Things are going pretty swimmingly, being an endorsed candidate for ordained ministry. I registered for my classes yesterday. Can I get a Wee hoo!? I thought so. And Mum got accepted to an art program at the university. Can I get another Wee hoo!? I thought I could. But in the midst of all the happiness about the decisions people have made about us, we have had to make a difficult decision of our own.

We have found a new home for our dog.

When we got Nozy, we were very specific about what sort of dog we needed for our family. Nozy seemed to be that sort of dog for about three days. Once we got him dewormed and eating healthy food, his demeanor changed considerably, and the mellow companion we sought was nowhere to be found except when he was sick. We don’t want a sick dog. Or an unhappy one. We have spent almost a year trying either to make the dog we have into the dog we need or to make ourselves into the family for this dog. Neither attempt has proven very successful. We’re all of us too stubborn.

We’ve really really really tried. But the last straw fell upon the camel when we had to put a muzzle on him to take him for a walk. In the city, with all the litter and untended dog shit, it is impossible for this dog not to eat something that will make him violently ill if he goes out. And our yard isn’t big or fenced enough to keep him in. And he needs a lot of exercise. And we can’t live with needing to muzzle a dog regularly for years. We can’t be that cruel. Or cruel enough to let him eat himself to death.

It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but it was really the right one. I advertised on kijiji, and found a family. They live in a small town with a big fenced yard. They want and need a dog with a lot of bounce. They have an eight-year-old boy who is high-functioning autistic and will have to wait years to get a service dog. I think this will be a good fit in a way that we really weren’t.

Nozy went to his new home today, and it’s been tough, in some ways. I (not to mention my mother) don’t like to fail at anything we set our hands to. We don’t like the loss. It’s a similar loss to the miscarriages, because we really wanted to add a member to our family, but it wasn’t meant to be.

There’s been some sad, but to balance it, we’ve been moving furniture around and getting plants and making our house what we want it to be and undoing the “temporary” changes we made a year ago for a new puppy that we were never able to rectify when the dog grew to be not-so-new.

The girls are coping incredibly well with the change. I think they liked the idea of having a dog far more than the reality of this particular dog. I’d also like to give a shout-out to Jane O’Connor and Robin Preiss Glasser because this book and our children’s love for it totally saved the day. God-bless Fancy Nancy.

In conclusion, while this may not have been our first charity of choice (if you’d asked) to which we’d like to give a year of time and many many thousands of dollars, there is no doubt that preparing a companion for an autistic child is a very good cause. And we feel mostly good about that.

I am typing one-handed, ’cause there’s a sleeping baby on my lap. That’s my excuse for the infrequent posting, too. Sometimes, it’s easier to read than write when you’ve only got one hand free.

Nozy’s a little over three months old. If it’s true that the dog:human time ratio is 7:1, that makes him coming up on two in development. I have no trouble believing it. Behaviourally, he is in the heart of toddlerhood’s limit testing, and at the same time, he’s still a baby.

Assuming that we get the human baby we’re hoping for, I won’t have to worry about being rusty in the caregiving department. Adding a puppy to a home is more like having a baby than like adding any other sort of pet. Nozy gets us up in the night and wets the bed and puts everything in his mouth to see which things make us yell and needs lots of attention and loves nothing better than to nap on somebody’s lap.

When the human kids are entertaining themselves fairly well, I take my computer to the kitchen in the mornings, so that I can give Nozy his snuggle and still check in with the outside world. But I have a lot less time on my hands to simply sit and stare at the screen or tell you tales of all that’s afoot. He’ll soon be too big for my lap, so that may change, but who knows? It may be different once he’s housetrained and has his grownup teeth and can go anywhere. Since he still has the tendency to pee and chew on anything and everything, he stays in the kitchen, and we spend most of our time with him in there.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I mean, I miss you guys sometimes. But I really like going for a half-hour walk with Michael every evening, and having that time to talk to each other. And sitting on the kitchen floor reading a library book while a warm little bundle of love snuggles on my lap is not exactly a hardship. If I could somehow get him to fart less, it would be absolute perfection.

Note to self (because I don’t trust myself to just remember stuff that happens at 5:00 am): If, when I am wakened by canine whining, I take myself to pee on the toilet before I take the dog to the yard, I will have a mess to deal with which is more inconvenient than if I should hold it for a few minutes and let him pee first. Tomorrow I will remember this.

On the plus side, this morning’s 5:00 kicks the ass of yesterday’s 1:30 for Nozy and 3:30 to take Mum and Terry to the airport, pee kennel and all.