And they call it...

... puppy lo-o-o-ove.... (I was such a big Donny Osmond fan when I was 9 years old!)

So, just to be clear: I still know nada about our LOA. It is probably sitting, unopened in its courier envelope, in a government office somewhere. At least, that's the good scenario. (I won't even think about the bad scenario.) The only two people in the whole Department who can deal with a LOA are away. But at least one should be back tomorrow, so I might have a nicer post to write tomorrow night...or a really, really rotten one.

But, I promised to tell you the love story of Louie & Lady, didn't I? So, here it goes:

We had Louie for about 2 years when my sister-in-law needed a dog-sitter for a couple of weeks while they went on a summer vacation. We were the obvious choice for this kind of favour. Since Lady was young (about a year old) and smaller than at least one of our cats, we agreed to take her.

The day this 15 lb bundle of black curls and cocka-poo wiggles arrived, Louie was smitten. They were buddies within an hour, and it soon became really obvious that Louie was a "dog's dog". Even my husband had to admit that Louie was different with her around.

But, you know what happens with all summer loves... Lady went home. I swear, if I did not know better (ahem...let's keep in mind I'm a scientist), I would say that Louie went into mourning. He moped around the house and the yard for at least 2 weeks. And, once again, even my husband had to admit that Louie was a dog in need of another dog.

Right! All we needed was to find another dog! But we wanted a specific sort of dog- not a specific breed or anything, but a dog that was younger than Louie (not a small puppy, since, by this time, we had a toddler and a preschooler), a dog that would be smaller than Louie (since I thought that might have been part of what worked so well with Lady), and a dog that would be great with our small kids. Guess what? We found one. At our municipal Humane Services shelter. And that's Oscar's story, for another day.