Three Dogs and Easter

Starting on the 19th of March, we had Arkhon's brother here for a week. I was a bit worried about what it was going to be like having three dogs in the house, but it went much better than expected. The first day, Allopex was outside watching them play. He said that when Loki (Arkhon's brother) started to get rough with Siff, Arkhon would get between them. There was nothing aggressive about it, but he would just quietly tell his brother to back off.

 He sure is a good boy.

However, by the end of the first day, they were getting along really well. Loki enjoyed his time here, I think, though he did have a couple of accidents. The ironic thing is that he had more accidents than the puppy did. She seems to be completely house-trained. We've trained her to bark when she needs to go outside, and in the last week, she hasn't had a single accident. Instead she barks at the door and waits for us to open it.

Even though they were all really good, having three of them around did stress me out a little bit more than normal, so I was a bit relieved when Loki left after a week. It was nice to only have two dogs again. 

 We had a great Easter weekend. Somehow, the holiday came up on me unexpectedly. I wasn't nearly as prepared for it this year as much as I would have liked to have been. We're trying to start a tradition where we focus on Christ every day of Easter week and what happened that day during his final week. However, this year we weren't prepared, so we just did minimal celebrating. We tried to maintain a good focus on Christ nonetheless.

On Saturday, we did the local Bunny Chase (where they release some rabbits and the kids that catch them get to take them home) and Easter egg hunt. Kevin didn't catch a rabbit, which we were pretty grateful about since we're leaving on vacation soon and didn't want another brand new pet.

He was a little bit sad, but we weren't too upset. I tried again as well, but my feet have been injured recently, so I couldn't run as fast. 

Siff is doing so well! She gets along great with everyone and is so adorable that we attract a lot of attention when we take her out. It's a lot of fun!

Her main issue at the moment is, now that we've taught her to speak, we're teaching her to stop speaking when we ask her to. That's harder for her to learn. 

It was fun to have Loki for company, but I don't think we're ever going to have more than two dogs. +

He can come and stay anytime though. 

The Rabbit Story

On Saturday, we were invited by our relatives to go to a Easter egg hunt/bunny chase. We decided it sounded like fun, and we thought that Kevin would like to chase some rabbits.

We got there a few minutes late, but Kevin was still able to participate in the Easter egg hunt. He quickly found one blue egg, and that was all he wanted. Children are so simple at this age.

We didn't have a problem with him carrying his hard-boiled egg around and other kids were grabbing the eggs, so we mostly just wandered and let him go where he wanted until it was time for the bunny chase.

For the bunny chase, they separated the kids into age groups. The 0-2 age group was my favorite. As you could see from this week's video, most of the kids really didn't get it. The people in charge said, "Ready...set...go!" and the kids took off running, but it was more of a running for joy and freedom than after any rabbits. A couple of the kids spotted the rabbits, but they were more interested in petting them than picking them up. We saw one or two pick them up, but when the rabbits began scrabbling for freedom, the kids quickly let them go. 

Eventually some of the 2-year-olds grabbed the available rabbits and the first round was over. Each age group had two chances. Kevin never did chase a rabbit. He saw them at one point while his dad was holding him before the race began, but after that, he just wanted to do his own thing. 

Following the 0-2 group, they had 3-5, 6-8, 9-11, and 12-14. We had some cousins participating, and one of them caught a female rabbit. Then, to my surprise, they announced the mother's race. 

I knew we couldn't keep the rabbit, but I couldn't resist trying. My cousin who had already caught the other rabbit (who lived on a farm), informed me they would take it if we caught one. So, with an out in case I succeeded, I pulled up at the start line. I quickly selected my target (a rabbit, not a chicken, though those were also available), and focused.

As the announcer yelled, "Go!" we all took off. I wasn't the first to reach the rabbit. The first woman did a sliding tackle which the bunny leaped away from. Then I almost got the rabbit, but it slipped out of my fingers. Scrambling to my feet, I dived on the rabbit, and gently pushed its shoulders to the ground, pinning it. The lady who had reached it first was right behind me, and she jumped in and landed with her arm around it. 

Though I had reached it first, she had it in her arms, and she could have taken it, but she gave it to me. That was nice of her. When I told her that she could take it, she shrugged it off and said that they already had two. 

Oh well. Now I had a rabbit. 

Though we toyed with the idea of keeping it (it was really cute), we decided to give it to my cousins instead. It turned out I had caught a boy, while my younger cousin had caught a girl. 

Whoops.

My boy rabbit is now named Bilbo (they named it), and we found out yesterday that the female rabbit just gave birth. She had been pregnant when they caught her. 

Now my cousins have 8-10 rabbits. 

Ha ha. Hope they're okay with that. 

It was a pretty awesome race.

If you haven't seen the video, feel free to click on the link below and watch it. I slow-mowed it so that you could see that I WAS there first.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49ZT8ZRtmIU  

Oh, the adventures we have.