Lap Potato

When Carly is allowed, she can be a couch potato but she would rather be like she is here, a Lap Potato. There is nothing in the world she likes better than jumping up in your lap, flopping over on her back and insisting that you rub her tummy.

When we came to Texas in August, we had to leave her in the kennel in San Miguel. Although, Peter's place isn't so much like a kennel as it is Doggie Camp. Peter has room to divide up the dogs everyday by size and give them outside space to run as a pack. Carly qualifies for the mid-size pack but she climbs the fence and joins  the large-size pack.

I'll never forget the first time I took her to Peter's and he was showing me around. He pointed out a nice crate in his house and said that this would be Carly's crate at night. I told him he might have a problem because I was working on it but she wasn't crate trained. No, no, Peter told me, after one night he would not have a problem. Every evening at a certain time every dog came in and went to their crate for the night. I don't know how he did it but ever since she stayed that first time with Peter, when it is bedtime for us, she knows it is bedtime for her and she heads for her crate.

Once we realized that we were going to be in Texas for a while, we wanted to get her here as well. A few emails and some wonderful friends and we worked out a plan. One couple went to Peter's to get her to the Vet so she could be up to date on her shots and start heart worm medications. They kept her overnight and took her before the crack of dawn to meet up with her ride. The couple who was bringing her had a car that was already loaded down and there wasn't space for Carly so she sat in K's lap from San Miguel to San Antonio. Carly weighs 17 pounds, not too heavy but she sat in K's lap for 12 hours....now she is heavy.

My #3 son who lives in Austin drove to San Antonio and picked her up from K. Carly rode from San Antonio to Austin with her head in one of the grandson's lap.  She stayed with them and their three dogs until the weekend when we met #3 half way between Austin and Houston and brought her home to Houston.

Carly is a good traveler and can adapt to whatever is happening especially when she can be a lap potato

Crossing the Border One More Time

Yes, we made the border crossing at Laredo one more time by car. Other than seeing a lot of military convoys headed South and Federal Police convoys headed North all was quiet. Don't misunderstand. Just because we didn't see any bodies piled up on the highway doesn't mean that everything is safe in Nuevo Laredo. Yet, there was a big softball game going on as we drove by parks along the river. The Ford car dealership and other businesses were open. I always wonder how I could live in a war zone or endure what the people in Japan are living through. Would I be a survivor? Someone who could go on day after day under the stress of such living conditions? I hope I never have to find out.

So many times we have waited to cross the border but this time we sailed right on to the bridge and waited for about three cars to clear out in front of us. A long day of driving but an easy border crossing.

This is the first time we have made the trip with Carly. She is a good traveler. Once the car is moving she curls up in the back seat and sleeps except when she is braced on the armrest between the seats and looking out the front window.

Carly Got A Haircut

Carly is not going to be nominated for the best dogster category of the Academy Awards. She is afraid of the camera. Any time I put the camera up to my eye she tucks her tail and acts as if she is in trouble. You can see that nervous look she is giving me.

I was trying to get a photo of her new haircut. She was clipped and I do mean clipped. I asked for her fur to be left about 3/4 inch long. It didn't work out that way. It is less than 1/2 inch long. I've asked in inches. I've asked in centimeters. I held my fingers just so far apart to show them how long. So far nothing I've tried with any groomer we have used here for Taylor or Carly has worked. They do it like they want to do it.

We thought she was gaining weight and we were thinking about putting her on a diet. But this haircut saved her. She wasn't a little butterball after all. She was just fluffy. Now she is skinny. I may have to go buy her a jacket because it is cold here during the night and we don't have central heat.

In general the haircut was bad enough but they trimmed about 5 inches along her tail by her butt so now we have this tail that looks like a feather duster, handle and feathers.  Most of the cut she can take but her beautiful fluffy tail.....she knows it isn't right so rather than let me take a picture of it, she is going to tuck it under and sit on it.

Carly Can't Fly

Carly can't fly on Continental Airlines. Maybe I should say I won't let Carly fly on Continental Airlines from Mexico to Houston, Texas. And if some of you are wondering who the heck Carly is, Carly is the little dog we rescued in July. She is a cute little thing, dark gray and white. Maybe a poodle/Lhasa or poodle/cocker mix. Who knows. She weighs about 15-18 pounds and is like a fluffy teddy bear curled up in your lap.

Three weeks after we adopted her, we left her for five days to go to Mexico City. And then our lives turned upside down and we were back in Houston for seven weeks. She stayed in San Miguel. Back home for three weeks and then we left her again. All of this time she is being left, she is in a good place but it wasn't with us.  The poor little dog was getting traumatized with having a home and then not having a home. She needed to be with us and we needed her.

I thought it would be simple. I had read Continental's website about traveling with dogs and I bought a crate that complied. She is just a little too big to fit under the seat so I knew she would have to go in cargo. But then I called Continental to book her. It wasn't going to be simple. They gave me numbers to call at the Leon airport because they could not book her out of Mexico. The first number didn't work. It "no existe." Then they gave me two more numbers to call. "No existe." Finally I reached someone who told me I would have to get a customs broker to get her on the flight. That number worked.

Between my poor Spanish and the custom brokers poor English and the bad connection, I was hearing that I had to come to their office which wasn't at the airport and fill out the paperwork several days ahead of time. There was something about they had to have the dog so many hours before the flight and I never could figure out what their address was even if I went over to Leon to fill out the paperwork.

I was so frustrated that I asked a friend of mine to help me. Darlene was amazing. She was like a dog with a new bone and she wasn't going to let it go until she had it all figured out. She made phone calls to Continental in DF and the Customs brokers in Leon and it all came down to was that to fly Carly from Leon, Mexico to Houston, Texas was even worse than what I had understood and it would take two or three trips to Leon to set it up (a three hour round-trip drive from San Miguel), it would probably mean leaving Carly overnight with the customs broker and it would cost almost as much to fly her from Leon to Houston as my round trip ticket from Leon/Houston and back again.

The wonderful thing about San Miguel is how friends rally around when someone needs help. Darlene made some phone calls and found someone who would bring Carly to me. Kelly with Save a Mexican Mutt also found someone who would bring her. Neither of these people who said they would bring her had ever laid eyes on Carly and one of them did not know us at all.

I flew into San Miguel to take care of Carly and also to take care of some business but I had to get Carly ready to go the next morning. As soon as I reached the house, I went to pick up Carly and took her to the Vet. Another thank you to Darlene for getting me a quick appointment on a Friday afternoon. I got her health certificate just in case anyone asked for it at the border although that has only happened to us one time in all the times we have crossed the border. Early the next morning I took Carly to meet her driver and off they went. I wonder what thoughts were going through her little head. First she is here and then she is there and then somewhere else.

I flew back into Houston Sunday afternoon and Carly arrived in her "car" about an hour later. The whole family is together again and other than a little separation anxiety when we leave her, Carly seems to have survived being left here and there.

Don't ask me how we are going to get her back to San Miguel. I'm going to be like Scarlett O'Hara and I'll worry about that when the time comes.

UPDATE: There may be some hope for flying a dog that is too big to go under the seat out of Mexico in Cargo because American Airlines has announced that they are going to add some more routes into Mexico. And Southwest has also announced some flights into Mexico. BUT American will be flying a Queretaro/Dallas/Ft.Worth route and Southwest will be flying to some Mexican locations from the West Coast. Not much help for Carly but it might be good for some of you other doggies owners. From what I have heard they are not sending the dogs through Mexican Customs when leaving the country and their charges for a doggie ticket is much less than on Continental. Of course, just like anything else in Mexico this can change without notice or vary from official to official, or location to location.

More About Carly

This morning when I went out to walk Carly, I looked up the street and the rising sun on the yellow building against a dark blue-gray sky made the building look like it had been gilded with gold. I didn't have the camera with me but as soon as Carly finished her business, I got the camera and took a picture.

Several readers have asked me about Carly. Carly has clearly decided she is going to stay. She has the household routine down. She flies up and down the stairs. She has picked out her napping places in each room. She is definitely a Mexican dog who can ignore all the fireworks. And she thinks we are wonderful. Isn't it nice to have a dog just love you and they welcome you everytime you walk in the house like you have been away for a week.

I think she is pretty smart and definitely intuitive. The other day I had arranged for the groomer to pick her up and take her to get a bath. Ned and I were talking about it that morning. She started sitting right by Ned's leg and she would not follow me downstairs even when I called her. You could tell she was worried. When the groomer came she did not go bounding to the door and she just crept along the floor when we called her. How did she know that she was going to get a bath?

There are a few things she needs to work on though. First of all she needs to be crate trained because when we travel and are visiting with friends or in a motel, that is the best place for her if we have to leave for a while. Then I know that she isn't going to damage anything. From the first we put her food and water in the crate so she would get use to going inside it. Since she has settled in, I decided it was time to work on the crate training. I sat for about 15 minutes with a few delicious little bits of meat that I held inside the crate. She sat down in front of the crate with her tail wagging. She would look at the meat and then at me but she would not go into the crate. She seemed to be saying, I'd like to have that meat but you aren't fooling me. I'm not going in the crate for it. Never once during the whole 15 minutes did she put more than one foot in the crate. This could take a while.

She seems to be pretty well house trained but she doesn't recognize the patio as the house. I don't know, maybe it is the plants and sky that give her the idea it is okay to go on the patio especially if we have gone off and left her. But that seems to be getting better.

Carly was on the street for a while and she must have learned how to tear into garbage bags to survive. On garbage days we sit the garbage bags by the door to wait for the clang, clang announcing the garbage truck's arrival on the street. We can't do that anymore. All of a sudden you will realize that she has left your side and you will find her attacking the garbage bag. Now we have to leave them in a garbage can until we take them outside to the truck. So we are adjusting too.

Another problem has cropped up in the last day or two. She wants to sleep with us on our bed. We don't want a third party in the bed. She is sneaky about it. She goes to her bed and then waits until she thinks we are asleep then she jumps up on the end of the bed and curls up. She is so light weight that she can jump up on the bed without shaking the bed at all. Last night I was on my side but not yet asleep. She got out of her bed and came over and looked at me. She must have thought that I was asleep. She immediately went to the end of the bed and jumped up and laid down in one swift movement.

Ned fusses when she misbehaves and threatens to send her back to Queretaro but she knows she has him wrapped around her paw. The other day I found them snoozing on the couch. she was between him and the back of the couch and she was laying on her back. She looked quite comfortable.....and so did Ned.