elanya

I am making this update for the benefit of earis, because she loves and misses Jola. And I have a ridiculous picture of her to share.

When I moved to Canada, I bought both my pets with me. My sister already had a dog, Sierra, and the two had never met before. Sierra was pretty good with other dogs, but could be a bossy bitch. We had no idea how she would deal with having another dog permanently in her space for the longterm. As it turned out, she liked Jola right away, and things were great. Don't ask about the cat >.> Sierra is a black Border Collie mix with a white blaze on her chest, going grey around her muzzle. She is sweet and snuggly and too smart for her own good in some ways and not in others. She knows a lot of tricks! She is currently wearing a Wonder Woman bandanna she got for Christmas. She is a great emotional support for my sister, and I love her a ton. She and Jola hang out, they play, they walk pretty well together. They are good dog buds.

Jola loves longpig and wererogue (especially Wererogue, she's always loved boys more). She also loves the nephews. She loves them a lot. She gives them kisses (let's be fair, she is pretty licky, but still, she puts up with a fair amount from them, in terms of small child chaos, though they are both good about giving the dogs their space). She goes into their room and crawls under their bed during story time (and usually scratches at the door a few hours later to be let out). She usually sleeps in Longpig and Wererogue's room, on the pile of laundry on Wererogue's side. Sierra will sleep on my bed if I let her (it was her bed before I moved here.... uh it *is* an actual bed, not a dog bed, just to clarify, but it was hers ;), but she is a giant bed hog and I can't always sleep well if I let her. Right now, they are both on my bed, as are the nephews, because I am the only person awake and they want to play and so they have swarmed. They have given me a toy of theirs that is a little brown dog with its tongue sticking out, which they call Jola. HD just told me that they want the toy to be mine as long as I am living in the same house as them. Awwwww. The toy is sitting on my shoulder as I type this, because they insisted.

Anyway, Jola! As I said, she's from Texas. One of the other girls in my program found her under a bush outside her apartment, but she already had two dogs. She brought her into the department, where I happened to be. I said I'd hold on to her while she looked to to see if she could find an owner. We both probably knew that wasn't going to happen, and she would become my dog. This was in March 2008, and she was 3 months old, more or less, when I took her to the vet.

She has adjusted alright to life in Canada pretty well, but she is not a big fan of the cold. Even in Teas, she would get cold in the winter. so you can imagine how she does here. She has a little coat that I got her in Texas that seems to be doing fine for her here though. I also have booties for her... I'm experimenting with the Paws kind, which are basically balloons that go over her feet. They stay on okay, but they only last about a week because of her talons. I cut her nails every week, but they keep growing and I feel like I am not making any headway. Also she really hates it, as she hates having her paws touched in general. On the other hand, she sure loves the snow, as long as she in bundled up! Watching her and sierra play is really adorable.

I finally got her dog license in early January. When I'd first come here in June, they told me to wait until July so I only had to pay the half year rate, and then I forgot. Ontario has a Pit Bull ban (bah). Jola isn't a pit, but she is a very thorough mix and you can see just about any dog breed in her if you want. We had to tell the guy who came (animal control, but I call him the dog assessor) two kinds of dog breeds for her to be, officially. So she is Australian Cattle Dog and Rhodesian Ridgeback. The latter was his suggestion. In Texas, she was a Chow mix, officially. Who knows what kind of dog she is really...

I think I had more to include, but it is perhaps not unsurprisingly hard to concentrate with a three and four (almost five) year old crawling all over my bed and poking into my stuff and demanding my attention!

But I will leave you with a picture of Jola in her winter gear and her DC Girl Power bandanna. You can see Sierra in the in the background. Pardon the flash, bit you can see what she thinks of her winter gear, a.k.a. her shame booties, as Longpig and the kids call them...