Have you ever seen a Schnoodle?

Are you ready for a story? Have you ever seen a Schnoodle?

As you may recall, last month I began seriously looking for a dog. My beautiful Shasta died tragically four years ago at only nine years of age, and I still miss her terribly. At the end of October our youngest daughter moved from where she was renting to a house where she could take her little Sammy (a Mauxie, which is a Maltese x Dachshund), so that left me without a dog here for the first time in about thirty years! Sammy had lived with us for eight years and I discovered just how much of a “dog person” I really am after he moved out the night of my birthday in mid-November.

After telling my husband “I have to have a dog!” my search began. I made phone calls to the SPCA, Veterinarian clinics, a dog breeder, animal control, asked questions here on my blog and talked to people I met during my day, and I searched the internet. When our daughter in Alberta was home for a visit in August we’d compiled a list of what I wanted in a dog, which narrowed down my search, and complicated it at the same time. What I had described was mostly my Shasta, but I knew I would never find a dog exactly like her, so I researched and cross-referenced and fine-tuned my search to what qualities I was looking for in a dog. I also decided it had to be a small breed this time, one I could take to my dad’s on my weeks there; Dad had to like it. If only for myself a medium size breed was preferred, but a small breed would have a better chance with Dad.

The SPCA and such places had mostly large dogs, Kijiji had many dogs listed and one does have to be careful when shopping that way for a pet. I was very mindful of that, but kept searching (and … seriously … praying) to find the right one.

Through my research I decided the breed that would best suit my situation is a hybrid, specifically a Schnoodle. A Schnoodle is a Schnauzer x Poodle, and I liked what I found out about those small breeds. Furthermore, both breeds can be trained to be great as therapy dogs, one of my requirements for Dad’s sake. It had to be a Schnoodle! Now all I had to do was find one I could afford and easily obtain. That wasn’t easy!

The last week of November I located a litter of Schnoodles here in Nova Scotia. The price was more reasonable and it wasn’t as far, so I inquired. One little female was left! I mentioned it to my husband again and showed him the picture. Surprisingly, he told me to go ahead and get myself a dog, he would pay half — “Merry Christmas!” So sweet of him and such a blessing to me; I almost cried!

When I responded to the ad the sellers’ reply was they had one little female left, she was the runt of the litter of four, has a very slight heart murmur, and is small but not fragile as she can certainly hold her own with the other dogs. I expressed strong interest and said I could be there on the weekend to get her. It’s a bit of a long story, but I will simplify it by saying there was a misunderstanding and the next day I found out I had to wait while someone else who called after me had the choice to take her or not. Needless to say, I was upset, but later that evening the seller called with the news that she was still available because the formerly interested party felt she was too small and they were afraid they’d hurt her! I could have her … did I want her? Did I want her?! I was ready for small, I was a definite! Yes, I want her!

Mid-afternoon the next day – November 30 – my husband and I made the two-hour drive to meet the puppy and her parents. Her mother is a Poodle x Schnauzer, her father is a miniature Poodle. Lovely dogs. But when I saw the remaining baby … oh. my. goodness! So tiny and fluffy! When she was put into my hands I said, “I love her already!”

Now I want you to meet Minnie (born September 24)
(Poor little thing didn’t have a definite name until Monday night; I had a hard time deciding.)

Minnie is tiny; she is spunky; she is adorable. And she is hilarious!

It took her a couple of days to stop whining, and another couple to feel content enough to not miss her mother and the rest of the pack where she started life. Now she is in a new routine, travelling back and forth with me during my respite hours, and enjoying both her homes. Tonight she did something new … running and tearing around in Dad’s living room, racing circles around me and making my dad laugh as he tried to keep his focus on her while she sped around the room. Then when she tired herself out she slept in his arms. That is what I hoped for; she has fit in quite well.

On Tuesday Minnie met her veterinarian. Dr. Bligh told me her heart murmur is nothing to worry about and that I got myself a great little dog. 🙂 Oh, and she weighs not quite 2.5 pounds! (about a kilogram)

And did I mention … she is almost completely house-trained. AND I get to stand out in the cold while she trots around carrying fallen oak leaves nearly her own size as I’m waiting for her to “do her business”! BRRR! Yep! This was a great plan. What a way to get me outside more often.

I thank God for this little dog, and I plan to go through the training necessary to get her to the place I envision for her. (Anyone who knows me will know that is a big step. 🙂 )

That’s my exciting news! Thank you to everyone who gave suggestions and wished me well in my search. You are wonderful people. 🙂

Do you have anything exciting to share? Any great pet stories?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

‘Read More Books’ challenge: Week 8: 364-415 of the list of 623 of the best books ever!

Are you ready for week eight of our Read More Books challenge?

Read HERE to learn about it. It’s never too late to join in.

Check the ones you may have missed or want to review:

WEEK ONE WEEK TWO WEEK THREE WEEK FOUR WEEK FIVE WEEK SIX WEEK SEVEN

How did you do with your reading? Even if you didn’t finish the book you selected, it counts if you select one for this week to add to your TBR pile.

364. Father and Sons — by Ivan Turgenev

365. A Wild Sheep Chase — by Haruki Murakami

366. Point Counter Point — by Aldous Huxley

367. Babbitt — by Sinclair Lewis

368. The Souls of Black Folk — by W. E. B. Du Bois

369. The Thirty-Nine Steps — by John Buchan

370. The Jungle — by Upton Sinclair

371. Under Satan’s Sun — by Georges Bernanos

372. The Voyeur — by Alain Robbe-Grillet

373. The Secret Agent — by Joseph Conrad

374. All Quiet on the Western Front — by Erich Maria Remarque

375. Double or Nothing — by Rayond Federman

376. The Bonfire of the Vanities — by Tom Wolfe

377. The Phantom Tollbooth — by Norton Juster

378. Amers/Oiseaux/Poesie — by Saint-John Perse

379. The House of the Spirits — by Isabel Allende

380. Paradise Lost — by John Milton

381. The Joke — by Milan Kundera

382. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz — by L. Frank Baum

383. At Swim-Two-Birds — by Flann O’Brien

384. Contempt — by Alberto Moravia

385. Dealing with Dragons — by Patricia C. Wrede

386. Blood Meridian — by Cormac McCarthy

387. The Home and the World — by Rabindranath Tagore

388. 2001: A Space Odyssey — by Arthur C. Clarke

389. American Pastoral — by Philip Roth

390. The Cannibal — by John Hawkes

391.Matilda — by Roald Dahl

392.The Thornbirds — Colleen McCullough

393. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd — Agatha Christie

394.Good Night, Mr. Tom — Michelle Magorian

395. Nadja — André Breton

396.King Lear — William Shakespeare

397. The Magnificent Ambersons — Booth Tarkington

398.Othello — William Shakespeare

399. Aurélien — Louis Aragon

400.Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World — Haruki Murakami

401.The Color of Water — James McBride

402.Soulier De Satin — Paul Claudel

403. Leaves of Grass — Walt Whitman

404. The Sonnets — William Shakespeare

405.American Psycho — Bret Easton Ellis

406. The Bean Trees — Barbara Kingsolver

407. Nightwood —by Djuna Barnes

408. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction — by J. D. Salinger

409. High Fidelity — Nick Hornby

410. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas — Hunter S. Thompson

411. Kane and Abel — Jeffrey Archer

412. Franny and Zooey — J. D. Salinger

413. The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui —by Bertolt Brecht

414. Sense and Sensibility — Jane Austen

415.The Faraway Tree Stories — Enid Blyton

I love to hear from you! From the above list:

Which books have you read?
Which books do you want to read?
Which books are you going to obtain this week?(Even if you are not officially taking the Read More Books challenge I would love to hear about your reading.)

Note: I got permission to share this list on my blog. (Thank you, Stuart!) You could go HERE for the list of “623 of the best books ever written” and see them all at once for yourself, and/or you can follow the list here a few at a time.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!

Writing challenges over for now, fun news

It’s snowing on my blog again! 🙂

A quick note tonight ..

So quickly the month of November is gone and some of us are into Christmas planning mode. With November done so are that month’s writing challenges. My report is: I made the hard decision and dropped out of NaNoWriMo; I blogged 28 out of 30 days for NaBloPoMo; for PiBoIdMo I met and surpassed the 30 ideas in 30 days having accomplished 40 ideas. Yay! Some of those ideas are only titles, some are names for possible characters, others are ideas for stories. One idea in particular I feel quite good about and have a rough draft begun. That will be the one I start working on first.

Especially exciting news for me in another vein is the day all those things finished another challenge began for me. I found what I was looking for! I will tell you more about that in a later post, but do you know what a Schnoodle is? (hint hint) Adorable is what! 🙂

This is my caregiving week and ‘the household’ has just retired for the night so I am off here to get some sleep myself.

Talk to you all later! Blessings.

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Good-bye NaNoWriMo ’13

I made a hard decision yesterday.

I dropped NaNoWriMo for this year. It just was not working out for me to write in that challenge. Perhaps it was because I took on three writing challenges for November and it was too much with all else going on, perhaps it was because I am simply having difficulty writing through to the end of my novel’s story, maybe it was because I am weary or preoccupied, or …. all of the above!

Whatever the reason, I gave up. That is something I hated to do, but it was better than reaching the end of November and hardly having anything added to my novel when I had a 50k goal or completion of my novel. My NaNo update page for 2013 has been revised to accommodate my decision. So, good-bye NaNoWriMo 2013; I’m disappointed to not have finished the story, and likely my sister will be, too, since she wants to know how it ends. (So do I!)

The good thing is I have been working away at PiBoIdMo and already have over the requirement for completion. Yay!I will update more later. And I may have some very exciting news soon!

Do you give up when it looks like failure, or as if you cannot complete what you set out to do?

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings!

Sue Harrison’s “Writing the Third Dimension” – part 11: Break Dance!

Welcome! Over the next many months we invite you to return here, specifically on the fourth Thursday of each month for the newest installment of Sue Harrison‘s teaching: Writing The Third Dimension. You can read all the segments by clicking on the page title WRITING THE THIRD DIMENSION, found under Writers’ Helps & Workshops on the drop-down menu. Please feel free to ask questions and leave comments for Sue. Now for the topic for month eleven:

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“Writing the Third Dimension” – part 11: Break Dance!
I don’t hear much about one of the major rules for novelists. SCHEDULE BREAK TIMES!

Yes, you DO need to schedule definite writing times. Once a week or three times a week or every day, whatever works for you. Maybe you write for an hour or three hours or eight. (Don’t burn yourself out, by the way!) Some of my writer friends give themselves a goal of words written rather than time spent writing. The important thing is to establish a definite writing schedule. Maybe a dentist appointment will intrude but definitely not laziness or the dreaded “I’d Rather Not” Syndrome. That’s a novel killer for sure.

However, writers do need breaks.

If you’re reading the “Writing the Third Dimension” posts as I write them, that means that we’re closing in on the December holiday season.

(This is a photo of my daughter, granddaughter, and my mom!)

I usually don’t write the last two weeks of December. During the rest of the year, I also break for Sundays, vacation trips, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Thanksgiving weekend, and a few other odds and ends along the way, including a week between finishing one book and starting the next. The important thing is that these are SCHEDULED BREAKS. I’m not cheating on my writing time. Once you begin to cheat on your writing time, it’s very difficult to get back into a disciplined routine.

Novelists function like marathon runners. Sustained discipline is often the only difference between success and failure. For the novelist, failure doesn’t have anything to do with publication or lack thereof. Failure is failing to finish when you suspect the book you’re writing is good enough to merit completion. (And I’m assuming here that your life situation and your health remains stable.)

In honor of the holiday season, and with Lynn’s agreement, I’m taking a December break from “Writing the Third Dimension” and will dedicate most of my December time to preparing for the holidays: sewing dresses for my granddaughter’s dolls, baking, cleaning, practicing songs for Christmas performances, wrapping gifts, writing holiday cards, having a houseful of guests and, and, and…

Meanwhile to all of you, Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year! I’m looking forward to connecting with all of you again on January 23rd. Holidays are fun but it’s always great to get back to writing!

What breaks do you schedule in your writing time?

Happy Writing and Many Blessings!

Sue

Bestselling author, Sue Harrison, has written two Alaska trilogies: The Ivory Carver Trilogy and The Storyteller Trilogy, and a middle readers’ book SISU. Prior to the publication of her novels, Harrison was employed at Lake Superior State University as a writer and acting director of the Public Relations Department and as an adjunct instructor in creative writing and advanced creative writing. For more information, click here. To inquire about booking Sue for workshops or speaking engagements this year, click here.

Thanks for joining us! Please feel free to leave your questions and comments. We invite you come back January 23, 2014, for part 12.

Nothing to say

Hard to believe, perhaps, but tonight I have a headache and have nothing to say. I want to extend to you all my thanks for following my blog, I appreciate you.

Blessings everyone!

Thanks for reading, and … Creative Musings! 🙂

Autumn’s glory

Last Autumn …

How many pheasants can you see in the images below? They blend right in. Look at this gorgeous fella! This year Mr. Cardinal brought his mate and their two little ones!I don’t have very good pictures of the Grey Heron that was in the brook by Dad’s, or the Kingfisher perched above it, or the Pileated Woodpecker on a pole near my house.