Mokey Pending

Yes, I know, it never rains but it pours.

A month between updates, now here I am back on two concecutive days!

This time, a brief word about the impending excitement in our household. There's quite a lot really; a few big things in the works, any one of which would normally dominate.

Tonight, we are expecting Unicyclists. There is a big world-wide event passing through Hubbards today. 34 teams of Unicyclists, from 13 countries are taking part in the "Ride the Lobster 800k International Unicycle Race" and the time trial phase brings them right through our little town. It's the first event of it's kind anywhere anywhen and they are spending the night RIGHT HERE! Two of them are even going to sleep in OUR HOUSE! How exciting is THAT? Pretty cool huh? Major excitement what? Yep.

Then there's Friday night/Saturday morning. We are booked to play at the "Relay For Life" event in nearby Chester - at three in the morning. That's exciting too - only our second real gig here and part of a seriously cool event that should be a lot of fun. (Shame I have to work all day Saturday but hey, see previous post for why I hope that'll be OK, the guys'll keep me awake). Enough excitement for one week right? Wrong!

It is all overshadowed by what's supposed to be happening on Thursday afternoon. Regular readers will know that we lost our beloved L'Uther to bone cancer back in February. That left us with one dog (B'U the Standard Poodle, L'Uther's uncle and nephew (don't try, trust me, it works)) and two cats, Ricardo (aka Tardo) and Yoda The Ragdoll (aka Yoyo). We always knew this mix was uneven. Bu misses Lu, tries to get the cats to play all his giraffe-dog games which they really don't get and generally has a lonely time of it.

We also always knew there would be another dog in the house at some point but were not ready. THEN, last week, the breeder and friend from whom both dogs came, told us she had three 8 month old apricot bitches who had not been sold when they should have been because of other stuff that was going on at the time and, if we wanted one, she was ours.

We deliberated for about 1.07 nanoseconds and said yes. So, WestJet permitting, she arrives on Thursday afternoon. There was much hilarity for a couple of days - including all through wife's birthday/Fathers' Day dinner with daughters - trying to name said pup.

At one point, we had a less-than-original comedy sketch worked out around the line "Hi, this is my dog Bu and this is my OTHER dog Bu". We even wrote a song called "Me And You And Two Dogs Named Bu" but apparently something very similar has already been done!

Finally, we did what all serious minded people do when they have a serious problem of this sort. We reverted to childhood and mined the caverns of kids' TV. I never saw "Fraggle Rock" - wrong age, wrong continent - but it seems there was a hippy-like, female Fraggle (not even really sure what a Fraggle is/was, truth be told) called "Mokey". Suddenly, there was unanimity, consensus, agreement and a modicum of regret that the naming hilarity was over.

So, "Mokey" it is. She'll be a handful, no doubt, but cute as a button and a playmate for Bu and she might just even up the feline/canine balance a bit. Today was "Buying Of Stuff", a huge tug rope that Bu has already claimed and a couple of harnessy things that make it easy (sayth the label) to walk two dogs that a) can't agree on which way to drag you or b) CAN agree on which way to drag you or c) don't want to go ANYWHERE, even though you need to AND d) weigh more than you do. Not bad for $8.99 each if they work.

Don't forget to tune in for next week's exciting episode.