I had worked a ton of hours in the month of June to deal with the financial challenges I talked about in my last blog. This weekend I was off for the first time for 3 days in a row that I can recall ..well that doesn’t include being sick 
I cherished these days, I knew I had worked hard to get to this long weekend and I wanted memories. Now of course this is a challenge when you don’t have money! But we made the most of it.
Friday night I finished at 6:30. I got home to a totally exhausted Megan who had a rough day with 35 campers that drove her nuts all day, we decided to go over to Swiss Chalet for dinner, its one of the few places that I know we can go too and have a half way decent meal from a health perspective. She looked over at me and reminded me that while she is working with these children she is reminded that she will NEVER have children and if I wanted Grandchildren I better talk to her brother Alex.
This moment stuck out to me because with the challenges she has with her menstrual cycle being unanswered I am keenly aware that she may not have the ability to have children due to her health. I was preparing myself for that when I considered that she may have PCOS and I still think its a possibility. We will be getting to a specialist about that problem this month and I truly look forward to an answer for the constant bleeding she has had to endure since 2009.
We went to Jumbo Video where she got 2 classic movie rentals and a small poster of James Dean. This cost me about 15.00 total and I knew would make her happy.
I got prepared to handle fireworks and the impending fear and anger that it would cause in my puppy. I had purchased Rescue remedy drops to help calm him as I knew this long weekend would be full of them! We went home and decided to take Toby for a drive and see if we could find any fireworks that we could help him understand. We took him to the dog park first to get a bit of energy out of him and he had a blast. The people he jumped on however… did not like him so much. I really have to find a solution for his jumping up at people at the dog park. He is not being aggressive he just wants to play or say hi. But it really has to stop. We drove around aimlessly after the dog park and did not find fireworks. Went home at 10 and settled in for the night. No fireworks were heard!
Saturday morning we decided to take Toby to the off leash dog BEACH in Grand Bend. This was an hour drive from our house and Toby as a little puppy always got car sick. So we were a little nervous that he would struggle with this long of a drive. Toby did great on our way to the beach. The beach cost me 16.00 to get into the provincial park. We kept Toby on his leash and Megan went into the lake with him first. He was a little tentative initially at the waves lapping up at him. The water was not deep and he was also very confused as to whether he should swim or walk. He chose to jump over the waves instead. Was very funny watching him leap. I went out with Toby next and decided to let him off leash. He focussed on a dad and son who were throwing a football and he was leaping between them trying to catch up with it. He was in puppy heaven. This looked like we were going to have a great time. I brought him back to the beach and Megan took him out again. When Megan brought him back she took a seat on the blanket beside me. We were both soaking wet in our clothes as it didn’t occur to us that we would be going so far into water with toby.
We were about to relax when Toby saw a dog that he wanted to play with. All of a sudden he breaks free of his leash. At least I thought it was his leash, Megan yelled mom he broke his collar!! OH NOOO!!! Toby was taking off like a bat out of hell! He was leaping in the water and chasing people that had toys! How the heck were we going to catch our WET, slippery, crazy collarless puppy!!! After what seemed like forever a man was able to grab him around stomach and Megan got to him and pulled him back to shore by the scruff of his neck!! I took the leash and left over collar and tied it around his neck as tightly as I could. Then Megan and I soaking wet and covered in Sand slowly made our way back to the car with our naughty puppy. Toby is not meant to be at the off leash beach yet! Maybe next summer!
It was about 4:30 and we were headed back to London. We realized we would have to pick up a new collar for Toby before we went home. I was a bit worried that stores might be closed by the time we got back to London. We stopped in a small town named Forest. We got some bottles of water and asked the girl if there was a pet store in town. She laughed and said not in this town. As we pulled out of the drive thru I saw a sign for Canadian Tire. I knew that Canadian Tire Had to have a pet section especially without a pet store in the town.
We pulled up to the smallest Canadian Tire Store I have ever seen. Think of a corner store hardware store and that was about the size of it. Megan doubted I would find a collar in this store but I had to try. I got out of the car and my pants weighed a ton as they were soaking wet! I could only imagine how silly i looked! I got inside looked around and got a bit worried that Megan might be right. I went up the first aisle and saw camping equipment, tools, paint I had hit the back of the store in less than a minute. I start heading down the only other aisle and I see car parts, accessories, fishing accessories. I just about gave up when I saw a box of catfood in the middle of an aisle. I headed for the cat food and prayed I would find a collar. They had them! Thank god! I looked at the medium size ones and realized that they might be too small. So I went with the large and hoped I could get it down to fit Toby’s neck.
Got it back to the car and started tightening it around my confused puppy. Got home and settled in to make dinner and then rest for the remainder of Saturday night. I was looking at Twitter when I noticed that a number of my twitter friends were on their way to a church right by me for fireworks! These fireworks would be within walking distance of my home and would be VERY loud for Toby! I got the rescue remedy out and started reading the label. I gave him 10 drops at 9 pm starting to settle him down before they started. At 9:45 I gave him another dose in peanut butter and got him upstairs in my room. I knew that I could have the air conditioner, Fan and I could play music on my Iphone Making my room as noisy as possible. I filled his water bowl and added 10 more drops of the rescue remedy and waited for the fireworks to begin. Overall this went pretty well. Toby did bark occassionally but thanks to noise level in my room only a couple of the fireworks caused a reaction.
Sunday was Canada’s 145th birthday. We were both tired from our adventures with toby the day before so we decided to stay home during day and drive to fireworks during the evening. We watched the Euro Cup and saw Italy get slaughtered. It was hard not to feel bad for them . The teary faces were so touching. The media certainly enjoy showing people with devastated emotions on their faces. The Spainards were so excited and happy. Megan and I decided to drive downtown to see if there were celebrations. We also looked for any of the Italian flags that had been on cars so proudly for the last 2 weeks. We did not see one italian flag. We did see some Spain fans waving flags out of cars. walking down the main street of London cheering. It was wonderful to see so much excitement and it hit me with just how beautiful it is to be living in Canada where you can have every culture and appreciate the celebrations that we get to watch due to our openess to them in our society. This was also pride day in Toronto where people who are gay, lesbian, transgender can go and celebrate who they are and the freedom they have here to marry without society telling them who they are allowed to marry. This makes me proud to be a Canadian, free health care makes me proud, our immigration policies make me proud. I truly love being Canadian!
Sunday night we decided to get Toby in the car with the rescue remedy and take him to see fireworks. Megan really wanted to see them so really this was so Megan was not missing out of them due to our dog! I was not sure how Toby would react. We were going to keep him in the car and turn up radio loud so he could see them but not hear them as much. We found a parking spot in the raised parking lot of the mall next to fireworks. They started and Toby didn’t react. I actually saw Toby watching the fireworks. I don’t know how much he could see them but he did seem transfixed. Again thanks to the radio he only heard a couple of the really loud ones. But he didn’t bark. The only thing that made him bark was the people walking who he could not get access too! We got home and as we got out of the car we heard loud fireworks. Toby did not react at all! We got in the house and the sounds continued. Toby barked a couple times but overall ignored them. I think he actually learned something with seeing the reason for the loud noises he has been hearing. I guess we will find out the next time there is a firework weekend…I suspect that is August 1st here in Canada!
Happy birthday Canada we had a memorable weekend and I hope you did too!!
great post