!!!!

Is this the sweetest smiling doggy face or what?
Bernstein's a good boy.

Merry Christmas, and yes, we're still waiting!

Lovely as this baby doll is, this is NOT Lucy....Joe's Aunt Joann gave us this beautiful Chinese doll for Christmas, and as you can see by our faces we were about ready to pretend she is our real baby. We are crossing our fingers that we get our referral sometime in January -- maybe early, maybe late -- but it can't come a second too soon!

Happy New Year to one and all!

I work with an interesting lot...

Luster, your wish is my command. You have now become the person you most secretly admire!


If this is how he looks after Kentucky WINS...


This is me trying to conceal my identity. I do not know these people.


"You HUFF!"


"They're doing WHAT in my bedroom?"

She coulda been a contendah...

Sometimes you learn things at the vet. Like the first time your little beagle has an allergic reaction to her first full round of shots. When Joe took Stella for her vaccinations in the fall, she had a reaction about 3 hours later. The photo on the left is what she looked like after she got back from the vet, still very swollen even hours later. Ouch. The photo on the right is what she normally looks like.

40 isn't Fatal

The man is my husband. The woman is not me.

Dogs, Dogs, Dogs!

Meet our family.

Bernstein is our Golden Retriever. He's named after a character in the movie "Citizen Kane," one of the greatest movies of all time.

Stella is our Beagle. She's named so we can shout "STELLA," like Stanley Kowalski did in "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Bernstein is among the sweetest dogs you'll ever meet. He will be your friend for life if you'll only rub his head for a few minutes and maybe hold his paw when, "Pffumph," he throws it up on your thigh or maybe on the coffee table.

Stella looks like an angel. I've got four stitches that are proof looks are deceiving. Really, she's not all that bad -- her anger is more and more under control now that she's older but she can howl until the cows come home.

Bernstein's greatest claim to fame is he is the logo dog for the local Golden Retriever rescue group, GRRAND. Mary Ann took the picture in hopes we would get him in a calendar the group was planning. They made him the logo instead. Big Red
photogenic boy. Now, you can see him around town on city buses and a courier service's trucks.

We hope Stella ends up with a claim to fame other than sending me to an immediate care center. Stay tuned.

Why The Loaded Goat?

Why The Loaded Goat as a blog title? The Andy Griffith Show, one of my favorites of all time because it reminds me of my Mayberry-esque hometown, had an episode called "The Loaded Goat." It featured a goat who ate some sticks of dynamite.