Say Hello to Zsa Zsa

Here's our newest friend, Zsa Zsa, hanging out with Murray on the sofa. She's a tiny little Chihuahua, barely five pounds. She's nine years old. Her previous owners were forced to give her up as she doesn't play well with small children. So, we decided to adopt her, figuring a stable home would be best for her.

We've had her for a couple of weeks now, and she's slowly settling in. It took her a couple of days to warm up to us, and she's still in the process of warming up to Murray. So far, it looks as though she'll get there just fine.

She needs some help socializing, as she can be pretty afraid of new people. It's something we hope to work on in the coming weeks and months.

But for now, so far, so good. She loves to snuggle and her idea of the perfect day is alternating between napping and sitting on our laps.

Dog Park in Rogers Park

Did you know that Rogers Park has a dog park? The Pottawattomie Park DFA (Dog Friendly Area) can be found at the far northeast corner of Pottawattomie Park near Clark and Rogers in Rogers Park. It's a bit hidden -- but don't be discouraged. If you're parking in the lot for the park, you'll want to come all the way back from the parking lot, to the far north end of the park, where you'll find the dog park area. It's just west of the Metra tracks. It's closer to Birchwood than to Rogers.

If you have a dog and live in Rogers Park, I hope you'll come check out the dog park! It's been open for almost a year now and it's never very busy there.

For more information about the Rogers Park dog park at Pottawattomie Park, check out the PPDFA website.

Please tell your friends! And please link to the dog park website from your website, if you're able. It'll help make it easier for other neighbors to find information about the dog park.

Bad Dog Owner

Hey neighbors, watch out for this guy:

His dog killed another dog at Montrose Beach on March 17th, and he ran away instead of dealing with it. If I see him, I'm going to call the cops on him.

More info here and here.

This is a sad situation. And for anybody who would want to say anything about either dog or what somebody should or shouldn't have done differently; that's beside the point. The point is that this guy ran from the scene. And that is flat-out wrong of him.

Update: The guy has been identified as a Chicago police officer. What the hell was this guy thinking, that he could just walk away and that nobody would ever find him again?

It's Murray!

We were pretty sad after losing Solly, but knew that eventually it would be time to bring home a new friend to keep us company. We planned on picking out a random adult dog from a shelter, but when we saw this little guy was an option, we had to go check him out. He's part corgi and part pug, just like Solly. We brought him home when he was just about twelve weeks old, which means he was born back in July.

We decided to name him Murray.

We were hoping that going with the same breed mix would land us a dog with as calm and laid back as our last one. Not sure how true THAT turned out to be, as now we have a puppy who loves to run around in circles at 100 miles per hour and chew on everything in sight, when he's not barking at invisible monsters. I'm thinking we should have paid more attention to the warnings about what level of effort it takes to deal with a puppy. But, we're managing. We love him, he loves his new home, and we're slowly training him to sit and stay and go potty at the right time and in the right place.



And thankfully, he falls asleep from time to time.

Back in the Hood

I've been traveling a lot lately, so this blog has suffered. But now, hey, I'm back. So I'll do my best to come up with something more interesting soon.

Lesson learned this past weekend: The dog is a hindrance on a road trip. He just isn't happy. I wasn't happy either -- I'm not sure anybody lives in Cleveland on purpose -- but you don't hear me complaining.