#11 Pinto

On Wednesdays I volunteer at Guide Dogs for the blind.  I spend the morning helping out in the vet clinic and the afternoon walking dogs.  When I arrived yesterday with Lila I was met by the sad news that Lila would be leaving us.  They want her in a 'working foster home'.  At these homes, located close to the campus, the dogs are picked up everyday and taken to Gresham or Portland to 'work'.  Lila needs to keep up with her training so that she can soon be matched with a visually impaired person.  I understand that but I really felt sad.  George and I both had fallen in love with her spunky, enthusiastic personality.

I must have looked sad because one of the kennel techs asked me if I wanted to take another dog home right then.  Of course the only answer was yes!

So meet Pinto!  Guide dog #11. Our 3rd retired guide and our 2nd black lab.

At ten and a half years old he is definitely an older dog but a very active one!  He fits in well here with us….I like to think that we are also active senior citizens.  Like me, he is always ready to go!

Now when you hear the name "Pinto", you probably think of this….

Not me…I think of this……Jose Manuel Pinto…..

FC Barcelona's back up goalkeeper!  You know how some BYU fans say they 'bleed blue', well I bleed 'blue and red', the Barça colors!

Lila - Foster Dog #10

Lila is our 10th foster dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind.  Just look at that sweet face!  This was about 30 minutes before the time I usually feed her and she is giving me her best "I might just starve to death" look!  Hard to resist!

 We've had 2 retired guides, 2 medical career change dogs, 2 active guides who just needed to be boarded for a short time, and 3 training dogs who have gone on to be Guide Dogs.  Lila is a class ready dog, which means that she has all her training and is just waiting to be matched to a blind person.  However she was a very vocal critic of kennel life.  The staff reported that she barked constantly and chewed up her fleece bed.  If they put her in an X-pen, which is basically a little portable fence, and she could see another dog's fleece she would push the x-pen over close enough to steal the fleece and chew that up too! Very naughty little girl!  I think they had serious doubts about her and were reluctant to place her in class with a blind person.  But since she was very good at guide work the trainers decided to see how she would adapt to a home environment and sent her to us.

We've had her now for four weeks and I've never heard her bark even once.  She never chews her fleece and is just a great dog!  Looks like she will get to be a guide dog after all!

Lila is not perfect though!  She has quite the personality. If I'm not very observant when I'm reading or napping or watching TV, I look up to find her sharing the couch with me.  Very bad behavior for a guide dog!

We finally found a solution that makes her happy, while still keeping the rules.  I have a down comforter on the floor right by the couch.  She usually puts a paw on the couch to see if maybe the rules are different today but when I tell her NO she settles in on the comforter.

Chewing on this bone is one of the joys of her life.  I sometimes worry that she is going to break a tooth!

 She seems to prefer 'frog' position!  Yes she is flexible!

Sometimes the bone is like a pacifier!

The red bone is wonderful but the very best bone is her KONG.  It is hollow plastic that is supposed to be indestructible.  If it survives her, I will agree that it is.  When we leave her home alone we put her into her crate.  I usually put a little bit of peanut butter in the KONG and then tell her,"Kennel" and she races to get in.  I think she secretly wishes we'd leave her more often, if that meant more peanut butter kong time!

I don't know where she was raised so I'm not sure if this big snow we had was her first snow experience.  She acted like it was.  When I took her out the first time she just kept trying to dig down to the more familiar grass.  By about the 3rd time she decided it was pretty fun to run around in the white cold stuff and she loved going for walks!

And even made a cute new friend!

After the freezing rain turned the top of the snow crunchy, Lila discovered a new joy!  She absolutely loved eating the crunchy stuff off the top.  As we walked outside she stopped every few feet to take a bite.  I started breaking off big pieces and taking them in to put in her food bowl.  She acted like I had given her pieces of steak and always ate every single bit before it melted.  Doggy Snow Cones!

We love this sweetie and are so glad to get to play a small part in her life while she waits for her real life as a companion and guide to begin!  The person who gets her will be lucky!

DNA

For Christmas George's sister Karen gave us each a Ancestry DNA test.  I wasn't too surprised at my results:

I am 38% Irish.  My mother was a Boyle and her family came from Tralee, County Kerry.  She even had an Uncle called Paddy!  Can't get much more Irish than that!  I've moved a trip to Ireland way up on my bucket list!

23% Great Britain. Does this explain my fascination with the British Royal family!

15% Western Europe I have a German line that I'm just learning about…the Gross family….or possibly Grosse!  My maiden name was Montgomery and I know that there were Norman knights named "Montgomerie"; not that I can link to any knights….I can't get the Montgomery family past my great-grandfather who said that he was born in a different state and in a different year every single time he filled out a document or completed a census.

I was surprised by my 13% Scandinavian.  I did love Norway and Sweden and I like to shop at Ikea! Oh and I love DAIM chocolate candy bars but I can't stand pickled herring and sour cream. And I most definitely don't have any seafaring blood!

7% Italy/Greece I haven't been to Greece but I absolutely love Italy.  What's not to love?  Great scenery, fantastic food, art, architecture and the best gelato in the world!!!!  

1% Iberian peninsula I just knew I had some Catalan blood….I am confident that my DNA is all from Barcelona and most certainly not Madrid! Independence for Catalunya!!! 

 Visca Barca!

This cemetery is next to FC Barcelona's stadium.  I told my kids that I want to be buried there.  Some people want to be buried in the Kidron Valley in Jerusalem and some near the temple in Salt Lake….bury me in the shadow of the Camp Nou! (For my family that is reading this….I am joking!)  I feel like I have more than 1% Iberian Peninsula DNA….I know I left a part of my heart in Barcelona!

1% Finland and Eastern Russian Don't even know what to say about that!!!! Perhaps somewhere deep down I have a desire to try this…...

Last I have less than 1% Eastern Europe and less than 1% Caucasus.  Maybe some of these people are my ancestors! See any family resemblance???

Another Graduate!

Miss Christina was our  ninth foster dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind. She stayed with us for about a month while she recovered from some stomach issues. Trust me, you do not want to hear details about that!

We love that sweet little girl! This afternoon she graduated and is now an official Guide Dog!

 Doesn't she look great in her new harness with her graduate?  Christina is her third guide dog!

We are so proud of her and so happy that we get to play a small part in this wonderful program.

Snow in LO

George and I have lived in Utah, Colorado, and Idaho so we are no strangers to snow.  This is our 4th winter in Lake Oswego and the first time we have had a snow storm since our move.  A couple of other times we have had a 'snow event' that did cause school closures but hardly any other disruption.

On February 6 all the weather forecasts pointed to a major storm.  People made emergency runs to the store, school dismissed early before a flake had even fallen, and by the time the snow actually started the freeways were at a standstill.  Snow fell for two days and then freezing rain added to the slippery conditions!  Schools were closed Friday and Monday.  George worked at home and I was a total lazy bum and watched about 20 episodes of Hawaii 5-O on the couch covered with an electric throw!  I don't know why a snow day feels like such a holiday to me since I don't have anyone in school.  I don't work and in reality I don't have a very strenuous schedule anyway!  For whatever reason, I loved it!  Must remind me of snow days in Lonoke when I was a little girl and the whole town just closed down.  Or maybe the days when our kids were little and a snow day meant snow fun!

Official snowfall for Lake Oswego was 8 inches.  We had about 6 inches on our railing.

We didn't even bring a snow shovel with us to Oregon but George keep our stairs clear by just sweeping them every few hours.

It was our Stake Conference weekend and we were getting a new Stake President.  Let me explain a bit about that.  In our church we are divided into congregations or 'wards' geographically.  If you live within certain boundaries you are assigned to a ward.  About 300 people are in a ward and one man is 'called' to be the Bishop, which is much like being a minister of a congregation except Bishops also work at a full time job to support their families.  Wards are organized into Stakes.  In our Stake there are 7 wards.  Another man is called to be the President of the Stake.  The man who has led our Stake for the last 5 or 6 years has just been called to be the president of a mission in Ghana so he and his wife will be leaving in July to spend three years presiding over hundreds of young missionaries.  Young men can go on a mission when they are 18 and young women when they are 19.  Right now worldwide there are about 80,000 missionaries serving at their own expense for a period of 18 months for the young women and 2 years for the young men.

A General Authority, or one of the church's leaders from Salt Lake, had come to Lake Oswego to interview men and call our new Stake President.  What does all this have to do with snow in LO you may be thinking?  Well the General Authority said that in his 14 years as a church leader he had never cancelled a Saturday night meeting at a Stake Conference BUT he did this time.  The roads were that bad!  We did have the normal Sunday morning meeting but we all got emails saying that we were excused from attending if we did not want to drive on the roads.  I think the General Authority was quite shocked at how many people attended. Probably about half the normal number of people. Maybe people had cabin fever after two and a half days indoors.

 I always think that Oregon is beautiful but covered in snow it was spectacular.  I may be in the minority but I'm ready for another snow storm!