a cereal box that we gave him as well. It was a Dr. Seuss character named “Thing 1″ that had this thin little red body, and electric blue hair styled like he was Einstein or something. I think this was probably his favorite toy, he would carry this all around with him, where ever he would go.

We both spent the whole night playing, and stayed up pretty late. I stayed up the latest, which meant that I got to lay him down for the night, which we were both worried about. We had made up a little blanketed area in the garden tub, sectioned off with two laundry tubs. I laid him down, pet him some, and then shut the door.

His whimpering started immediately, and it lasted for awhile. Sarah got up, laid on the tubs in the bathroom petting him until both he and Sarah fell asleep. Sarah eventually came back to bed and he slept through most of the night until the early morning. Sarah got up with him, took him outside, and then stayed in the living room half napping half playing until I woke Sunday morning.

Today was really nice. Got up and had a nice breakfast and read some of the paper. Sarah took off soon after to go to the store, I knew that I had to do some work so I stuck around. I got through some more email, and researched arcade related stuff. I talked with Justin and Tim, as well as my parents and Laurie & Kenny. I did also finally get to do some design work for a contact in the arcade stuff who is in Chicago. I talked to him about coming up and having him show me some things the weekend before I found out about Australia. Well, that got put on hold, but I told him I could help him with some web work. So, late, but a man of my word. He liked the revisions I made which was good, so hopefully he can use them, and I haven’t damaged the relationship to be able to ask him questions when needed.

At about 2:30 Sarah and I headed out to see if Petco had any puppies, since I had checked out Petsmart last night. They didn’t, so we did some pricing out of what it would cost for our base of necessities to have a dog. It was about what I expected, but it was good to see it in print. We did head back to Petsmart, and there were about 30 puppies there again this weekend that they were looking to get homes. We ended up spending about an hour and a half with the dogs there, somehow, and we really wanted to try their “foster” program. The program lets you take the dog home over night, to house them, and get a feel for their personality and such. We knew this was a trap, but we didn’t really care, we were preppared. And I am embarrassed to say that we didn’t do anything but play with the dog for the rest of the night. We held it, got it some chew toys, gave it a bath, and just sat around in front of the tv watching it’s every move. In that time, we got 4 pee spots and one poopie, mostly on Sarah’s brand new carpets. (I am sure the dog isn’t smart enough at 8 weeks to make a statement:) ).

It was time to go to bed, so we had made a little resting place for him in our tub. I put him in, went to bed, and listened to him howl for the next half hour until about 2 am. It was terrible. I knew that Sarah got up to do something, maybe put him by our bed in a box, but turns out she laid in there with him until he fell asleep and he slept until about 6 am. She then came out, played and napped with him until I woke up about 9. But the good news, he apparently started to figure out that when we took him outside, he needed to potty. We kept taking him out there, and he just whined, too malnurished to do anything in the cold, his ribcage just sticking out. He got the message, and that was nice to wake up to after such a long night.

I still hadn’t heard anything, and tonight was when I found the other photos of the sideart online. I have started to think I may have to have to start my search again, that maybe Richard just is too busy. The photos I found are the first I have seen of the sideart bigger, but I tried to do some tracing and I lose some of the detail, especially in Jr. Pac-man’s shoes. I emailed Richard to show him what I found, hoping that I wasn’t being too overbearing and asked him again if he had time.

Today was a really good day. I wrapped up a project at work that went over well, and I got to come home a little early, which is always nice.

I wasn’t home very long, I messed with the arcade game some, loading adobe software to read some instructions, and then I headed off to the gym. Brian was going to be there at 5, and Sarah was already there, or so I thought. She wasn’t anywhere to be found, but maybe I just missed her. We had a hard lift, it felt like I hadn’t done biceps in 2 months, and I have no idea why.

On the way back I stopped at Petsmart to take a look at the puppies. All they had this week was mutts apparantly. They didn’t know much or anything about the parents, so it was hard to know the breeds and research them as a result. Puppies are cute, but I just figured we would wait another week. I got some Subway for dinner which was excellent, and then I stopped at Petco to see if they had puppies on the weekdays, but they don’t.

I headed home and got here just before 7. As soon as I got in, I made a small delivery to Rachel and Joel down the street, some alcolhol that had been graciously given to me I passed on to them because I knew they would enjoy it, plus I got to see their place and talk to them. When I got home I went through some emailing and communications that I have needed to do, I cut a hole for the outlet in the garage, and I made a called that got me the information to fix the light in Sarah’s office. I also dinked around with my Mame machine more, of course. Sarah had come home, fixed some dinner, and left again. She was up at scrap booking, so I knew I was on my own for most of the night. At about 10 I put in Fast and Furious 3, and I really liked that. The color, the electronic music, and the high paced action and just a small dash of sex appeal But I was just really surprised.

It was about 11:30, so I went to dink around with the computer stuff more, and email, and Sarah got home. We sat down in front of the tv, when we finally got our “drunk dial”. Seems the group that was hanging out tonight was done, and they were heading back towards us. I lured them in with some promise of alcolholic gifts, so they stopped in. Kate and Wes, Jeff and Sarah, the girls were bubbly, the guys were tired, but we got to hear a few interesting stories about the night before they had to take off and for Wes and Kate, make the long trek home. I did a coulpe of things, and went to bed, Sarah relaxed in front of a movie for a bit before hitting the sack.

Today I stayed a little later at work again, but since we weren’t going to the gym that meant I could just eat dinner and do whatever without it being 7:30 when I started.

Sarah and I ate a nice dinner together, and we watched 45 minutes of “Thank you for Smoking” that I got when I returned my Blockbuster mail in to the store location after work today. After dinner I went downstairs and tried to figure out how to get my button LED’s to come on. But after about an hour of that, playing games, and talking to Kate about her day, I didn’t have any luck. I turned my attention back to the house wiring.

Tonight I got back up in the attic to feed the line from the switch to the outlet, and I was done up there for now. I drug back the drill and the cord (yeah, that was fun, no cordless drill meant a long way to haul a tool through an attic on a plug) and came back inside to wire everything up. I got everything together, the old lightswitch, the new lightswitch, and the light fixture. But wouldn’t you know, I flipped on the breaker and it couldn’t be perfect. At least it didn’t pop, but her office light was permanently on, the lightswitch wasn’t turning it off. Right now, I don’t know exactly what that means, so, another night of waiting to get that finished.

Sarah did school work tonight, still not feeling great, and watched some tv, just trying to stay warm. She was my helper when I was reducing slack in the wire I ran too.