Nov 03
We adopted Dottie in 2002. We had been in our house for less than 2 months. We had recently adopted our first dog, Sydney, from a rescue shelter. Courtney got a phone call from a Great Dane rescue looking to place an older Dane. Dottie’s owner told us that if we weren’t going to adopt her then he was going to turn her over to the pound. He was being transferred to Kentucky for his job and didn’t want to make the trip with her. So, that afternoon we packed Dottie into Courtney’s Honda Civic along with Sydney.
We were originally told that Dottie was 4. But after awhile her owner let it slip that she was closer to 5. A Dane’s average life expectancy is somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 years. We wanted her to finish out her golden years with us.
Through the years we had our good times and bad times. When she came home with us she was an overweight 140 lbs dog. Within a few years we had her down to 100-110 lbs. Her weight loss was mostly due to her not acting her age at all. She and Sydney ran around the yard all year long.
In the last few years her hips started to go. It’s typical for large dogs, especially Danes, to have hip displagia. She became stiff when it got cold out. She burned through many dog beds over her life. But through it all, she continued to get up every morning and make it outside.
I came home tonight to find Dottie not confined to the kitchen as usual. I also came home to find some sort of “mess” on the kitchen floor, also quite usual in our house. But what I wasn’t prepared for was the condition Dottie was in. Something was wrong and it was obvious.
We put Dottie to sleep tonight. She was 11 years old. She had lived longer than she was expected to. She was a big dog, stinky, stubborn, and beautiful. We always enjoyed watching her lay in the sun during the summer.
She was our Dane. We loved her. We miss her.
Nov 03
Preparation for the next kid has swung into high gear after this past weekend. We’ve been holding out before doing anything too serious until we found out the gender of the next baby. Besides, we had Riley’s 2nd birthday party to plan and execute to keep us busy.
On Friday we found out that our next kid will be a girl. We are excited and relieved all at once. We were just happy to hear we had a healthy baby still in the hopper. We’ve been so busy keeping Riley entertained we haven’t really stopped to grasp the fact we have a second one on the way. Having a girl will be quite different for the Motylinskis. It’s been almost a full decade since the last girl was born.
There are only a few things we think we need to accommodate a second child. Since a bigger house is out of the picture for awhile (Thanks terrible housing market), we have moved on to getting Riley his own bed and getting a bigger stroller. We knocked out the bed a few weeks ago and picked up a stroller this weekend.
With Riley I’ve felt we’ve been able to maintain some sort of identity as a couple. We always made time to enjoy life with and without Riley. For our sanity, sometimes it has been nice to hear each other over dinner instead of Riley’s constant opinions. But the new stroller I think put us firmly into the parents column. Our initial thoughts were to get a side-by-side stroller for the two kids. Riley loves riding in strollers. But after talking with a lady at Babies R Us we discovered that our infant carrier wouldn’t work in a side-by-side. To make matters worse, we now have a very large 2 year old who shows no sign of shrinking anytime soon. So we ended up not getting the fancy stroller we thought we wanted but a practical Sit and Stand stroller. It’ll accommodate an infant seat and also allow Riley some “Big Boy” freedom.
If you haven’t seen these Sit and Stand strollers, they have a “seat” behind the infant seat where a toddler can either sit or stand by. It’s nothing fancy, more like a ledge of convienience for a toddler who’s engine craps out a mile from the parking lot. Riley really enjoyed it but I think we should be more concerned with the fact that he jumps off of it every time we come to a stop with it. He exits it like some guy jumping from the getaway van in a jewelry heist. I can easily see this turning into a race to Jamba Juice in the mall. I’ll just slow the stroller down enough for him to make his getaway.
I’ll hopefully get pictures of Riley’s 2nd birthday party online soon. I’ve got some sweet pinata video too.
