It's been a while since the last posting and since then we celebrated the holidays and added to our zoo!

Since the last posting to the blog, we've celebrated Christmas and the New Year and we had a wonderful holiday season. We did a lot of ice skating (pictures below) and with the unseasonably warm weather, we even managed to go mountain biking!


It was such a wonderful holiday that we felt like we were on vacation for a month.

Plus, there's a new addition to our zoo - a miniature daschsund we have named Andouille (pronounced on-dew-wee - like the sausage)!


On the first day of the winter vacation, Sandy and Sophia were out for a mother-daughter day and came across this little guy in a pet shop. They had me come back that night to meet him and I knew that he would be coming home with us regardless of what I thought. You could just tell that Sandy and Sophia had already decided but I told them we needed to think about it more.

The next day, while Sophia was at the home of one of her friends, Sandy and I brought our beagle, Emma, to the pet shop to meet this puppy. An hour later, he was on his way to our home. I reserved naming rights on this puppy and he reminded me of a sausage and since I love to make Cajun/Creole food, the name Andouille was a perfect fit. We call him Douille (pronounced "Doo-wee") a lot.

About 18 hours after he came home, Sandy noticed he wasn't eating or drinking and was pretty lethargic. She brought him to the veterinarian and he wound up in intensive care for three days with an IV in one of his paws. It was horrible and he recovered pretty quickly. The veterinarian wasn't sure what was wrong with him but we were allowed to bring him home two days before Christmas and we got a great Christmas gift in that the place we got him from paid the $1,500+ in veterinarian bills for his three days in intensive care.

Andouille and Emma get along well and Emma treats Andouille like he is her puppy. He's tiny. he weighs about 4 pounds and is now 11 weeks old and he sure has a big heart. He's still getting used to running and it's pretty cute to watch his front end go one way and his back end slide the other way, especially on the wood floors. During the day the two of them spend a lot of time playing with (chewing on) each other and sleeping.

So the zoo got a little bigger this holiday season and our home got a little crazier. We wouldn't have it any other way!