Strays for the weekend

We've had Kylee this weekend. It's been interesting. She stated several times that she was "bored to tears" and I told her to go get a book to read. She looked at me like I was crazy. The kids did swim quite a bit, and while I was combing out her hair, realized that the split ends were terrible. It was like trying to comb macrame. So I asked her if I could trim her hair for her. It would make it easier to comb and it would be much healthier. "My bangs too? Would you trim my bangs?"

I didn't take any "before" pictures and I'm not sure I have anything really recent except Easter. But here's the "after" shots!



ZBoy had a birthday party he suddenly remembered he was supposed to go to, so I took him, leaving Miss K with her Pappy. The timing was great, as thunderstorms began rumbling in as the party ended. We were back in our neighborhood when I spotted a little white dog running around in the road. When the thunder cracked, she dashed out into the street. I pulled over and Z and I managed to coax her into my arms. Another neighbor pulled up and said she thought she knew where the dog lived and gave me her card because traffic was starting to pile up around us.

We got home and dashed in just as the rain began. I set the dog down and took her collar off (she had a rabies tag on it). And I really looked at her. Poor dog! Her face was a mess, her hair was matted so badly that she could barely move her legs, and she was covered with fleas. I didn't know how long she would be hanging out with us, but if it was for more than five minutes, those fleas had to go. I made her a bath on the back porch and she was in it for nearly an hour. Serious scrubbing occurred. Then I got her out, dried her off and began combing the dead fleas out of her fur. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the comb through the fur, and wound up cutting much of it off. When I got the mats cut out from her front legs, she shook her legs and bounced around for a moment. Then she came back and I continued cutting behind her ears, her back legs and her tail. A lot of hair came off. You could tell she felt so much better! Again, I didn't take any "before" pictures, but here's some "afters".

Her face was really stained, and I wasn't sure how to get it clean. I did the best I could with a sock dipped in soapy water, but obviously there's some kind of trick to this.

As it turns out, the vet's office was closed, so we can't find out who she belongs to until Monday. The neighbor lady called back to say that her neighbors that she thought owned the dog have their dog at home, so it's not theirs. In the meantime, everyone has grown very attached to "Padme" and hates the idea of giving her up to people who obviously don't take care of her. Still, someone owns her and we don't know how long she's been running around out there.

There is a bit of jealousy on Kida's part, but mostly she's thrilled to have another dog around. We were thinking of getting a second dog, and may have had fate thrust one upon us. We'll know more on Monday...