The New Brood

My husband and I really did it this time. We so missed not having that extra heartbeat in a room. That little creature that loved you unconditionally. That constant shadow who followed you from room to room, well.....if you love dogs you know what I mean.

So we decided to do something we wanted to do for a long time, rescue a greyhound.

Enter "Kiowa Sunbeam", who is now our wonderful girl Kai!

We wanted Kai to have a companion(we always had a few dogs at a time) and we wanted to find a male terrier mix so I hit Petfinder. com for weeks until I found this little guy, Dutch. There was only one problem. Dutch was in Arkansas and we were in New Jersey.

So I have a friend who was born and raised in Arkansas and with the help of another friend's great on gas Toyota , we decided to make a mad dash halfway across the country to his parents home in the northern part of Arkansas.

As we drove out to Arkansas we stopped at just about every TJ Maxx we could find. My friend Shea has a justifiable addiction to these Belgium chocolates that are only available at TJ Maxx during the Christmas season. If you loooove chocolate you know it had to be done!

Now, little Dutch (he was actually called Hutch at this point) was in the south western part of the state. My friend Shea, has a friend Martha, who was not that far from Dutch's location. Martha was going to be heading up to the Ozarks (nearer to where Shea's parents live) and offered to pick up Dutch and drop him off to us. It saved us about another 6 hours of driving, so we thrilled. In hindsight though, we could of found a few more TJ Maxx's but the car was already so loaded down with the stuff I don't think we would have had room for the dog and one more piece.

On the day we were to meet Martha, we had quite a few hours to kill before our rendezvous so my friend Shea takes me to the most incredible natural wonder in the world, the Blanchard Springs Caverns. I highly recommend seeing these caverns if you ever get to the Ozarks. I can not even describe this other worldly experience. Amazing!

Being the artists that we are we had to stop in this art center in the Ozarks and take a look at some of the wonderful handcrafted items from the local artists. Well while we were there Martha calls to let us know she had Dutch and would see us in a few hours but that there was a problem.

About 20 minutes before Martha arrived at the Bailey Family Special Needs Animal Rescue Dutch's brother Starski was returned to the rescue center. He had been adopted a week earlier and the family decided they did not want him. My husband had really liked Starski and we had inquired about him before Dutch, well you know where this is going by now.

I could not say yes, "bring him too", without talking to my husband first. I called him over and over on his cell phone and could not reach him. I called people that might know where he was (most likely on his job site) and left messages to please have him call me. Martha had to leave in a very short time so she would not have to be driving through the night. I needed to make a decision and I was also thinking "two puppies, we would have to be out of our minds". We are!

My husband got back to me in the nick of time. Here is Milo formerly known as Starski. We just had to have the little guy!

This was quite a trip. The first thing we had to do when we got into Arkansas, at about 7 pm, was to pull into a dark bank parking lot and change into black clothes to go to a viewing of Shea's sister's father-in-law, at the local funeral parlor. Shea never met the man and I certainly did not know him or anyone else. We were also the only two people dressed in black looking like we were going to a NY art opening compared to all the jeans and cowboy type shirts. Was kind of surreal. The mourners were the happiest nicest bunch of people you ever wanted to meet. Did not feel like any family viewing I've been to back east.

There were so many little quirky episodes on this trip that we should have been filming it all. Since I am not the best writer I will spare you all from any further details.

Just enjoy these photos of our new family because we are enjoying them immensely!