Hey All! Sophie here – I’m back after Mommy took over my blog last week – sheesh, sometimes you’d think it was her blog and not mine! That’s okay though because my Mommy is one of my best friends in the whole wide world (well at least of the non-furry variety 😉  This leads me to what I wanted to talk about this week…friendship. I thought I would share with you all how my Mom met Miss Jen and how I came about writing this blog.
First I wanted to say thank you to all my “blogettes” who were concerned with what happened after my awful experience with Samson, a.k.a. Ninja Kitty. Â Well, my eye finally healed up and Mom & Dad freed me of that horrible cone thing and I can see perfectly again just like nothing ever happened. Don’t get me wrong, I still don’t trust cats and probably never will but Sam & I have established some boundaries and as long as he stays on his turf and doesn’t mess with mine, all remains happy in Homeville.
Ok, now how I met one of my other great non-furry friends, Miss Jen. Back in July of 2007, when I was just a 4 month old pup getting away with anything I wanted (ahh, the good ole days) my Mommy got very sick and found out she has something called “psuedo tumor cerebri”.  That means she has too much fluid on her brain & it  doesn’t go away like other people. I guess it was kind of drowning her brain or at least that’s as much as I understand about it.  I’m a smart dog, but I’m no doctor so I have my take on things that humans go through.  I heard her & Daddy talking about it being very serious and she could die if she didn’t have surgery to fix it and I was very scared but tried to be a brave pup. I knew I couldn’t do anything to help her which made me very sad & I saw she was scared too so I made sure I gave Mommy even more puppy love than normal.  In August, after she had been to sooo many doctors appointments, she found a really good doctor named Dr. Rigamonte and she decided he was the one who was going to operate on her. First they had to shave all the really long fur off of her head which made her look really funny.  Bear, Maggie, Buddy, “The Feline 3”  & myself got together & I told them everything that she was going through (I had the inside scoop back then because I was living in Mommy & Daddy’s room in that darned crate thing). We all agreed we wouldn’t fight or tear up the house and that we would give her extra love, at least until she got better. What can I say, we’re still animals darn it and being good wasn’t easy for us but for Mommy we would do our best!
They kept Mommy in some hospital far away from us for a whole week! I almost forgot what she looked like she was gone so long. Dad got the call that he could go pick her up & we were so happy she was finally coming back home. When they got to the house we could tell she had been through ALOT. She was so tired and had 38 metal staples and a huge cut where her fur used to be and it looked like it hurt terribly. Get this, though…they didn’t make her wear one of those cones around her neck like I did after my surgery…what’s the deal with that?
Well back to how Mommy met Miss Jen…After having surgery she was supposed to stay in bed for a long time & her doctor told her she couldn’t do much of anything but eat & sleep (which to me sounds like paradise but for some reason she was NOT happy about it at all – I may never figure humans out!). Daddy told all of us we couldn’t even play with Mommy & we definitely couldn’t go for our nice long walks anymore until she was all better which was going to be awhile. I was just a puppy back then & I needed to go out quite a bit because it takes puppies a little while to figure out that whole “potty training thing”. Daddy works all day so no one was home to help us & not one of us could figure out how to put those leash things on let alone how to open that tricky door handle to even get outside. So Mom went to work with a big yellow book with lots of names & numbers in it and she found Jen’s Gentle Pet Sitters and called. She told Miss Jen the story about her surgery & they made a date for her to come over & meet the whole furry bunch of us.
I can’t speak for my brothers & sisters (although I try to alot) but I was pretty scared. I didn’t like the idea of a new person coming over to do the things I was used to doing with Mommy but I also wasn’t down with not going outside for my walks so I figured I would give this Jen lady a chance. I’m so glad I did because she is one of the nicest humans I’ve ever met. She came over & let all 7 of us smell her as much as we wanted & she loved on each one of us & took her time to get to know everything about us. She learned all of our little quirks, where each of our favorite “potty spots” were, what food we ate & the most important thing, where Mommy kept those delicious treats we were allowed to have when we were done with our business! She even liked those darn cats that we pups allowed to let live with us – can you believe that? Mommy & Miss Jen set up a time each day that Jen would come over & just like clockwork there she was, right on time, at our door ready to fill in for our Mom while she was trying to heal. Mom even gave her a key to our house and we don’t let anyone have one of those but she knew she could trust Miss Jen and has never had a reason not to even when other “sitters” would fill in for her they were all so nice and what Mom calls “professional”
Miss Jen was so patient with me, just like my very own humans & she taught me not to jump on people (they really should have a puppy handbook because I thought that was the way I was supposed to say hi!) and she would walk us in the rain, heat, wind, whatever weather threw at us Miss Jen just kept walking us until each one of us was done & ready to go in for a nap. She & Mom would sit & talk afterwards and found out they had alot in common & pretty soon Mommy & Jen were having their own play dates. It’s been 7 years since that bad surgery happened and Moms fur is back and long again and she calls Miss Jen her “bestie” and they talk every single day! Even when we moved all the way from Severn to Cockeysville, Jen has been there for my Mommy and us through alot of other things (including a couple more surgeries – yuck & patooie!) and when Mom & Dad went on something called a cruise for 7 days and one of Miss Jen’s helpers came and lived with us 24 hours a day for all 7 days and took such good care of us.
So see how great pets are? Just like the title of my blog this week, not only are pets the best things around but they even can bring brand new friends into your life that you may have never met otherwise. Also, if we had never met Miss Jen, you all wouldn’t be reading this now and I never would have been able to share all my stories with you like I get to do on this blog which is something I look forward to doing every week, so I sure hope you all look forward to reading it! Well, time for me to give Mom back her laptop so she can do some work to make some money to buy more of those treat things I mentioned earlier 🙂  I will be back soon as I have so many more stories to share from a dog’s point of view of this crazy world. Thanks for stopping by. Peace, Love & Licks, Sophie