Update

Hey everyone,

Figured we should post an update about our lives, but I do apologize for the lack of pictures. Sure, I can always post pictures of the famous Winston, but I get enough grief from a certain fellow blogger in LA for my ridiculous obsession with my 4-legged best buddy.

John is going through what is likely the busiest semester, between overloading himself with classes and seminars, teaching, and research. He is an overachiever, but he plays that role so well. He has also found some time for Wake and UofA basketball, which is a good opportunity for him to relax. You guys know him, though...this doesn't really relax him.

Winston is doing really well at agility so far. He has mastered the tunnel, which is stretched out to about 15 feet. For whatever reason, this was scary for some dogs...not for Winston. Once he would reach one end, he was ready to run back the other way without any prodding from me. And, he liked to stop in the middle to sniff out any treats that were left as bait for some of the more timid dogs. To see the entire tunnel from the outside, wobbling and rocking around from him investigating, was pretty funny.

As for me, I'm keeping busy with my new lab and various things. I'm at the animal shelter most weekends, which I love, but this weekend was a really tough time to be there. After several months of investigation, a very large dog fighting ring was busted last week in Tucson. Two of the many news stories on it is here and here. Officials seized about 150 dogs (mostly pit bulls), loads of firearms, and God-awful equipment used in breeding fighting dogs (treadmills, rape stands for unwilling female dogs, etc). Most of these dogs ended up at our shelter.

To accommodate the 150 dogs at the shelter (side note: pit bulls are kenneled separately since they will kill each other if kept together), most of the regular dogs up for adoption were moved to the Humane Society shelter across town. So, my job of finding homes for the remaining adoptable dogs was a tough one on Saturday. It was a bit jarring for my little protected soul to see the pictures of everyone arrested in this bust scattered around "backstage," as warning should we see any of them lurking around. During the slow times, I poked around the closed-off and very secure part of the shelter to see all of these fighting dogs. Many came up to meet me right away, some were unsocial, and some were downright irritable. There were so many puppies, too. After hearing that some of these fighters were from such good "breeding stock" to cost thousands of dollars each, I wasn't too surprised to see that they were in good shape and healthy-looking. Still, I couldn't help but feel a lump in my throat walking around back there, thinking about what each of these dogs may have already gone through.

These dogs will all very likely be humanely euthanized...these dogs do well what their jerk-face owners bred them to do. It is controversial to put these dogs down, as many of Michael Vick's dogs are currently being rehabilitated. So, with the large number of dogs seized here in town, their "good" breeding line, the cost to rehabilitate these dogs, and the small funding our shelter gets, the reality is grim. Any thoughts?

I'm realizing what a "Debbie Downer" post this is, but I just can't seem to get these dogs out of my head. It amazes me to realize that Winston is the same species as these fighters. As my dad says of Winston's ability to protect us against another burglar, "He would serve them cocktails before he would ever stop them." While that doesn't serve my paranoia over home intruders well, it does make Happy Hour at our house very nice. He makes a good vodka tonic.

Dawg House

Here is just a goofy little thing some of you might get a kick out of. Today, Winston is at dog daycare. You read that correctly. Over the next few days, we are hosting Cooper (a very sweet Doberman-lab mix) while James and Somer are away. Every Friday, Cooper and his dog-sis Ripley go to the Dawg House Daycare service to burn some energy. So, to keep with Cooper's routine and help Winston burn some of his energy, we took both of them over there this morning. The website is http://www.dawghouse.biz/, and if you click on Dawgie Cam on the bottom, you will likely see a blur of stocky, shaggy Winston. They will have fun playing with dogs all day, and hopefully come home tired.

Winston 4 Prez

Winston's support of Hillary made his favorite website, www.luvmutt.com!! I hope that everyone in a Super Tuesday state voted today. When I showed up to vote, it only took 2 minutes....so no excuses, people!

Fun weekend

Hey everyone,

First of all, GO GIANTS!! John and I had such a fantastic time last night watching the Super Bowl at Linsday and Brent's house. I even made Giants cookies and brought out my 1986 Giants Super Bowl victory shirt for the occasion (it fits better now than it did in 1986). Then we went home and I watched Puppy Bowl IV for an embarrassing amount of time.


The rest of the weekend was pretty awesome too. On Saturday, Kara and I went to hear Hillary speak on the UofA campus. To be up front, I'm still undecided between her and Obama so I thought hearing her speak might help. I need to figure it out before tomorrow's primary. Chelsea was there too, but my fantasy of inviting her out for drinks and Mexican food to become buddies never really came to fruition. When I got home, though, it was clear Winston was jealous of my Hillary sticker, so I gave it to him. If you remember, he has always been a Hillary supporter.


Sunday afternoon we also had our first Agility class with Winston. We hope to have pictures of him on some of the fun equipment at some point, but our first class included obedience basics (which Winston nailed, of course!). Some people get really competitive about Agility, but our primary goal is just to have fun with him at the class and let him learn some new things.

It's been a while....

Hey everyone,

It has taken us (me) a long time to get organized to post up some goodies. John and I had a great time in NC for the holidays, and we even got to see Wake Forest play in the bowl game in Charlotte. Check out Brian's blog entry about John's wonderful time watching the game. I stayed in NC for two more weeks to chill with the Goldstein Lab and to do some experiments that will hopefully help the paper Bob and I are writing find a nice home in a journal.

The last few weeks in AZ have been my Return To Routine. If anyone knows me well, this RTR is an exciting time for me; my obsession with my red daily planner and pages of to-do lists comfort me, while the chaos around holidays keeps me a bit unsettled (even if I am having an awesome time). I've heard that this part of me stems from my early childhood problems with potty training. Happy New Year, everyone!

I do want to share a bit of my joy with everyone. You may remember, a few posts back, that our house was burglarized. When talking with our landlord about making the house more secure, I mentioned the doggie-door in the back possibly needing to be closed off. This was sad to imagine Winston running into a wall where the door used to be, but I felt that someone could crawl through pretty easily (especially in the likelihood that would-be robbers could be thin from all the meth around Tucson). John quickly said, "That's ridiculous. Nobody could fit through there." I could smell the challenge before he finished his sentence. Some of you may have even weighed in on our bet over whether or not I could fit through there. Some thought my head too big (wrong! quite the opposite, folks), my shoulders too broad (really?!), or even my hips too wide (thanks very much, jerks). I'm writing about this, because you can only imagine the outcome......Enjoy!

Merry Christmas!

Christmas spirit

Hey everyone,

We've had quite an adventure the last few days. We had a fantastic weekend up until late Sunday night. Sunday morning we had brunch with Somer and James at the very classy La Paloma resort, and Sunday night we did a 5k fun run with friends (and Winston) through Winterhaven's Festival of Lights where the houses completely deck out their houses for the holidays. Ben was even brave enough to wear a sparkly Christmas vest, which turned out to be a great way for us walkers to know where the runners in our pack were.

After having some snacks and drinks at Ben and Kara's house after the run, we got back home to find out we were burglarized sometime in the 4 hours we were gone...the front door totally kicked in. Fortunately, they didn't take everything....just things that could fit into my Jansport backpack. This included John's laptop (with all of his research), my Ipod, the Metamorph key from UNC (you science geeks will know how painful that is), and every single piece of jewelry I own(ed). The jewelry part stings a lot, partly because there were some very valuable pieces from John ever since we first started dating, and partly because all of Mom's jewelry was in there too....nice stuff as well as sterling/costume stuff that I would wear to channel Mom's good taste. Grandma's crystal necklace is gone too...fortunately, I got to wear that out on the town not too long ago. I'm devastated about the jewelry, and even more devastated about feeling so violated. These jerk-faces were in our home, snooping, touching everything.

The Tucson Police were fantastic, and given the dollar value of things stolen reached a certain limit, the Crime Scene Unit came out and were fingerprinting the whole house until 1:30 in the morning. They were terrific, and humored me every time I pointed to something and said, "They had to touch that! I didn't put that there." If you know me at all, you won't be surprised to know that when the Crime Scene Unit people commented on how spotless our house was underneath the mess of the burglars, I had a little moment of celebration inside. As mentioned before, Winston was with us while the burglars were here, so he was neither hurt physically or traumatized.

So, we've spent the day cleaning from the burglars and the fingerprinting dust that's everywhere, and dealing with police and insurance report stuff. We are totally spooked, and it will take me a glass of wine (or two) before bed to settle down, but I know that soon we'll be more confident about our safety. I should also say that our landlord has been super....he stayed with us the entire time cops were here, and was here again at 7am with a contractor to discuss the best options for a new front door, and he's now considering a security system. He's owned this house since 1971 and lived in the house the majority of the time since then, and this is the first break-in. Between those comfortable 36 years and the fact that we live on a busy, well-lit road in a house with a well-lit exterior, he's a bit shocked about this incident too....which means he is taking it very seriously.

I also want to mention that Ben and Kara have been so generous....when we told them what happened, within 15 minutes they called and insisted on bringing dinner for us tonight. So, Kara made her family's classic pasta comfort food (with extra for leftovers) and brought a bottle of wine for the four of us to enjoy together. I am so thankful that we have such terrific friends, and hope that they know how much it meant to us.

Here is our bedroom, where most of the mess was:

Sniff, sniff:
Fingerprint dust on cabinets: