pet connection

I cannot believe the lottery numbers didn’t fall my way on my birthday. I had big plans for that $252,000,000 (yes, Christie, some of it was going toward shoes). Guess we will have to continue with our plans for next month’s Darcy FunDay.

Five of us met Monday night to decide on games, speakers, prizes and refreshments and get our act together on insurance coverage and park reservations. I have a great team of go-getters from our Cavalier park group who are helping to set this year’s event in motion. Petra and Rima met last week and came up with an amazing list of ideas for themes and games; Tamela is our communications person; I’m working on pet-related prize donations and speaker arrangements; Petra is doing the park reservation; she and Rima are organizing the food and decorations; and Wendy and Suzie will help make phone calls to expand our prize offerings beyond the pet world. Jerry and the other husbands are the muscle and go-fers.

In my book, a successful meeting is always followed by margaritas, so we went across the street to dinner, accompanied by Petra’s ruby Cavalier, Henry. We all first met Henry a little more than a year ago when as a puppy he was left on the doorstep–not kidding!–at our veterinarian’s office. Tamela stepped up to foster him, but she needed a place to leave him for the day, so he came to our house. Harper wasn’t much older than he was–maybe 8 months to his 4 months–and she was thrilled to have a playmate so close to her own age. They spent the day tearing around the house like little maniacs. He soon went to live with Petra, and it’s fun to see him now as a lanky adolescent.

It was clearly the dog dining hour at El Ranchito. Every time we turned around, someone with a dog was walking in or out of the patio area. I do love living in a dog-friendly area. At a recent stop for a late-night dessert in Laguna Beach, the hostess quickly waved us onto the patio with Harper instead of making us tie her up just outside it, which is the usual policy at this place. Harper justified her kindness by curling up on the wall out of sight and going to sleep. She may yet be calming down enough in public to earn therapy dog certification. One can hope.