Week 1: Hobos have the happiest dogs...?

Yesterday, as Lily couldn't/wouldn't go in the dog basket, I had to jog her to the vet. In the rain.
Of course we got lost, and cloud cover made it so that GPS was a joke.

Whew... We were 15 minutes late, but we made it.

Then, we got lost on the way back, and involuntarily took the dog poo non-scenic route around the entire Noordkwartier of Leiden. Man, people don't pick up after their dogs. :(((

I was lost, tired, demoralized, with M. giving me directions on the phone (from the computer at home), and through it all, Lily was such a trooper. To her, this was a roaming, wandering adventure.

As M. puts it, she handles like a Mercedes Benz. I could't deal with dog trotting, or her going off after a pigeon, and she knew it. She just loped peacefully next to me until we got to the meeting point with M. 2 hours, but we got home.

***

Then, this morning, she jumped in the duck pond. 

Preparations at home

1. I'm scoping out veterinarian candidates. Sadly, this crosses out our last vet: though they were very kind, they didn't catch Emily's illness until it was too late. Also, the flashbacks to that time are pretty horrible.

The vet before that was so laissez-faire that he didn't seem to care. So much so that we scoped out another one, who was kind of racist and more fascinated by us (OMG! Asian people!) than he was interested in examining our dog.

This leaves the next candidates rather far away. And I need to get there by bicycle too, so I've been checking out the bike-routes and times.

Man, you have to be pretty fit to be a dog-mommy. Running's not going to help me here. And after 8 years in Holland, I'm still pretty wonky on a bicycle.

2. Pet health insurance: Petplan, which we used for Emily, was pretty solid, and surprisingly kind when she passed away. They should do.

Everything's up in the air. Or it's all in progress. Either way, I feel like picking out a nice new collar for the dog, just to calm down myself.