Quick Trip

Made a quick trip over to Richmond today, to deliver Yule gifts to our niece and nephew.  Unfortunately, we didn't have anything for their Mum and Dad, or for my mother-in-law ... or the two dogs.

However, Noa really seemed taken with the large plush dog we got her from Pet Smart (I believe $5 from the purchase price goes towards helping out a homeless animal) and the book of random dog facts and trivia.  John really seemed to get a kick out of the tub of Play-Doh we found, which has over twenty cans of Play-Doh in various colours, and a whole whack of bits and pieces to press and mold and cut and generally have a wildly creative time with the dough.  Actually, much of the fun even seemed to come from dumping everything out of the cannister and then putting it back in, dumping it out again, and putting the can on his head.  Isn't it grand when you give a child a toy which can be played with in so many ways!

The dogs weren't great.  Bailey, the new pitt bull, is only about ten months old so she's just a puppy and very full of energy ... and of course much larger than Angel and Hobgoblin.  Hobs really didn't want to play, I think mostly because she was so energetic right off the bat and didn't calmly introduce herself before starting to play ... also because she is big and has heavy feet which she used to paw at and step on him a couple of times.  Xara is getting old so she was fairly mellow until later in the day when she'd just about had enough of the business and antics of Bailey.  Then, John just loves the little dogs and we had to keep telling him not to get down on the floor onto their level to play with them, and he and Hobgoblin got into it a couple of times.  John ended up with quite the bruise under his eye.  Angel mostly hid either in my lap or tucked in behind my feet.

Angel was really antsy on the ferry, so I got her out of the car and we went for a bit of a wander around the car deck, and she stopped -- to pee, I thought.  I waited and waited, and was looking at her, then said "Are you just sitting?" as she does tend to do a fairly deep squat to pee.  So I tried to get her to move along ... and it turned out she was having this really long pee, which is SO unlike her.  Which means she'd been holding it for quite some time, good little girl!  I made a big fuss over her waiting for so long and then having such a big pee on the boat.  Good girl!  Funny thing is, as soon as we got to the ferry terminal just after eight, we did have the dogs out of the car on a little walk, especially as I needed to pee!