Toto earns her keep

-- Toto on her first 'field trip' with our family --
Kathryn Alberston Park, October 10, 2010

While Ryan's parents and sister are serving as missionaries in Rochester New York, we are taking care of their West Highland Terrier, Toto. She was really sick about a month ago when Ryan was in Singapore, but now she's healthy again. Thankfully!

Before Toto came to live with us, I did some research on her breed and learned that Westies were bred to seek and dig out badgers and foxes. They're white in order to be distinguished from the animals being hunted.

Well, I didn't take any pictures of the gruesome evidence, but Sunday night when Ryan was getting ready to take Toto for a walk, he discovered a dead mouse or vole. (We were unable to determine the species since the carcass was pretty mangled.) We've been thinking that Toto was similar to the dog 'Trusty' from "Lady and the Tramp", she growls a lot at unseen-by-us things. But, now we're being convinced otherwise.

Worse than puke

If you've ever wondered what is worse than cleaning up your child's puke, I have discovered it.

Dog vomit. All over the dog bed in the crate. Nasty stuff. And oh the smell. It was raining, so I couldn't hose it off and hang it up to dry, so I used our washing machine (I ran an empty cycle with bleach before using it on our clothes again) and then dried them in the garage.

Good news: Toto is now clean - thanks to the nice people at Petco. Bad news: she's still sick.