Category: Zeus

Vacation 2014 – Part 3

Ok, so life got busy and I didn’t end up finishing posting about our vacation.

I’m sure that some of you feel like you’ve just been left hanging……..HA!!!!

Ok, maybe not so much, but……continuing on….

It’s amazing how quickly the busy-ness and chaos seems to seep back into every facet of your life, once you leave the “vacation” and head back into reality. I guess that’s the beauty of vacation or holiday time….it’s a moment to relax, settle, absorb……just breathe.


There were lots of those moments, in between the bustle of life with 6/7 people. No family vacation is really a vacation for the parents…..it’s more of a break. Once I realized and accepted that, I’ve been a lot more content on our “holiday’s”.

Jon took the kids on a number of walks and this sweet boy here…..

He brought me back something from almost every walk. He is such a thoughtful little soul.

This time he brought me back some lovely flower puff things…..I have no idea what they were and they were almost dried, but I put them in a beer bottle vase and he was so thrilled to see his gift treasured.

After the first 3 days of sheer panic, this lovely fellow settled down (as long as there were no other dogs walking past) into the camping lifestyle and was almost a gentleman….almost!!!!


He has such sad eyes.

There was SO. MUCH. SWIMMING…. and Judah even sucked up his courage enough to jump off the dock TWICE!!!!

Jeremy was determined to get this rubbermaid bin to work as a boat and although it took a fair amount of figuring to work out the ballast and balance…he finally managed to tool around a little, until it dipped a little too much at one corner and then filled up and sank….

Sometime, this little one just slays me with his nerdliness…..he is such a sweet quirky treasure.

I have no idea what he was trying to show me in this picture.

Here is where you get the best peek of my little darling….ear folded over and all…and he wasn’t swimming….just wearing the goggles because he wanted to.

Oh I love him, so!

The Skagit Valley is a beautiful place with so many interesting things to look at and experience. It feels like our own little corner of heaven on earth. These puff ball mushrooms were just growing in the campsite, but it wasn’t till we got home and I could google them that I found out they were edible and not poisonous. They were just so cute, all nestled into the ground.

Read about Part 1 of our vacation here.

Read about Part 2 of our vacation here.

Part 4 coming….

Whatever happened to that other dog?

I’ve had more than a few people ask about Koda, our “rottweiller” puppy.

Rather than answer every one individually, I thought I’d just type out a post……it’s way easier than trying to tell the story over and over…..

Long story short, Koda is with a loving family out in Abbotsford.

We got her as a puppy. We bought from backyard breeders…..cause we had no clue!

We took her to puppy training and worked our butts off to do the absolute best that we could for her.

We loved her.

She is probably a Shiba Inu instead of a Rottweiller. Who knows if she has any rottweiller in her at all? Except for her coloring, she looks and acts so much like a Shiba Inu.

She is a CRAZY SMART dog. She picks up tricks like no body’s business.

And………..I don’t think that our house was the best place for her. She was insanely high strung and stressed out at our place. And, with 5 kids and a handful of those being special needs kids….it’s understandable. We are not the calmest or easiest family to be a part of.

I found it extremely difficult to give her what she needed and to be honest, I don’t think we had “it” to give to her. I don’t think we could give her a calm, peaceful life.

She ended up barking for hours on end, and seeing as I am the one who is at home all day….it really wore me down.

We met Zeus in December and fell in love with his easy going behaviour. When we had originally planned on getting a dog, we were thinking BIG and Koda most definitely was not big. She also had the most amazing persistence of any dog that I’ve ever come in contact with…….and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way.

The final straw for me, was when we had a OT come to our house to asses Jeremy and no matter what I did – from moving her inside or outside, or to her X-pen or down to her crate. Introducing her to the OT – who considerately gave her a head scratch – or spraying her in the butt with a bit of water to distract her, to giving her a Kong with treats………she barked non-stop for an hour and a half, in her shrill high pitched bark….by the time the OT left….I was SO stressed out and absolutely drained.

I took two ativan and trecked to boys off to the LEGO Movie and sat absolutely zoned out for the hour and a half that the movie played.

A friend of a friend had been looking for a running dog, and Koda most definitely could run. The house is a much calmer place than we could ever offer her and from what we hear, she is doing well.

We feel so conflicted about this whole situation. We’ve had Koda since she was a tiny, tiny puppy. She was SO little and sick when we got her. We are all she knew. She is a sweet dog. I just don’t know if we were the right family for her. From what we’ve heard, the anxiety that she displayed at our house…..is a thing of the past. She stayed with friends of ours before heading off to this family and they said that she didn’t bark, she didn’t seemed stressed. Even that makes me feel bad, because……..how much of her “anxiety” had to do with the chaos in our house?

On one hand, I feel guilty because we “got rid” of her and yet….if we were contributing to her anxiety, then that was not “kind” either. We can’t change the dynamics of our family and it’s got to be better to have her in an environment where she is not always stressed, right? Still, the guilt is a kick in the gut……..

Zeus is not perfect. He’s got his own set of flaws and issues, but he is so relaxed and laid back….he fits into the chaos and it doesn’t seem to affect him the same way it affected Koda.

We signed the adoption papers yesterday and Zeus is officially ours.

And of course, I wake up to this……

Stupid Dog……….