I don’t actually know if this is the first time anybody has celebrated Christmas with Pepper around. I think maybe Grandma and David celebrated when they were first together, but I’m pretty sure that’s not a tradition they kept up as time went on. I do know this is the first time she’s ever been legitimately cold.
Pepper, refusing to move on her walk.
We bought her a rainproof jacket before we came up to Oregon, but on her first walk, she was shaking like a leaf. So then we bought her a wool sweater that keeps her warm, but her movements are stiff when she has it on. When both the wool jacket and the rainproof cover are on, she’s not shaking anymore, but she also pretends like she can’t move at all. Which is totally bullshit because today on our walk, she saw another dog and went running after it without a care in the world. It took a couple more minutes after that for her to remember that she’s supposed to be pathetically incapacitated.
She also pissed in Ben’s parents house 3 separate times and places in the first 2 days of our visit. We arrived on Wednesday night, Thursday morning we went to a local spot for breakfast, Thursday afternoon Pepper pissed in the TV room, then she pissed in the sewing room in front of Ben’s mom. Thursday night Ben got violently ill, and spent the entire night puking. Not wanting Pepper under foot, and basically having forgotten about her in the drama, I left her downstairs while I played nursemaid to Ben most of the night. In the morning, while we were sleeping she pissed a little bit on Ben’s parents bed, and quite a bit on the 2nd guest bed. I think the first two were a combination of stress, and of her knowing that if she alerted us to the fact that she has to pee, we’d take her outside in the cold and there was no way she was going to do that. The second two times I think were because she was upset from having been left alone in a strange house all night while something was clearly wrong with Ben.
After that, I kept her within my line of sight for all of Friday and most of today, although we left her with Ben’s mom to go shopping this afternoon and she behaved herself. We also took her on the longest walk in the cold she’s ever taken, and she performed admirably. She moved a lot slower than normal, but I think that’s only 20% an act. The sweater/jacket/scarf/harness combo is rather constricting.
Aw crap, it’s Dec. 31st and I’m sitting here adding this to all my posts because I said I’d have it here until the end of the year and I didn’t. I suck I know. Still, support Planned Parenthood because they’re amazing and the things they do are awesome.
