The Wall Bloggers

I found myself complaining this morning... About our dog... our sweet, old dog we discovered has epilepsy and has been on medication to manage his seizures.  We are so grateful that the medication has controlled his seizures almost perfectly.  The drawback has been that the medication makes him ravenous and causes him to drink excessively.  Consequently, he wakes us in the middle of the night to let him outside and then wakes us up an hour before we usually get up to feed him.  If we don't respond, he starts whimpering before escalating to barking.  He also steals food from my children's hands when they are at the table.  I've been feeling frustrated over the lack of sleep and have struggled with a way to be grateful.  So I started praying, asking for help to be thankful, even in this.  And thanks be to God, He knows how to change my attitude, even if the situation does not change.  Even writing this now, it is obvious that if this is my bigg...

This is a glimpse of what our family looks like in the evenings, as we read to the kids before bed...  Abel really does climb all over us as we try to read to Adrianna.   It's our poor Rusty who's feeling the pains of our growing family right now.  I woke up at four this morning and saw him looking forlorn in our doorway.  I didn't think much of it, until I got out of bed a few hours later, and found that he could not put weight on one front leg.  I don't think he and Ruthie had a spat in the middle of the night.  As they get used to each other, there has been an occasional growling/pawing match, but we always hear them and help them to "make friends".  So I don't know what could have caused his injury, but I am praying for a swift recovery.

Our sweet Rusty dog is nine now.  He's lost hearing and is slowing down a lot... So we couldn't help but look at some young Shibas to be good company for him as he ages.  We have kept our eye on the Shibas that have come through a Shiba rescue group in Texas for the last several months.  There have been several that we were interested in, but each time we prayed about a dog and asked about her, she already seemed to be adopted.   A few weeks ago, we saw one named Baby available through this rescue group.  She was a three-year-old Shiba-Chow mix.  This time, I asked about her, and she was actually still available.  I emailed with her foster owner several times and Baby seemed to be a good fit for our family.  When Scott's parents went to visit family in Houston last week, they arranged to meet her.  And the way things worked out, they were even able to drive her home with them in their RV.   While Rusty is usually defensive with new dog...

We are still having technical difficulties with our faster computer not "talking" to the blog and our slower computer being oh, so slow.  So I wanted to post a few recent pictures to catch up. Abel (and Adrianna) have been enjoying the Radio Flyer fire truck that I found at our town's bi-annual kids' resale event.  Boy, was that fun to snatch up in my first two minutes at the event!  :) Adrianna made me smile with a Mom portrait on her Magnadoodle.  It may not seem like much for an adorable little boy to be petting a pretty, fat cat.  However, this is the same scaredy cat that has only let Adrianna pet her a handful of times in the five years they have shared a house.  I think Abel might be a cat whisperer.  Whenever he sees her tail flying away in a furry hurry or hears her meowing down the hallway, Abel searches her out.  Because she is a cat, you will find her pretending disdain while he buries his gentle little fingers in...

Ephesians 3:20-21 "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." No other words can capture this for me... "Exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask." I asked God to heal Rusty's ring worm. I prayed for him every day for several weeks (something I've never done for an animal before!), and God answered with more than I could imagine. Not only was his ring worm healed without a vet visit (as I blogged previously), but here's the update: His coat of gorgeous fur has grown back thicker and fuller than we've seen it in years. I thought I might be the only one noticing, but the other day, one of my friends studied him. She finally said, "Did you get him groomed or something? He looks so much younger." I don't want to get stuck on blogging about my dog (three en...

Copper is so mellow, my father-in-law (her owner and her favorite human) calls her a marshmallow. She is so mellow she didn't even know how to play with balls or dog toys, when my in-laws got her more than a year ago. Rusty, on the other hand, is so playful, he has his own toy basket on our hearth. Nearly every time we sit on the couch, he pulls out a toy and tries to get our attention by playing (loudly!) in front of us. As the months have passed, these two have come to enjoy each other's attention increasingly. With their time together, we have come to believe that Copper has learned a few things from Rusty. Last summer, my father-in-law found an abandoned dog toy, and Copper even played with it... once. Ever so slowly, Rusty's continued to show Copper how life in the dog world is. Last weekend, Copper came to stay with us for four days. Rusty enjoyed Copper's company so much, he felt he could reclaim his long-lost puppyhood. Nearly once every hour, Rusty purs...

Beautiful, healthy Rusty Ring worm infested, sick Rusty (2 years ago) If a picture is worth a thousand words, these two should speak volumes. The comparison should hopefully explain more than my words ever could why I have been so disheartened that Rusty's ring worm has returned. What's worse than having a dog devastated by ring worm? Knowing that I gave it to him... twice. I struggle to conquer the ring worm that has returned to my arms every winter for the last 13 years. Poor Rusty has gotten caught in the middle of that battle simply because he likes to cuddle. Two years ago, it cost us more than $2000 to eradicate his ring worm. It spread like wildfire across a parched prairie because he takes steroids for his allergies. Apparently, steroids feed ring worm. Thus, the fear and anxiety when I noticed a bald patch on his leg last week. Two days later, six bald patches. Scott wonders if I should take Rusty to the vet. But I started treating him wi...