}

Monday, October 22, 2007

Family matters

It's been a busy Labour Holiday weekend. My mother-in-law arrived on Friday, and we all visited and shopped a bit leading up to a birthday party Sunday afternoon (for the wife of Nigel's cousin). All of which isn't unusual, since family events, big and small, are often on the agenda.

But even Jake had some “extended family” news this weekend. To tell that, I need to back up a bit.

Nearly four months ago I wrote about Jake's arrival in our family. A few weeks later, I wrote about Jake graduating from Puppy Pre-School. After this second post, I received an email from someone who wondered if they had adopted Jake's blood brother. After exchanging a few emails, we worked out they had.

It turns out that they'd googled “cavoodle” and eventually stumbled across my blog post (gotta love the Interwebs!). In the old days, it would've been nearly impossible to find out what became of your companion animal's real siblings.

Anyway, on Friday afternoon my mother-in-law and I took Jake in to have his stitches removed (he yelped a little, but was otherwise unfazed, btw). Afterward, we took him to the adjoining pet store, as I did earlier in the month, to buy him a new toy and some refills for this rubber thing called a Kong. We put a treat in it and Jake's occupied trying to get the treat out. When we leave the house we give this to him so he doesn't mind our leaving him quite so much. Bribery, really, but it works.

So we're in the store and one of the clerks starts ooohing and aaaahing over Jake (clearly a very smart woman), and asks what he is. I tell her he's a cavoodle. “He came from here, actually,” I tell her. This couple shopping nearby hears all this and they introduce themselves.

It turned out that, quite by chance, they were there to pick up Jake's brother, who had his operation that morning. So we chatted for awhile, trading notes and anecdotes like proud new parents. They pointed out his brother's favourite toy, so I bought one for Jake (and he's already pretty much destroyed it). When Jake's brother is fully recovered we're going to organise a “play date” for the boys.

So, even Jake gets to participate in the extended family thing like his daddies. It's almost as if he was “meant” to be with us.

2 comments:

CondoBlogger said...

That is so adorable!

It will be very interesting to see if the puppies "recognize" each other. I'm certain they must have scents that will be familiar (literally) at least.

Nigel's family must be very close BTW. The Wife of his Cousin? I don't even know that person's name in my own family.

Arthur Schenck said...

I was thinking the same things about them recognising each other. I have no idea if they normally do or not, but considering how important scent is to dogs, you'd think they'd remember that. We'll see, I guess.

It's probably fair to say that most of our socialising is with family members--sometimes just a quiet dinner, other times a large party. But we usually do something with someone in the family at least once a week. That description of the birthday girl was a little convoluted, but, as I've said before, I never name anyone without their permission. Nevertheless, we know the partners of most of Nigel's cousins, even though we don't necessarily see them all that often. So, yes, the family is pretty close.