Laundrovations

Once again we've embarked upon a home improvement project. We actually have a handful of them planned, some which can wait `til summer. Among our scheduled upheavals are redoing the OTHER bathroom, redoing the auxiliary sink area for the bathroom we already redid last year, and doing some rock facing repair outside. But the one we chose to tackle over the past week was a fairly quick one in which we would redo the laundry room. While not the ugliest room in the house (the title of which still belongs to the guest bedroom with its hideous wallpaper--oops, there's another project for the list) it could be a close second due to its sky blue painted walls and peeling vinyl floor. The plan was to get the washer and dryer and storage shelves out, take out the floor, put down ceramic tile, repaint, and put all the stuff back in there before my parents show up next week or before the dirty laundry topples over and kills us.

As much as a pain in the ass as redoing our bathroom had been, almost every step of redoing the laundry room has gone very smoothly. We'd budgeted thrice as much time as we normally would have, because that tended to be how long everything took with last year's project, but we almost never had to use the other 2/3 of time. Neat. We even bought a tile wet saw to speed up the tile cutting process. (Actually, we bought two wet saws, but the first one, a Craftsman, broke before we even had a chance to turn it on. The plastic guide bar that is supposed to clamp across its surface proved to have a clampy bit that instantly shattered when the wife tried to install it. We decided paying that much for a power tool that would break before we could even use it was not something we were willing to put up with, so back the whole thing went.)

Once the tile was laid and grouted, we had to come up with a complimentary color to paint the walls. The tile was whiteish sandy colored (I can't recall the actual name of the color, but it had white in it somewhere), but also had faint hints of a brown and a mauvey sort of color veined into it.

"Seems like we could use mauve," the wife said. "Only lighter." I was skeptical, cause if you lighten mauve, you get another color entirely. Plus, the first "mauve" she picked out was really more of a brown almost exactly the shade of a Wendy's Frosty. The wife soon assigned the task of picking a color to me, as I'm the guy who's had impressive success with the last two color choices for our house. Even I had trouble with it, though, and wound up buying five test cans of paint from Lowes before landing back on Twilight Mauve. It's actually a lighter shade of mauve, which turns out to be possible to achieve after all. (I know, I know, it's still mauve, but I promise it works. Oh, and I know, I know, it has twilight in the title which is also irritating given the images from popular fiction and culture that name now conjures, but I promise it works.)

"Get a gallon of kitchen and bath enamel," the wife said, two nights ago, before I went to pick up our paint. And a gallon of white kitchen and bath was what I did pick out from the paint aisle at Lowes and then haul over to the counter where they mix the color. The kid walked over to me and I pushed the can in his direction, my paint chip lying on top of it.

"I need a gallon of Twilight Mauve," I said.

The kid picked up the paint chip, then looked up at me with an expression I interpreted as saying, "Twilight Mauve? Really?" However, what he actually said was, "What sort of finish do you want?"

This threw me, because I was under the impression that the finish was determined by the type of paint you were attempting to mix color into--in my case Kitchen and Bathroom enamel. I don't buy a lot of paint, though, so I usually have enough time to forget all I ever knew about buying paint by the time its time to buy more, so this could be some additional part of the process I had forgotten.

"What are my choices?" I asked. Kid listed a number of choices, none of which was kitchen and bathroom. I chose satin finish as that was what all the test paints had come in and was not too shiny. A warning bell still tingled in my head, though, and as I began walking away to go look at some other supplies, I looked back to make sure that the kid had indeed picked up my can of kitchen & bathroom enamel to use. He picked it up, so I turned off the warning bells and didn't give it a second thought when I took the gallon can he passed to me a few minutes later.

Of course, it wasn't until we painted the entire laundry room that the wife announced she didn't think it was kitchen & bath enamel paint in the first place.

"Well that's what I bought," I said.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure. I picked the can of kitchen & bath enamel from the shelf and took it to the dude to color."

"This is not kitchen & bath," she said. "It's not shiny enough."

"That's because it has a satin finish," I said.

"I don't think that's how it works. Where's the can?"

Now here's where I did myself a GIGANTIC favor and just kept my my damn mouth shut. My my impulse, you see, was to snottily and with tones of defensiveness, reply, "It's in the garage. It'll be the can that says `kitchen & bath enamel' on it."

This I did not do, A) because it's an asshole kind of statement to make, designed to chastise my wife for seemingly doubting my word, and which would definitely have escalated into a fight; and B) there was always the possibility that I was wrong. Being wrong would have been far FAR worse than a mere fight, because an unbelievably asshole statement like that followed up with such a colossal failure of accuracy would live long in everyone's memory, be recounted in family stories for YEARS to come, and haunt my every step, perhaps even beyond death. So instead of shaking the asshole stick, I wisely went to fetch the can itself to see what it really was. The label on it read "interior satin finish."

"You're right, babe, it's not kitchen and bath," I said.

Despite it being completely the wrong paint finish, it still looks great, as does the floor. And, fortunately, I got the major part of the painting done in an afternoon, so we were able to move the washer and dryer back in and tackle some of the mountain of laundry that had piled up in the intervening days.

All right, no one is to stone ANYONE until I blow this whistle. Even... and I want to make this absolutely clear... even if they do say, "Jehovah. "

I left the house to run a few errands, yesterday, and left the dogs outside to their own devices. I didn't even bother to put Sadie's "shock" collar on her, because she knows well her boundaries and only rarely ventures past them. (Plus, if she's not wearing it, I can hardly forget to take it off of her and shock her on the way down the driveway.) Moose, for the most part, orbits her and has not been seen to stray far from her side, unless it's to go hide in the mud beneath the back deck.

Upon my return, I found both dogs waiting for me at the top of the driveway, as though they'd been sitting there the whole time planning my welcome. I gathered up my grocery bags and we all went into the house through the interior door of the garage.

Around 20 minutes later, I noticed something odd with the back door of the house, the one leading out onto the deck. Crammed behind the handle of the door were two rolled up mini-magazine-sized pamphlets. I opened the door, already knowing full well what they would be.

"What are these?" I asked Sadie, holding up the November issue of The Watchtower and October's Awake! Sadie saw what I held and then looked away with a guilty air. "What Are These?" I repeated. Again, she dropped her head in shame.

"You let Jehovah's Witnesses get to the back door," I said sternly. "Moosey, I can understand, because he's new and he likes everybody. But YOU..." I said, waving the magazines at her, "YOU let them get all the way to the back door."

Then I noticed that I'd actually left the back door unlocked when I went out. I gasped.

"Jehovah's Witnesses could be in this house right now!" I said. "They could be lurking in the house right now, waiting to jump out and... and witness to me!"

Sadie lay down on the floor and looked suitably wracked with guilt. She was probably regretting not simply pulling the magazines out of the door and letting Moose chew them up.

"For shame," I added.

That the visitors at my back door were Jehovah's Witnesses was not actually the issue. I was mainly putting on a show for the dog's benefit because it struck me as funny for their appearance to BE a problem. The fact is, though, I don't so much mind visits from Jehovah's Witnesses or most other religions, but I also don't tend to invite them in to discuss religion either. My own religious views often conflict with theirs so the discussions I've entertained in the past have quickly degenerated into the three of us (there are always two of them) just conflicting at one another and moving no one's view even a smidge'.

No, the real issue here was that Sadie had allowed strangers to reach my unlocked BACK door. The front door would have been fine, as that's the door that strangers to a home SHOULD be visiting in the first place. I mean, really, isn't it a bit rude to just walk around to the rear door of someone's home uninvited? I would have been pissed off about it if I'd been home to meet them and would likely have pointed this out to them. But to the back door they had gone and Sadie had, apparently, not even attempted to eat them.

Now, I'm not suggesting that she should have attempted to eat them. However, she is an imposing enough dog at 80 plus pounds, with a bark twice as powerful as most male dogs her size, so she could have at least stood in the strangers' path and given them pause to consider whether or not she might eat them. Nope, they'd made it from my driveway, across the 30 feet of boardwalk leading to the back deck (as opposed to the 35 feet of nice clean boardwalk leading to the front door), had time to carefully deposit their magazines behind the handle of the back door, and, presumably, made it safely back to their vehicle. I didn't even see any scraps of clothing that might have indicated a hasty retreat with canine in hot, slavering pursuit.

Oh, I'm sure she barked at them, as she barks at everyone, but I rather expected more of a defensive front from her. Then again, maybe she had guarded the walk to the front door after all, and left Moose to guard the back one where he would have been completely ineffective. Or, maybe one of the Jehovah's Witnesses had cornered her in the front while the other snuck around the back. I don't know.

Regardless, it appears our fearless guard dog, who is impressively brave when it comes to defending us from the ever-present threat of vicious, rabid deer, isn't so good when it comes to smiling, peaceful strangers. Not sure if that's a good thing or bad thing. I guess, instead, what I should really be thankful for is that I don't have a lawsuit on my hands, filed by a mauled Jehovah's Witness or two.

He doesn't know he's cute or anything.

Anna Tolien? I think I went out with her once.

The wife and I have determined for ourselves that our puppy Moose (at right) is not a "damn little chow chow" as has been suggested. The chow features have failed to manifest, beyond a slight spotting at the tip of his tongue. However, we've still been doubtful as to his alleged status as a Leonberger/St. Bernard mix. While he has some Leonberger features, he also has some definite German shepherdy features too, though his flopped forward ears would seem to indicate he wasn't full blooded German shepherd.

At some point while watching TV, a breed of dog called an Anatolian Shepherd flashed across our screen and it struck us that it looked an awful lot like an adult version of Moose might. We quickly dashed to the innanet and looked it up.

Check it.

This is a picture from an Anatolian site. Same black face, same coloration, same curly tail, same love of sticks. The more we read, the more this breed (or a mixture therewith) was the better fit for Moose's ancestry. And from everything we've been reading, like Leonbergers, Anatolian Shepherds are supposed to be great dogs, not to mention exceptional guard dogs. They're also about as enormous as Leonbergers, which makes the wife happy, and with no drooling to speak of, which makes me happy.

Meanwhile, he's really come a long way as far as his potty training is concerned. I think we had at least three consecutive weeks without any piddling in the house and only one or two poop incidents. Mostly, when he needs to go, he either goes to the back door and looks at us until we notice him there, or he comes and finds us and barks at us until we ask him if he needs to go potty at which point he barks louder and/or tries to bite us in the face. The later is discouraged, the former encouraged. However, his efforts don't always work so well when we're asleep.

We've been encouraging both dogs to stay off of our bed. This is not easy, because they LOVE our bed and are fond of sleeping in it with us, if they can get away with it. However, beyond the matter of shedded dog hair and stank residue in the bed, there's the matter of massive and soon to be massive dogs hogging up all the leg room in our bed while we're trying to sleep. We could banish Sadie from the bed fairly well, but without a working crate (due to the fact that Moose destroyed the zipper in his "nite nite" collapsible crate) it was more difficult to keep moose out of it.

So not long after Christmas, we bought them both dog beds stuffed with recycled memory foam shredding. These we've stationed beside our bed and have been enforcing their use. So far this has worked surprisingly well. And the timing of Moose's potty training success finally kicking in around the same time was good. This way, we could sleep through the night with the dogs on their beds and didn't have to worry about puddles in the morning.

Two nights ago, Moose drank a lot of water before bed. At some point in the wee hours, he woke up, had to go potty and began trying to wake one of us up to let him out. Unfortunately, we were solidly asleep and the first we heard of any of this activity was when Sadie snarled after Moose crawled too close to her bed. We snuggled in and were on our way back to sleep when I heard a disturbing sound.

"Why do I hear running water?" I said. And, sure enough, it sounded exactly as if someone had left a faucet on in a steady pour. Immediately, we both thought of the pipes. With night time temps hovering between zero and ten for the past few days, it wasn't inconceivable that we'd had a pipe burst. I thought, Oh, please, let it just be Moosey peeing on the floor.

I leaned up and looked over the edge of the bed. In the low light from the night light in the hall, I could see Moose's little brown body directly beside the bed.

"Moose? Are you pottying on the floor?" I asked him. As I swung my legs out of the bed, Moose turned of his "faucet" and hauled ass for the back door. I followed and let him outside then went back to clean up the mess. I couldn't even be mad at him, because I knew he had probably tried to wake us up before succumbing to the pressure. And from the amount on the floor, his bladder had probably been at capacity.

We're pretty sure this was a one off event. Mostly, he's been sleeping through the night, so we think the days of having to get up with him three times are, at last, done.

Actual Semi-Paraphrased Telephone Conversations Heard at My House #5

THIS EVENING...

*RING*

ME-- Hello

SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- Hello, may I please speak to THE WIFE'S NAME?

ME-- I'm sorry, she's not here now. Can I take a message?

SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- No, that's okay. We can call back another time.

ME-- (SMELLING A CREDIT CARD TELEMARKETER) Can I ask what this is in regard to?

SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- I'm TELEMARKETER'S NAME with Shitibank and I'm just calling Shitibank Diamond Preferred Cardholders to thank them for being valued customers and--

ME-- (INTERRUPTING) Actually, we no longer have a Shitibank account. You guys dropped us a couple of weeks ago.

SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- Ohhhh, we dropped you? I'm so sorry. (PAUSE) Well, I can only speak with the primary account holder. I can give you a toll free phone number to call if you have any questions about this call?

ME-- No, thank you.

SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- You have a good evening.

ME-- You, too.

*CLICK*

And this is true. Two weeks back, we received a letter from Citibank alerting us that they were closing our account with them. This came as a bit of a shock to us, being as how there was no reason listed, beyond a general accusatory wording, as though we had somehow used our card in an unacceptable way that offended Citibank deeply. Of course, now that I think about it, I guess we had, since we carry no balance on the card and have not actually used it at all for a couple of years. They tend to favor indebtedness over at Citibank. Still, this was one of the wife's first credit cards of her life and she's had it for the better part of 20 years, with my name being on it for the past nine or so. We wondered if maybe they'd reconsider if we purchased a pack of gum with it and then forgot to pay the bill for a month or so. Nope, turned out there was fine print on our letter stating that no amount of purchasing on our part would change their minds.

That wasn't all our news from the Citi for that day, though. In that same pile of mail, we received a letter from CitiFinancial alerting us to the fact that they were raising our interest rate on a credit account we'd had with them back when we were paying for some furniture we'd purchased. Trouble is, that furniture has been paid off for nearly a year now, so as far as we were concerned we didn't HAVE any other Citi accounts beyond the credit card. Seemed odd that a credit organization would drop clients that weren't costing them any money, even if we weren't actively making them any money either. Weren't we still potential money?

I did a little research online and saw several articles about Citibank dropping customers, sometimes without bothering to inform them. Guess we were lucky, there.


TWO HOURS LATER...

*RING*

THE WIFE-- Hello?

DIFFERENT SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- May I speak to THE WIFE'S NAME?

THE WIFE-- This is she.

DIFFERENT SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- Good evening. I'm TELEMARKETER'S NAME and I'm calling Shitibank Diamond Preferred Cardholders to thank you for being a valued customer and--

THE WIFE-- (INTERRUPTING) No, I'm sorry, but you can't say we're valued customers when you dropped our account two weeks ago.

DIFFERENT SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- Ohhh, you canceled your account with us?

THE WIFE-- No. Shitibank canceled our account with you.

DIFFERENT SHITIBANK TELEMARKETER-- Ohhhh. (PAUSE) Well, I can give you a toll free phone number to call if you have any questions about this call?

THE WIFE-- No, that's all right.

*CLICK*

Trudging through a Winter Wonderland

Don't know if you've seen the weather reports, lately, but much of our state has been buried under a foot and a half of snow. Started Friday afternoon for us and pretty much didn't stop until some time in the wee hours, at which point there was an impressive amount of snow on the ground.

Sadie and Moose have had a blast running through it, even after it had grown taller than Moose himself. I had a blast laughing at them. The wife and I ate takeout pizza and spent an evening by the fire.

After we arose this morning, I assumed we would probably eat breakfast here and settle in until the roads were plowed, but the wife announced she wanted to "get out in it." This is the sort of thing people who grew up in Alaska say whenever they haven't seen this amount of snowfall in a while. I don't think it's a matter of wanting to show off their ice-driving skills so much as the desire to be able to immerse themselves in a reminiscence about how things used to be when they drove around in several feet of ice back in Fairbanks. (This behavior is usually accompanied by long speeches about how the scraper trucks in Alaska are so much bigger than those here, how none of these pickup truck with a blade on the front models would be able to move even 5 feet in Alaska, and, eventually, ends a treatise on how Alaskan blueberries are so much better than any in the lower 48--or maybe that's just at my house.) Besides, we needed groceries and breakfast, she said, so we bundled up and out we went.

We dug the wife's Element out, which had been stuck in the driveway all night, having been unable to reach the top of the hill due to my car being in the way. Sadie, in fact, couldn't recognize the wife's car as even being a car, as its boxy shape just looked like a big white cube, and she barked and barked at it until we were able to dig it out. Once we were on the road, we discovered that with 18 inches of snow, driving was more like piloting a boat than a car, but out we went. It's mostly down hill to get out of my neighborhood, but then pretty much uphill all the way to the highway. Didn't matter. The wife was in great form and we had hardly any problems all the way to our first destination: our favorite local breakfast buffet.

There were hardly any cars at the buffet, and we had already half-expected them to be closed due to their staff being snowed in, but the Open sign was lit so we parked. Inside, we waited to pay, but there was no cashier. Beyond the glass-fronted windows of the cooking area we saw a manager lady we're familiar with and a male manager. As we were to learn soon enough, we nearly outnumbered the employees ourselves, as there were only the two managers, plus a guy who looked like a bus boy or maintenance man and another lady who I think was a baker. There was no wait staff and the managers were pretty much running the show, with the other two employees cooking what they could in back. Besides us, there were maybe 8 other customers.

After waiting for a couple of minutes, the female manager came over and invited us in, saying we could pay later and that they didn't have the full buffet out, but were taking orders for custom cooked eggs or omelets. Sounded fine to me. She then directed us to the servers' station where we could get our own coffee. Still sounded cool to me.

What proceeded was a meal of understanding and cooperation between the customers and the four staff members of the restaurant. For instance, we understood that they didn't have the staff to put out the full buffet spread, so we overlooked the items such as green beans and baked chicken that were present on the bar, and instead ate from the bacon and sausage which were there. (The bacon was deep fried for added speed and was, therefore, really good.) We did our own serving and refilling and tried not to be huge hassles for the overextended staff. Meanwhile, the female manager did custom eggs for us, which we ate over Texas toast, and they were great.
Two of our fellow nearby customers had been traveling through the state on their way from Florida to parts further north and had been stranded in our town, spending the night in their car. They seemed very grateful to have a place to stay and certainly weren't going to complain about anything. The whole meal just felt like people pulling together to make a bad situation work out for the best, and I have to say it was one of the more enjoyable meals I've had in a while as a result.

After breakfast, we headed down the road a bit to see one of the wife's patients. She doesn't do a lot of house calls, but is not opposed to them and has a small list of people she has visited in their homes, usually among the elderly. Unfortunately, the patient she'd promised to come see lived at the very end of a very hilly neighborhood. We couldn't even start at the bottom of the hill, though, because there was already a guy in an SUV firmly stuck, blocking the road. We tried to help push him get out, but conceded the battle to a fellow in a pickup who had a tow rope. That didn't work, either, but we'd brought our shovel and snow shovel so we helped dig him out and then pushed while the truck pulled and were finally successful. Less successful was our journey up the hill. The fellow in the pickup was on the same journey, so we let him go first. However, he stalled out mid way up the hill and we lost our momentum and had to start over. We still only made it about mid-way up, before just parking the car and walking in the rest of the way. The wife's patient was amazed to see us, as she'd assumed we'd never be able to make it out of our own house, let alone to hers.

Following a couple more errands and a trip to Wally World for groceries and beer, we headed home. We had hoped that our neighborhood would have been scraped by the time we returned, but not even the road leading to our neighborhood had seen a plow, so we figured it was highly unlikely. Still, we made it past the entrance to our neighborhood and about mid way up the first major hill, before stalling out. We gave it a few more college tries, of course, but wound up having to park the car at the bottom and haul most of our groceries up the hills and, eventually, up our gravity driveway. It's basically half of one of the two routes I walk with the dog every day, so it wasn't so bad on me, but the wife isn't used to such hills when laden with the ingredients for mulled cider. Once we got back and dried off, the wife indeed fired up the cider and we spent the afternoon camped out on the couch, drinking cups of it while warming ourselves with the wood stove.

Sometimes it's nice to be snowed in.

Our New Family Member, the Third

A wise man once said: when a puppy piddles on the carpet, whose fault is it, the puppy's or its owner's? Answer: the owner's, because he's the one not paying attention to his puppy. That's paraphrasing, but we read something very similar on a puppy potty-training website, back when we were first trying to train Sadie. It's as irritating a statement as you're likely to find, but it's also true. Potty training a dog to "go" exclusively outside is a long and uric-acid soaked process that can drive you nigh onto insanity. Complicating the process further is that we refused to go the half-step route of first training to "go" on paper or floor diaper, opting for the whole hog "yer goin' outside or ye'd better get used to holdin' it" avenue.

It's the same process we used on Sadie, starting a year and a half back. We must have done a good job of it, too, because Sadie is completely awesome when it comes to whizzing exclusively outside. Point of fact, she's a pretty awesome dog all around, which we can see now that we have Moose (or Piddles McGillicuddy, as he's come to be known) as contrast. Whenever Sadie has to go "potty," she literally asks to go out; she comes and finds us wherever we are, and gives us an urgent-toned series of grunts and growls. That's our cue to say, "You need to go potty?" at which point she steps up the urgency of the growls. In the early days of this, we used to also have episodes of what we called "potty lying" in which the dog really just wanted to go outside to sniff or investigate the possibility of deer lurking in the yard and would use pottying as her ticket to be let out. This was annoying because at the time we didn't have our nifty wifi shock collar system in place and would have to accompany her into the cold using a leash to prevent her from tearing off into the night after said lurking deer. These days, though, she's so well-trained by her shock collar that she doesn't even have to wear the collar anymore and we completely trust her to stay in the yard and let her out whenever the mood strikes her.

As well trained as Sadie now is, we can't for the life of us remember what exactly we did to reach that level of perfection with her. How was it, for instance, that we were able to get her to verbalize her potty needs? We'd really like to know, because it seems silly to punish Moose for piddling in the house and yell at him to only go outside when he seemingly doesn't have any recourse for letting us know that he needs to go outside. So for the past few weeks, we've tried to remain vigilant for any signs that he needs to go and immediately let him out. Trouble is, he's a stealth-pisser and covert-crapper, capable of squeezing out some waste in seconds, usually choosing to do so in a room other than the one we're in and dashing back before we know he was even gone. Until about three days ago, we had not had even one single day without an accident in all the weeks he's been here. And I'm not convinced he even achieved that record feat, because I found and cold, old link in the guest bedroom two days ago, and who knows when he deposited that?

Fortunately, I think we're finally seeing the light at the end of Poop & Piddle Tunnel. While we have had some excretory indiscretions in recent days, they've all been of a solid variety, so he's either getting the message that the yard is where he needs to wee, or he's developing better bladder control. Maybe both. He's even begun to go to the back door when he needs to go, which makes us extremely happy. Now if we can only work on his verbalizing, we'll be good. As shiny and perfect as Sadie appears in this regard, in actuality it took her several months to achieve this state.

Meanwhile, Moose has been easier to train in other regards. He's actually sitting and waiting on command--at least most of the time--and is already shaking hands with enough regularity that it's nearing on-command level, too. He also fetches far better than Sadie, (who is perfectly willing to go get any item you throw, but will then only play keepaway with it); Moose actually brings things back, provided you don't tell him he's a good dog until he returns with them, otherwise he drops whatever it is and runs to be praised.

As much as we've hated having to be back in cleanup mode again, we're really digging Moose as a pup. He's a far less high-maintenance dog than Sadie was at that age and it's been a fun guessing game as to what sort of dog he really is. We keep telling him he'd better not be a damn little chow chow, but we'll probably survive okay, even if he is.

He and Sadie are great friends--except before she's had her coffee in the morning, when she tends to growl at him. Same goes for Avie kitty, who has wisely chosen to make friends with him while he's still tiny. They have lots of fun chasing one another around the house, with Avie running only until Moose gives up the chase, at which point she turns and slinks back in his vicinity to get his attention and start the game anew.

The other thing I'm trying to do with him is to take more pictures. We took lots of Sadie as a puppy, then a few more as an adolescent dog, but very few in between those stages and then adult. Got to get more in the bank before he loses his puppy cuteness. Everyone who sees him falls in love with him, even down to our vet. I've taken him in three times now for initial checkup and shots and each time the vet and her staff have trouble giving him back to me. This past visit, they even apologized that I had to wait around the waiting room for so long, because they didn't want to let him go. He's a charmer.