The Schuele Blog

The phone call to Hanna’s mom was pretty tough. We had to tell her that we did want to keep Hanna but that we would not be able to return her if we were going to do that. We could not risk losing the progress we had made, which  was significant. Hanna’s mom cried. And we both teared up. Chuck was feeling all kinds of emotions from a dog recently lost and the blessing that is Hanna.

And Hanna’s mom was making the ultimate sacrifice by giving her “baby” Hanna a home that she knew Hanna deserved.

But as hard as it was for her mom, Hanna would now be our pet with a solid start without returning to any of her former life. We told Hanna’s mom that she would be able to visit her after about a month or so once we felt she was comfortable in this pack.

From this point forward, I will start telling the “stories” we have already begun to amass. They may be in a different order than their actual occurrence, but will all be entertaining, I’m pretty certain. We can start with the most dramatic and traumatic….

Ass Over Teakettle

I mentioned that Chuck was now taking Hanna on runs next to the bike.. you know what’s coming next, don’t you?

That first Tuesday, Chuck set out as he had the few days before to take Hanna for her run next to the bike. Or, let’s put this another way.

The locomotive was revved up and ready to PULL.

As usual, I am in the house with the Princess.  We wait for the run to be done so we can go for the walk. I’m working, she’s patiently watching out the door for “the Dad”. Usually, this run goes fairly quickly because Hanna can only go one speed… VERY, VERY FAST.

On this day however, there seemed to be a time delay. I got into my walking clothes and was brushing my hair into a pony tail when I heard Chuck come back in the door.

And then he was standing in front of me with a bloody elbow.

Of course the panicked response…

“What the heck happened????”

As he was revealing that he also had a scraped hip and possibly a broken shoulder, he told the story of the CAR, the SPOOK, and the Dog (1) hitting the front wheel of the Bike (0) causing Chuck (-1) to hit the ground with all of his 235 pound, 6’4″ frame landing directly on his shoulder.

Next question?

“HOW IS THE DOG??”

Well isn’t that an obvious question??

After assessing that his shoulder hurt but he was not in immediate need of an ambulance or trip to the ER, we discussed the dog and the situation.  Seems that when he fell, Hanna quietly sat by the side of the road, leash still attached and waited.  She waited for Chuck to get up and to start trying to walk her and the bike home.

Realizing that he was pretty shaken up and not steady, he decided to sit on the bike seat. Hanna promptly took the lead and gently pulled Chuck and the bike home.

Is there any wonder why we love this dog now? Amazing.

We did, later on, decide that an ER trip was going to be necessary. Not being able to leave Hanna alone (not crate trained – not giving up the couches yet), we decided to take both dogs in the car to the ER, where I would drop Chuck off, return home, and come back to get him later.

And just wait until you hear THAT story…

Into the house we go.

Slowly introducing the rooms.

We closed the doors to all of the house except the main open area for starters. One room at a time… slowly.. so as not to overstimulate the very excitable Hanna. Mostly, we watched the dynamic between Hanna and the Princess. We wanted to be sure the interaction between them was going to continue to be calm once inside the Princess’s Princessdom. Stardust is admittedly spoiled. 

(It was that fawn like face that sucked me in.)

Hanna was receiving a lot of attention and the Princess is not one to quickly or readily share her people or her domain. Her move is really just to come between you – no snarling or aggressive meanness, just a stubborn streak a mile wide.

We are absolutely shocked at the amount of time that it is taking Hanna to blend in (move in?) and settle down. She easily goes into a sit and seems to hang on our every word. (Is this a ruse?)

We are now starting to work on a few bad habits.

Excitability when the prospect of food comes into play is the first. Not only does she whine and jump up at the thought of dinner but…

You’d better check the number of fingers you have after you hand her a treat.

There isn’t anything malicious here.. just an “OH MY GOD THERE”S FOOD AND I COULD JUST PEE MYSELF” mentality.

We will work on this.

And then there’s the WATER… not yet.. I’m holding that story for a while.

Hanna has not been crate trained. Should we decide to become her parents, we will definitely work to that end. In the meantime, we have decided that Hanna will spend her first night with us on the floor in the spare bedroom with Chuck. (Sorry, but this was Chuck’s idea so he gets the graveyard shift.) He calls Hanna into the room and closes the door. He manages to get her to lay down and then climbs into bed. A few seconds later, there is an earthquake like shaking as Hanna decides there is a very appealing and oh-so-dog-comfortable spot for her next to Chuck

ON THE BED.

And then Hanna learns another one of the house rules…

no dogs sleeping on the bed. Chuck gets her back to the floor where she remains and sleeps the rest of the night. Good dog. And of course, this rule only partially applies to the Princess because we (I) had only recently started allowing her to come up on the bed on Sunday mornings. And, well, then it turned to every morning for just a little bit while we lounged and waited for the coffee to finish brewing. Once again, I digress…

We are now ready to start our second full day of non-stop “exercise, discipline and affection”. The first course of action is exercise. Chuck has always helped the Princess with her energy release by leashing her and letting her run alongside him on a bike. This is a good exercise for Hanna as well so it is the first order of business. Off they go.

There is a lot of energy and strength here and she proceeds to run full speed for 2 miles.

Chuck’s feet are merely balancing on the pedals but they are not pushing. Hanna is doing all of this work. I believe she is in complete glory and is relishing the opportunity to actually run. Remember, her life to this point has been confined to the house and a tiny yard all day, every day.

After the run, there is the WALK. The discipline. Something else that has been sorely lacking that is now being soaked up like a thirsty sponge. We have purchased a harness for Hanna (more on that later) and take both dogs together on our “pack walk”. There is a lot of strength required for the walk because it is definitely not something that Hanna has done before. Chuck has the leash wrapped around his waist to hold her. We don’t go far.. we’re taking it a little at a time.

We spend the rest of the day working on breaking some nasty habits. But we are making progress. And we have both marveled at Hanna’s ability to adapt, learn, and capture our hearts. And we know, without a doubt, that she NEEDS us. Although not at all in the original plan, at the end of the day, the choice has become clear. We will make a phone call today…

We will keep Hanna..

to be continued…

We had somewhat promised Hanna’s mom that we would take her for the weekend prior to the dog park escapade. I was in a “no way” mode and thinking we should beg off explaining that we just didn’t think it would work. (My brain could only imagine total chaos to our somewhat calm lifestyle).

Chuck, on the other hand, and being the gentle and trustworthy person he is…

(OK, I am too.. but I digress…)

reminded me that we had pretty much committed to taking Hanna for the weekend and we should honor that.  ”Besides,” he said, “we can just keep her overnight on Saturday and return her Sunday”. We were both pretty much betting Hanna would be returned but..

Chuck is in love already. I can see this.

So.. realizing that he is absolutely correct, and that we must honor the commitment, we agree to take Hanna Saturday night and we will return her Sunday afternoon.  We informed Hanna’s mom that we would pick her up (so as not to have yet another repeating episode of chaos brought on by “spirited” children) on Saturday morning around 10:30.

We arrived promptly at 10:30. When we pulled in the driveway, we saw Hanna confined to the very tiny (probably 10 x 12) backyard. She immediately ran to the fence and jumped up barking to see who the “intruder” was. Upon hearing the ruckus from the dog, we were then greeted by the soon-to-be-ex who had agreed to be there to meet us because “mom” was working. He came bearing a leash.

We asked for her papers so we could review her bloodlines and medical records as well as something from the house with their “smell” on it to help make the overnight visit go a little easier for Hanna.

A bed, a blanket, a toy…..

Something of hers to bring along.

What we learned was that Hanna had no bed, blanket or toy other than a tennis ball. We also asked for a little bit of her food so we would not change her to a different food and upset her stomach. The response to this was…

“Oh, we ran out of food last night. Just give her anything – she’ll eat anything.”

Troubling.

So, we left – leash, papers and a pair of mom’s flannel pajama pants for comfort in hand. Oh, and the dog, of course we left with Hanna.

The car ride home was fairly uneventful. Hanna was obviously nervous but not out of control. Lots of room in the back of the 4Runner but she stayed pretty close to us – her head hanging over the console, her big pink tongue hanging out of her mouth, the familiar panting noise. It’s the sound we had been missing since we lost our sweet Samantha. I’m thinking she would have preferred the front seat and without my elbow in front of her, she would have HAD the front seat. She’s already taken to Chuck like a duck to water. His hand stays under her chin and the words “it’s OK” are repeated many times during the ride.

We pulled into the driveway some 20 minutes later.

Pack Training 101

Being the good “Dog Whisperer” students we are, Chuck helped Hanna exit the car in a much calmer fashion than the leap she practiced from the big red SUV. He then immediately took her for a walk so he could introduce her to our yard and our home as the “pack leader”. It was a gorgeous sunny day and we decided to keep her outside for a bit and get to know her before introducing her to the Princess. Although we don’t have a lot of time with Hanna, we plan to give her as much “exercise, discipline and affection” as we can before returning her, which we felt pretty certain would be happening given her previous psycho performance.

We give her about 10 minutes of attention and realize

she is completely docile! And sweet! And she’s beautiful and shiny and so totally affectionate!

Time to bring out Princess Stardust.

Let the sniffing begin. The girls make their introduction for the second time and guess what… it’s almost instant… they are friends! Of course StarPrincess is the little jealous brat. She will make sure that she puts herself squarely between you and any other animal that is attempting to squat on her affection rights. But she’s not mean about it – just determined.

Things are going great! After a couple of hours of introducing her to the yard, it’s time to introduce her to the indoors. With the white shag area rug removed from the living room floor, and the rest of the flooring a good laminate (it’s the only way to go with dogs), we feel fairly confident that if there is  an “accident”, we should still be in pretty good shape…

Next post …. Part 2 of “the Weekend”

Did I happen to mention in the last post that Hanna is in need of some attention and training?  Well, yes, I believe I did. And this became even more apparent at the dog park.

Feeling like we might be in for some work (trouble?), we were a little apprehensive about setting up another meeting.  Hanna’s previous owner suggested we meet at the dog park. Well, Stardust loves the dog park and this might be a good idea. It would give us an idea of how Hanna interacts with other dogs, including the Princess, and we could see her in a different environment.  So, we called Hanna’s mom and made a play date.

We arrived at the dog park on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.

Yes, we played hooky from work.

We got there a little bit early and took StarPrincess into the gated area and let her start to play a little. Shortly after we got there, the bright red SUV pulled up with the mom, the kids, the soon-to-be-ex of the mom (I think he wanted to make sure we weren’t going to mistreat Hanna) and HANNA.

Hanna had not been to this park before, but she had been privileged enough in her 6 YEARS to go to another park “a couple of times”. She seemed like she was pretty oblivious to the other dogs surrounding her doing their I’ll-sniff-yours-and-you-sniff-mine-so-we-can-say-hello thing. We brought our usual dog toy with us, the CHUCK-IT – which is a fabulous thingy that Stardust loves because it can send a tennis ball screaming. She runs like a chased rabbit to get the ball, and in her typical non-retriever fashion, promptly drops it about 2 acres away so we have to go get it.

Greeaaaat.

Anyway…. humans and dogs are all together and the kids aren’t screaming and we’re all a little pensive around each other so we think – OK, let’s throw the ball for Hanna. And she bolts off like lightning and  promptly retrieves it!! And she brings it back and drops it at your feet!!  She’s AMAAAAZINNGG!!!!

So Chuck throws the ball again and she runs again like lightning and retrieves the ball and drops it at his feet!

WOW, WHAT A GOOD RETRIEVER!!

After several rounds of this, we start to think..  well maybe she might be a tad obsessed. We are coming to this conclusion because it seems that NO ONE ELSE can throw a ball either because Hanna chases EVERY ball and she is now deciding this is way too much fun and her obsession is causing her to be a little more reluctant to give up the ball that she is now frothing at the mouth over. The soon-to-be-ex tells us that he sometimes has to hold her back because she doesn’t know her limits. Hmm.. interesting tidbit.

And every ball that she now gets ahold of becomes a

SLOBBERBALL, and yes, that is slobber on her head.

Maybe it’s time to go home. Since the only focus Hanna has is the ball, she isn’t interacting with us, the loving humans, or with any of the other dogs. Stardust is having a difficult time figuring out why she can’t get this one to chase her, which she is normally so good at. She eggs them on, lets them get close, and then kicks it into supersonic overdrive. You can almost hear the thoughts in her head.. “Yeah, just try to catch me sucka”.

But back to Hanna – we’re going to have to think about this one.

So we wrap it all up and start to leave.  And Hanna is lagging behind a little bit because she’s very thirsty and needed a drink of water so the smallest child starts to cry because he thinks she’s staying at the park. And we start to feel a little sad for the little boy. What if we take his dog?

We put Stardust in the car, and totally APPRECIATE her for being as well mannered as she is (except for a little excitable jumping perhaps) and we head home to ponder our next steps..

I believe my words to Chuck at the time were “NO FRICKIN’ WAY ARE WE TAKING THIS DOG – SHE’S NUTS”.

What to do, what to do…

…to be continued

Yes, it was indeed barely a week later when I was speaking with one of our favorite clients (and now a great friend!), Gina LaGalbo, L’BRI Consultant Extraordinaire, and she told me about this DOG. As she relayed the story to me, I was relaying the story to Chuck… black lab, 5 years old, 60#, purebred, needs a home, owner can’t keep her…  He could basically do nothing but put his shaking head into his hands. He knew that this was the universe aligning and that something providential was about to happen. But it’s tough – remember, he just put down his 17 year-old-lab Samantha (previous post – The Pup Report  - From the Beginning).

According to Gina, Hanna, the DOG, really needs us. It seems that her current owner is a struggling mom of 2 little kids under 4 who is going through a divorce and who is struggling to manage her day to day life, let alone a big dog. She has been looking for someone for some time and has been pretty selective about the person/people that she feels will be a good fit for Hanna. Gina arranges for a conversation….

And the conversation goes well….

And now we will meet…..

Hanna arrives in our driveway – in full glory – in the back of a very red SUV. As the tailgate is opened, we are greeted with an excited, hyper, panting, frantic 75 POUND dog who is about to relieve her current owner of her arm via yanking it from its socket. Well, no … that really didn’t happen. But let’s just say that her 100 lb. owner was being tossed like a rag doll from the boundless energy known as Hanna.  In addition to the panting so loud it was nearly a sonic boom, we had 2 children under the age of 4 that came with their mother who obviously had a lot in common with Hanna.  No, they weren’t panting – but their energy was also boundless and the panting was replaced with shrieking - sometimes in glee, sometimes in fear of Stardust, the much smaller but equally energetic princess of our house who promptly decided she MUST lick and jump on those children knocking one of them down leading to more shrieking.

We will call this chaos.. or bedlam.. or you choose the word…

Thinking we must somehow get this situation under control, I kindly suggested to Chuck that he should

TAKE THE DOG DOWN THE STREET FOR A WALK, which he did.

Better.

He returned in a few minutes with Hanna in a calmer state (although still seriously in need of some doggy Valium) and we chatted for a few minutes about her life thus far.

What we learned:

• She’s had no training but was bred for duck hunting
• She’s never been duck hunting
• She’s purebred with papers
• She’s left sometimes 18 hours a day
• She’s gated in the kitchen most of the time
• She sleeps wherever she wants to
• She’s really sweet when she has calmed down
• She has a big tongue
• She was listed on Craig’s list and there were multiple calls and a few visits but no takers

OK, we’re feeling like she needs us.  We tell her owner that we’ll consider her but need to meet her again, perhaps at a dog park.

I bet you can’t wait for that story…..

to be continued….

I have grown up with dogs my entire life. I once also had a cat, but quickly learned that a severe allergy would prevent any furry feline from providing me with playful purrs.

I’m starting this series of posts mainly to tell the story of the “trials and tribulations” of our recent adoption of Hanna, the 6 year old black lab. She has been with us just over 3 weeks and has made some remarkable progress integrating into our lives – including the life of the world’s most spoiled and pampered pup, Stardust.

But first, a little background.

Hubby Chuck and I have both had dogs of our own, and a dog we have raised together (the pampered one). When we met, I had Shocko, a 13-year-old golden retriever/lab mix who was near the end of her days and who was the pup-love of my life. I have to admit that although I loved her more than any dog I’d ever known, I didn’t give her the kind of love that she truly deserved as a dog. Mostly from lack of knowledge and experience. She still turned out to be a sweet, gentle soul – even though plagued with separation anxiety because of various circumstances in my life and hers. She’s been gone 5 years this September and I still miss her every day.

Chuck also had a beloved pet – Samantha.  Like, Shocko, Samantha was raised from a pup and was the family dog for nearly 17 years. Chuck brought her into mine and Shocko’s life in 2006. She was nearly 11 when I met her and still spunkier than any 2-year-old! She and Shocko didn’t immediately hit it off – Sam needed to take a small nip at Shocko’s ear to let her know who was top dog, but after a little separation via a baby gate and then a slower introduction, they became fast friends. Sam suffered Shocko’s loss just as we did and even thought Shocko had returned when a similar golden visited us. Sam was the only dog for about 2 years and then.. the princess arrived.

Missing the golden retriever face, I was making it somewhat of a mission to find my perfect mixed-breed pup. We searched Petfinders.com on a fairly regular basis and almost found a little girl named “Twinkle” but were too slow and she was quickly adopted. We were also determined to find a rescue dog, knowing that saving a life was paramount to the perfect breed. My search seemed to be fruitless because of the type of dog I was interested in. The furry little blonde puppy seemed to be a very popular type and I was not being quite quick enough. My daughter was also feeling that it was quite important to find this pup, so she shared my mission (somewhat without my knowledge). She called one day and said, “Mom, I think I found her”. She sent me to a page on Petfinders and BAM – in an instant my heart was stolen by a little pup currently named “Flower”. I told my daughter that I was going immediately to fill out the application and that WE would be the retriever and GET THIS DOG. After being deemed to be worthy of this adoption, the date was set for us to pick her up. Unfortunately, I had a houseful of family coming that day to rake the sea of leaves we manage to accumulate each year and this pickup location was in Illinois near my daughter’s house. She was promptly excused from meeting the responsibilities of Leaf Day and was pretty much “ordered” to go GET THIS DOG.  She got all of the necessary supplies (with, of course, the promise to pay her back), arrived to “view” Flower (they wanted to make sure it was a good fit) and promptly made this rescue a reality. “Stardust” made her 2 hour ride to Wisconsin sleeping peacefully in her crate and was welcomed with an over-anxious, giddy, nearly sobbing “mom” and immediately introduced to the entire family all at once. (PLEASE forgive us Cesar Millan, we still had sooo much to learn). She arrived a princess and she remains a princess to this day just over 2-1/2 years later.

Moving right along…

We lost our beloved Samantha on March 27th. There is nothing easy about losing your pet and Chuck was particularly devastated with her loss as I was when I lost my Shock. About a week after Sam’s passing, we made the decision that we would not actively search for a dog again. We have had wonderful dogs and we have Stardust so we felt fulfilled and blessed at that.  We did, however, also agree that the only way we would consider another dog would be if someone we knew told us about a dog in need of a home. And we felt comfortable with that.

Yes, you guessed it. Only a week went by.

Riiinngggggg………..

Enter Hanna.

to be continued…

We’re just past day 2 of our remodel. So far, camping in the sunroom has not been too bad as a way of life . We still have the office, the bedrooms, both bathrooms and the finished basement so we’re not completely trapped. I can imagine that I’m definitely going to feel like a caged animal before this is all over however.

Here’s the latest of our demo’d kitchen – which is just one of the areas being re-done.

Keep watching.. more to come.

And by the way HGTV – we’d still love your expertise and advice.  And if you care to come out and let us know how we’re doing, we’ll be happy to have you. There’s still plenty of areas we’d let you do without our help

Well this is the first of (hopefully) a series of posts on the long anticipated (and heavily priced ) remodel of our major living space.  We are taking 4 rooms and combining them into 1, which is certainly going to represent a transformation.  At the end of each day for the next 8 weeks or so, we’ll have some photos or a video to mark the progress.  In the meantime, here’s a quick intro video!

After much begging and pleading, we’ve got our new puppy!  It’s been somewhat hard to focus and I feel like a new parent waiting for naptime to get things done!  I didn’t remember all of the work involved – or the biting, chewing, yipping, and ENERGY!  But we love her to pieces and welcome our little sweetie!

Isn't she adorable?

I wrote this on the train, so we obviously made the better choice.  We paid for tickets that basically saved our sanity by ruling out the crazies and the construction in favor of the Amtrak Hiawatha Line from Milwaukee to Chicago.  Great little service that Hiawatha to Chicago run.   Chuck and I prefer to avoid the “other season” of Chicago.  As everyone who has lived in the Chicago area knows, there are only 2 seasons – winter and construction.  So we opted for the relaxing ride to visit family – most specifically my sister – who came in from Indiana for her birthday.  And that’s probably where the relaxing part ends… tee hee.

The Flaming Saganaki

We decided to hit Greektown – ever been there?  We’ve got a family tradition of partaking in Saganaki (flaming cheese – YUM), Gyros, Roditis, Baklava and perhaps a bit of Pastitisio.  For many, many years we would sit on my dad’s boat in Monroe Harbor watching the fireworks on the 3rd of July and make Greektown the follow-up visit on the 4th.  We used to do this nearly every year, but the tradition passed with the passing of my dad nearly 6 years ago.  Our return to The Parthenon resurrected those good times and we yelled “OPAAA” once again.  It was such a fun night – the food, the memories and the entire family.  We yucked it up, drank too much, ate too much, enjoyed the birthday cake and the litany of off-color birthday cards that my sister got.  We caught up,  razzed each other mercilessly – a true declaration of love in our family.  Because that’s what family does and that’s what life is and I’m hoping we’ll continue this or some other form of tradition the rest of our lives.

We caught the train back to Milwaukee the next afternoon and enjoyed, yet again, the relaxing ride (except for the VERY noisy child with the helicopter parent who sat right behind Chuck) instead of the bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Ah, Sweet Home Chicago – my old stomping grounds.   We love your excitement and fun.  But, I’ll take my “little house on the prairie” any day.  Glad to be home.