Category: Casey

>They say pet ownership is rewarding.  Studies have shown that people live longer, have a reduction in stress and therapy animals really help wonders with sick and disabled patients.

They apparently never had their dog end up on a roof.

Now, I know you’re laughing right now, and going “How did THAT happen?”

Well, let me tell you.  Now, I don’t profess myself to be a dog whisperer or psychic, so I can’t tell you what was going on through Casey’s head when he did this.  But my inlaws have a deck in their back yard, and it USED to be two levels.. the second level being on the roof that’s slightly higher than this portion.. you can see it in the top middle, or at least the metal flashing.  Anyways, a few years back, they had the back part of the roof replaced, and due to the unstable nature of the top level deck -it was a DDIY or Don’t Do It Yourself- and they had it taken down.  Except they didn’t have the stairs taken down.  There’s a window on the back of the house, and I guess it’s a great fire escape route from the second floor.  Anyways, The Sunday before last, Zoe got Casey to come up through the roof and got yelled at because he probably wanted to come in the house through the window.  Well, we let the dogs in and I think rather than wait for someone to open the back door, he decided he was going to go through the window and get in the house himself.  But that didn’t work.

We think at this point, Casey got confused and went down the wrong way, and obviously started panicking when he realized there were no stairs to get down the side of the house and get all four paws planted on the ground again.  So, this is a picture of Jeff trying to get him to move forward one foot to get ahold of his collar and drag him down to the edge so he can go ahead and pick him up off the roof (Jeff’s standing on something the roof isn’t actually that low).  But that wasn’t working.  So I ran upstairs, expecting Tim -the youngest boy of Jeff’s family of 6 siblings- to be home, but he wasn’t.  Luckily, one of his friends was still there and he was nice enough to hop out the window and help Jeff get Casey down by grabbing his collar and shoving him forward a foot and holding him there while Jeff got him off the rest of the way.

Moral of the story?  Dogs don’t belong on roofs.  We’ll see if Casey does this again.

>No, we did not adopt a new baby.. but we did adopt a dog!  It was unexpected, but I’m so glad we did.

Every Saturday, we always go to lunch.  We budget for Saturday lunches, and so it’s been a tradition since.. forever really.  We’ll usually go out to fast food, or sometimes buffet places, depending on how hungry Jeff and I are.  If I really had to name the place we go the most, it’s Souper Salad.  Anyways, we went to lunch at Blimpies, and then went down to Draper to hit Michaels, I needed to purchase some jewelry making tools.  And of course, I ended up getting more than tools and instead of spending around $10 like I planned, I ended up spending around $27, because then I had to get a little caddy, and then Jeff saw these cute little beads with letters on them and suggested the girls would like personalized bracelets, then of course I had to get some filler beads, and then I had to get some elastic string to make them… yeah I love when stuff like that happens.

Well, Michaels is actually right next door to Petco in this particular shopping area, so while we were walking in, Zoe somehow recognized it as a pet store, and asked if we could go in to look around.  Jeff, being a softie said sure and so after we were done in Michaels, we went into Petco.  The Utah Humane shelter was doing an adoption thing there that day, so they had some extra cats and seven dogs there to adopt.  Three large dogs, three Chihuahuas, and then a medium sized dog.  Well, apparently one of the dogs had issues with men; to be more specific, tall men with facial hair.. which fits Jeff’s descriptions.  He was going crazy when he saw Jeff, barking and growling at him so Jeff had to walk away for the dog to calm down enough for me to get a look at all the other dogs.  The other two larger dogs were good, except that the chow/lab mix was around a year old and seemed too high energy for us and the other large dog was a pit bull mix.. and seemed sweet enough, but we’re not really a pit bull family.  Jeff absolutely hates Chihuahuas because of Grandma’s dogs she had, they were ill tempered and nasty and I think they ruined the breed for him.  So that left.. Casey. 

Jeff said he noticed that Casey was just watching him as he walked away and was just staring at him, and he did it with respect, and I think at that point Jeff got attached to him.  Eventually we were drawn back over, and dispite the other dog’s aggression towards him, we managed to indicate we wanted to see Casey closer and walk him around the store.  Casey was in a cage on top of another dog -the one that didn’t like Jeff- and instead of waiting for her to pick him up, he JUMPED out of the cage and straight for Jeff.  We walked him around the store, and Ruthie just took an instant liking to him.  Normally it takes her a bit to warm up to dogs -she’s been exposed to Newton and Oreo, the dogs at John and Wendy’s house- but it was almost instantaneous with Casey.  Everytime he’d stop and sniff something, Ruthie would hug his butt, something he did not mind at all.

Anyway, we ended up going back and telling the gal that we wanted him, and so we filled -and by we, I mean me- out the paperwork and then we bought the basics, dishes, collar, leash, food, and brought him home.  I have to clarify, it’s been a long time coming.  Ever since we bought the house, Zoe’s been asking for a dog.  She’s been drawing pictures like this for months:

What is that you ask?  Well let me tell you.  This is what we like to call “Emotional Blackmail”.  That’s our house.  With a dog door.  Then that’s Zoe with pigtails, and the smaller, four legged creature is a dog.  That’s right, a DOG.  This was the first of many pictures like this.  It started coming to a head about two weeks ago, when Zoe said to Ruthie, “Lets go upstairs Ruthie and play Animal Shelter.”  At that point, we knew she was wanting one BAD.  And that’s what lead us up to getting Casey.

Anyway, Casey is a great dog for us.  He’s a medium sized dog, so he’s between 25-50 lbs (we haven’t weighed him yet) and he’s half Beagle, half Lab.  He’s gold and white, and he’s pretty straight down the middle in terms of which breed he favors physically.  He’s also a shorter dog, and since he’s 2.5 years old, we know he’s not going to get any bigger.  He’s great with children, and he’s also not an ‘in your face’ dog unless he has to go outside, then he comes over and licks you and noses you and starts a low whine.. which for the most part is the only noise he makes.  He also does this rumbly throaty sound too if he’s happy.  Anyways, here’s Casey!

He’s such a handsome dog, and it’s pretty clear from the beginning that he’s Jeff’s dog.  We were thinking of changing his name, but he responds so well to Casey we’re going to keep it.