I don't care what the groundhog says, this past weekend was nothing but fabulous early Spring weather here in Copperland, and we have enjoyed it thoroughly.


The weekend got off to a tasty start Friday night with Chinese takeout when Copper snatched the fortune cookies off the counter and bolted through the dog door to enjoy them outside.  We try not to chase her anymore when she steals things and runs outside (so she doesn't think it's a game) and regardless, know it is always a lost cause with food anyway.  Needless to say, we have recovered the fortune cookie wrappers but not the fortunes.  I hope their advice wasn't terribly life-changing.



It was also Friday night that we discovered that the HD channels on our cable box for the TV in the den didn't seem to be working.  Which didn't bother me except that we were having some friends over the next night for burgers and beers and I had been told that the Duke-UNC basketball game was of utmost importance and we needed to have it on (you know who you are EEH aka ZEH).  More on this later.

One of our friends (you know who you are LMS) even told my husband she thinks I maybe don't give Copper enough credit because she's so well-behaved.  Typical.  =)


Anyways, we had a great get-together Saturday night, Copper was, again, very well-behaved which was nice.  It certainly helped that Nola and Rocket were over to keep her company.  And most importantly, the basketball game didn't seem as popular as was predicted, since approximately one person watched it (on non-HD, and thanks to GMP I have some great footage of this person engrossed in the game).


So I started to think about this post Sunday morning, thinking that it would really be about our turning point weekend with Copper, how she's growing up, things are looking good, maybe she's slowing down a bit.  Yay!


This feeling of euphoria lasted only as long as it took for the cable guy to show up to look into our HD issue.  A few days ago my husband and I noticed that a wire that runs along the ground behind our house had clearly been chewed on by Copper.  We didn't think about it too much because we decided it must be connected to some outdoor speakers that came with the house when we bought it and that we can't figure out how to work anyway.  False.  That would be the copper wire (no pun intended) that feeds our cable box and internet in the den.  So the cable guy spent the better part of an hour not only rewiring the whole thing on the back of our house but also going to some trouble to tack it to the house so that Copper (hopefully) can't get to it.  I guess I will be happy that we have HD again (hellooooo Oscars) even though it means we now have to probably paint the giant black wire tacked across the back of our house so it doesn't look like such a do-it-yourself home improvement project gone wrong.


By about mid afternoon Sunday, peace and quiet seemed to again be settling over Copperland and I sat down again to think about this post.  Which I never got a chance to actually do because all of a sudden Copper was barking like mad in the backyard, in a strange pitch I hadn't heard before, and then racing in through her dog door like she was being chased.  I look down and there are droplets of blood splattered all across the kitchen floor.  My husband and I scooped Copper up (wow she is getting heavy!) and put her in the bathtub (the walls of which also got splattered with blood).  Yikes.  Needless to say we quickly found the problem--she had split her toenail somehow--and got her under some running water and hydrogen peroxide to clean it up.  The bleeding stopped a bit but to be on the safe side we headed off to the vet (to be clear, we headed off in my car after discovering my husband's wouldn't start, good times) where they decided she needed to be put under to get the toenail clipped pretty high into the quick, which is very painful.  However, that couldn't happen yesterday as the vet was closing shortly after we brought her in, so they bandaged her up to spend the night at home.  As an aside, the vet mentioned that Copper takes the prize for the most visits to the vet ever before her first birthday, which is not encouraging news to hear as a "parent." 

As much as I feel sorry for her, watching Copper try to walk around with that foot bandgage on was just hysterical, and it clearly drove her to the brink of embarrassment / insanity:





Anyway, Copper is at the vet right now recovering from her procedure this morning and I'm about to pick her up.  She has to "stay calm" for the next three days (right) which means no doggy daycare tomorrow or Thursday which means we'll have an energetic Copper on our hands this week.


Cheers to more adventures in Copperland!



PS.  Copper has invited a few friends to join her in Copperland as ghostwriters.  Stay tuned...