Jenna Puppies Update and Rizzini Flies to Georgia…

Hi all!

What a whirlwind the past few days were! I feel like I am in a semi-coma. Gosh, I am getting old. Too many days in a row of no sleep will do that to the best of us, right?

Anyway,  I was afraid to fall asleep and have a puppy get squished! I kept dozing off and would wake up every time I heard a little cry. Gosh, the first few weeks with newborn pups are so scary! I finally just gave in and got up and worked on catching up on all the laundry (puppy whelping around here creates tons and tons of laundry!). I got all the older doggies out, got Rizzini up and ready to make his trip to the airport.

A crate had been returned (thank you, Mark!) and just arrived Thursday, so I had that all ready to go. Paperwork, check. Health Certificate … check. Puppy food and treats… check… Reservation numbers… check… Okay, we are ready to roll… except, I go to put Rizzini in his crate and as he is sitting there, I realize–his head is touching the top of the inside of the crate! OH NO! This isn’t good. One of the airline rules is that the head cannot touch the top. I scramble around and find another crate–outside not very shiny and new, but he fits and it will have to do. No carrying handle, either. Some of the airlines insist they have them. I don’t think Delta does, if I remember correctly. I get everything switched around and off we go.

We left around 7:00 am with a quick stop to fill-up the truck with fuel and to get a cup (okay, 2-cups) of coffee–I was out at home and hadn’t had a chance to get to the market in days!  Okay, we are on the road. Traffic is awful (the older I get, the more I can’t take going to the city… and I cannot wait, cannot wait to get back to the remoteness of my dream hide-out way up north… I wonder, could I leave in June, instead of waiting for September??? Oh, I can’t wait, I can’t wait… peace, quiet, clean-air, not many cars out where I stay and when you do see one it is going 20 mph and folks always have a friendly wave, millions of acres of public forests, fields, birds, my bird dogs barking if they want to… I dream and dream…as I stare in disbelief at 4 lanes of brake lights in front of me stretched on for as far as I can see and people in cars beside me arguing and fighting and horns blowing….), but, I survive the insanity and we arrive with time to get out for a walk and let Rizzi do his business and have our good-byes. He is such a sweet, smart, nice puppy!

I decide it is time to go ahead and get him checked in. Everything is great… then the fellow at the check-in counter realizes my health certificate expired yesterday!!!!! OH my gosh. Do I have a brain cell left in my head? I had looked into the date earlier in the week and counted today as exactly ten days… yep… nope… they count the day it was issued as Day 1. The health certificate expired! He can’t fly! Geesh… okay, I call my vet to see if he can fax a new one (he had just seen Rizzi again the other day when he stopped by to look in on Jenna and give a few other dogs shots)… I get the machine.

The wonderful folks at the counter suggest that I try to get Rizzi into a vet nearby. Really? Where? Who? What’s the number? How do I get there? Okay, so I remember that I have the coolest Garmin application on my Blackberry that lets me search for businesses nearby– I try to type in veterinarians with missing keys on the blackberry… finally get it in there…. it produced a list in seconds. I press call and get the first, and closet vet. They are very, very nice and tell me to come right now and they will see me! Really? Wow! Okay, I press “navigate” and the application gives me voice-driven navigation to the office!!! Yes, I could have punched in the address and everything with the GPS in the truck–but the same thing is on the Blackberry and it can make the call. Anyway, it works slick as all get-out and gets me to the office in about 10 minutes.

The office was already packed, so Rizzini and I wait and watch kitties and doggies go in and out… finally, it is our turn! The vet was wonderful! He LOVED Rizzini and went on and on about how beautiful he was, how nicely built, healthy, and friendly he was. He remarked that he was one of the finest setters he’s ever seen. That was nice! He double-checked everything and was very thorough and wrote out the new health certificate. After taking their share of any money I may have started out with today at the counter and trying to avoid a sick Cocker Spaniel that was leaving large messes all over the floor, with Rizzi in my arms, we escaped the jam-packed insanity of the vet’s office and the taped-together, puppy-mangled Blackberry navigated us back to the airport cargo facility. Wow… very cool. I am addicted to navigation devices and must say this Garmin application for the Blackberry impressed me today!

So, I figured I had really messed things up and Rizzini would have to take a later flight–but everyone at the cargo facility was waiting for us!!! They checked the new health certificate, had all the other paperwork ready from earlier, and had a driver waiting to whisk Rizzini away to the plane!!! We made it!!! Rizzini was off and on his way to Atlanta.

What a day for him, as after arriving in Atlanta, he would still have a good 4-hour ride by car to his new home. At least he’ll be in loving arms for that ride, too. I heard he arrived safely and slept for the second long drive of the day.

It’s always kinda sad on the drive back home after dropping off a puppy. But, I know Rizzini is going to a wonderful home with great opportunities to hunt until his heart is content and he’ll get to be with other Llewellins and his brother, Ruger!

I had to make several stops on the way back. I won’t drive down there for anything, but if I have to bring a puppy, I may as well make a few stops on the way back….a few groceries from the organic place, make the bi-weekly dog food pick-up, some puppy supplies, pick-up something my sister needed for the wedding that is postponed, and since the store is right next-door, I stopped at the cellular place to see if I could get a new Blackberry under my warranty. Yea… No…That was funny. I show them my deformed puppy-mangled phone with no back on it–tape holding the battery in and some keys and the side-piece on that I just got a few weeks ago… they are like, “What happened?” Puppy teeth marks were very obvious and I told them 3 puppies had a ball with it! The most expensive puppy chew toy on the planet!  Sadly, the warranty doesn’t cover puppy munching. But, the fellow was nice enough to set me up with a new phone on a payment plan. Darn it. Oh well, at least I can have some time to pay for it. AND he talked me into getting the insurance on it this time and assured me the insurance will cover puppy munching. 🙂

So, I am back on the road and think I will return a ton of phone calls–except the guy didn’t transfer my contacts like he said he would and I had no phone numbers in it!  Oh darn, I’ll have to make phone calls later (Sorry, Dave, I didn’t purposely not call you right back!) …. just get home, out of the traffic and madness of crazed shoppers to check on Jenna and the puppies! I expected the men to be working on the kennel project so it could finally be finished while they had a few days off work. Nope, the place was deserted. Other things had called them away from projects around here once again. 🙁

Jenna and the pups were fine and she was really needing to go outside. I get her something to eat-which she decides she doesn’t want! She will not eat anything I try. Usually quite the chow-hound, she wants nothing I give her. She really needs to eat!!!

I get everything unloaded from the truck and can barely make the last trip inside with the 35lb bags of dog food. What a wimp I am today!

Well, the puppies are doing great. They are so strong and can really get around! Wow! I check on each one and they all seem okay and get quite wound-up from my daily puppy stimulation routine. Then, everyone gets settled in again and I just have to take a quick nap–I can’t hold my eyes open another minute.

Scott gets home a little while later, wakes me, and we get the evening feeding, cleaning, and exercise all the dogs. We order pizza around 9:00 and decide to get the puppy-id collars on. We took photos of each puppy, weighed them (they weigh between 11.8 and 13.6 ounces already!), named, and collared each. Oh, the girls have the pink collars and the boys have green. As soon as I am able to order new ones, they will all have a different color. But for now at least maybe you can tell the boys and girls apart on the puppy-cam (or as one viewer, Keith, calls it, the “Jenna-Cam”). 🙂

I updated the site with the photos, names, and info. See them, here. I answered a few e-mails. As I am writing this, I am hoping the clean stuff for the whelping box is dry now. I can change the box and go to bed!

Oh, and guess what? It’s Easter!!! I didn’t get a thing for the kids or my parents or anyone! Darn it!!!! I love to get little special Easter gifts. I just didn’t get time. There was so much traffic and so many people and all I could think of was getting home and how rude is it that I didn’t put others before myself to have something special for them for tomorrow?

Hopefully I will get to get up and out early and run a few dogs in the morning before worship, then off to my wonderful sister’s house for visiting and dinner.

Well, this is probably a really lame post and I will delete it tomorrow–who cares about every detail of my day? Geez! I really just meant to say that Rizzini made it to his new home today and that the puppies are doing well!

I received an update on Rain (Kimber) from the previous litter and can’t wait to share the photos! I’ll do that tomorrow or maybe Monday. I just remembered I have work projects due Monday morning. Oh no!

Over and out.

Have a blessed Easter, everyone!

ML