I had noted in an earlier blog post that Darla had broken Rule No. 1 soon after arriving here: no dogs allowed in my ancient, woe-begon-but-still-beloved recliner. She quickly claimed it as her own, and I surrendered almost as quickly. She broke Rule No. 2 — no dogs in our bedroom — shortly after that,…

A rain overnight really made the fall colors pop on Sunday, and everywhere you look it's just a gorgeous rainbow of trees. Initially, in the past couple of weeks, it looked like it would be a muted autumn — some years are just more splendid than others, depending on weather — but suddenly the colors…

It's been a tough week. After a battery of tests on Thursday, we learned our Queen Bee, blind Widget, has lymphoma. We had taken her in to see specialists for a full work-up because she needs a dental, but we were worried about her heart condition and the resulting anesthesia risks. Our previous internist, Dr.…

One of the apple trees next to the front yard has a branch hanging over the fence, and periodically an apple will fall onto the lawn. We had noticed in the past few weeks that someone – who? — had been eating these apples. And oddly, the apples were ending up under the fir tree, a…

Allie is another of the dogs who will be in our fall print newsletter, which is our annual "originals" edition featuring animals who have been with us the longest. In Allie's case, she came way back in 2005 from a California family. They had two small toddlers, and after Allie went blind she began knocking…

Yep, he got stuck in a blanket again. I opened the door to the front porch to let some dogs in on Thursday morning, and the fleece blanket came to life, stirring and moving. Up popped Wilbur, who immediately realized he had taken the "I-shouldn't-have-done-that" short-cut to get out of the blanket and was now…