Our New Addition

Meet Molly !!!

Our new Best Friend is a 1 to 2 year old Golden Retriever .  We have been really wrapped up trying to get her settled in. She is the smallest Golden Retrieve I have ever seen. It is obvious that she recently had puppies and she is so malnourished that you can see her ribs.

She came with the name of "Meadow". It doesn't strike us as good name for a dog. We couldn't think of anything that rhymes with Meadow, so we have decided on "Molly". We are hoping that the "M" of Meadow and Molly will be close enough for her to make the transition easy. So far it seems to be working.

Molly was picked up last Wednesday morning at the Animal Shelter by Southern Arizona Golden Retriever Rescue. They took her to the Vet to be spayed and we picked her up at the Vets that afternoon (80 mile round trip).

Molly is housebroken (coming directly from the shelter no one knew if she was or wasn’t) , walks well on a leash, loves people but is shy around other dogs. She doesn't run from them but she doesn't go toward them either. She doesn't seem to have any vocabulary beyond "come" and "sit". We bought her some toys but, when we tried to get her to play she hasn't shown any interest in them at all.

As we were considering getting another dog, one of the things we talked about was that we think most of the people we have met since being on the road was because of Raider. He loved people and people couldn't help but come up to him and pet him. We try to walk 10,000 steps a day and do laps up and down every row of whatever RV park we are in. RVers are always friendly and Escapees are especially so; they wave or say "Hello" as we or they walk by. However, when we are walking Molly everyone has to stop and pet Molly. Naturally that leads to a conversation. So, after 3 weeks of passing these people everyday on walks; thanks to Molly we can say that we have actually met them. Our walks now take twice as long to cover half the distance. :-) Yesterday a couple that met Molly the day before invited us to their Casita for Happy Hour. We have been 3 sites away from them for 3 weeks never heard from them; now with Molly we are getting to be part of the "in crowd".

We were nervous about leaving her alone while we went to the RV Park's BIG Thanksgiving dinner but, when we got back she was standing at the door wagging her tail. There were no surprise packages, or wet spots and nothing had been chewed while we were out. The next day we left her for 15 minutes and she tried to claw her way through the screen on the slide window nearest the couch. Another day we tried to leave her leashed to the dinning room table. We hadn't even made it to the truck and we herd something fall. She managed to get on the couch and pull down the window shade above the couch. Clearly, she has abandonment issues.

The screen to our slide window

Tuesday we returned to Sierra Vista for Molly’s post operation visit (another 80 mile round trip). We also stopped at Petsmart and got a crate for her. 

Molly’s new crate.

We think Molly may have been crate trained. Sometimes she walks into the crate on her own then curls up for a nap. It does however take up a huge part of the living room!

Molly makes herself at home by taking over my recliner.

After just a few days with us Molly seems very relaxed and settled in !!

Life is Good in Arizona

We have been here at the Escapee co-op for about a week and have really settled in. This is a picture of our site. Somehow in one week we have put out so much stuff it will take us a month to repack.

Our temps had been low 80s during the day and low 50s at night. After our very cold summer at Cape Blanco, we are relishing the warmth. We have sat out on the patio more in the first week that we did all summer. However the weather change to wind and then cold with over night lows at 32 degrees.

Since the weather has been so nice and this is such a good place to walk; we have been walking everyday and trying to get back to 10,000 steps a day. We have also become social butterflies. Kathy has been going to the Beading Group meetings and I have had my first Boccee Ball lesson. We have also been to the Ice Cream Social, a few Happy Hours and have tickets to a community dinner.

I started volunteering at Kartchner Caverns again and it was great getting back into the cavern.

You are probably wondering why I said "I start volunteering" and not "We start volunteering". We have been grieving over the loss Raider now for over a year and just can't get past it. Whenever we see another Golden Retriever we have to run to it to give it a hug and then walk away with tears in our eyes. We have had several friends who have lost a dog tell us, "the only way to get through the loss of your dog is to get another to fill the hole." So far we haven't been able to do that, but have now decided to get another Golden Retriever. We tried the Golden Rescue in the SF Bay Area that we got Raider from. However, they aren't comfortable with the whole fulltime RVing thing and no yard. We have been in contact with two Golden Rescue places here in Arizona (one in Phoenix and one in Tucson), they both said that they adopt out to Snow Birds all of the time so the fulltime RVing isn't a problem. So, we have been approved for an adoption and are just waiting for a dog to become available. We don't want to leave a new dog alone in a new environment, so Kathy is postponing volunteering until we think the dog as settled in.