A Gift to Scotia’s People

My parents recently adopted a malamute named Nova Scotia, and she’s super sweet. She’s three, so she’s very high energy and tends to bowl over the other dogs. I have to separate them sometimes because she plays rough and has puppy manners.

For example, earlier this week she sat on Tundra’s head and chewed on his back leg. Completely pinned him.

Tundra did not approve, legs kicking and whining.

I pulled her off and banished her to the addition where she could see us but not reach the dogs. She caterwauled and huffed and whined, nearly drowning out the call my mom was trying to make on the phone.

Then it went silent.

I hopped up in time to see her pulling paper out of the trash and shredding it. So she got a scolding, the paper was put back, and she was STILL in exile in the apartment.

When she finally calmed down and laid down by the gate with a huff, I opened it, and she came out to sit nicely with Tundra.

She’s a hand full!

She’s super cute though, and when I work in the upstairs office, she squishes in under the desk by my feet and rests her paw on my foot.

Well, her people didn’t want to give her up but were forced to due to circumstances beyond their control. This wasn’t a seizure or rescue – she was loved and well taken care of, and her sweet temperament proves that.

When we got Joe, his person had terminal cancer. We had no direct contact with this person, and they were in a bad place. I’m glad they realized that they couldn’t take care of Joe anymore because he was HUGELY overweight and didn’t go outside to piddle. Our understanding is she fed him treats to behave (high energy Husky!) but was too ill to take him outside and instead had puppy pads all over the house.

So it was a rough start. Just walking across a room would make him pant and wheeze, and he looked like a table with dog legs. We immediately adjusted his food and treats, took him for walks, and taught him to pee outside. He grumped at the other dogs and took a while to warm up.

But we worried about his person and worried that they would miss him and be worried about him.

So we created a book for them with photos of Joe and his new people and dogs and house. We included as many photos of him as we could and mailed it to the rescue for them to give to his person. The rescue loved it, and we hope that it made things a little easier, knowing Joe was safe.

Scotia on the other hand fit in immediately with no problems other than rough housing a little too rough, and my mom has been in frequent contact with her people. I’ve uploaded a few videos of the dogs to my private YouTube and sent mom the links to share. They still miss Scotia though, so we decided to make a book for her people too.

We used Shutterfly, the same website as before.

Here’s a shot of the cover. I picked one of Scotia looking out into a bright day to show that she had a new life and was doing well.

I’m not going to include all of the pages, but here are a few.

In this one, a couple shots of the dogs playing together.

Some shots of the yard and what she sees from it. Our apple tree is on the left, and the right photo is down our driveway towards the valley on that side.

I thought it would be cute to include Scotia hunting mice. She has discovered that there are scratchy-scratchy critters in the walls and has been snuffling and digging and scratching everywhere in her attempts to reach them. In the photo on the left, she had squeezed down past the dehumidifier in her search.

Then a fun photo of her being cute.

She’s an amazing puppy dog, and we were really happy with the book when it arrived this week. My mom will be sending it to her family as a remembrance.

So, thank you to them. She’s a perfect fit for our house, and I think she’s happy. *smile*