Goldie comes home and Reception for Denise

Thursday, we went to the pound to pick up Goldie. It's good to have her home. She spent most of the rest of the day laying down...as though she hadn't done that the whole time she was in the pound. Here she is in one of her favorite positions...especially when one of us starts petting her.

We found out a couple of days prior to picking her up that there would be some "fees". Once we got a hold of someone, we found that there was an $18/day board and care fee (go lightly on the care!), a $57 quarantine fee and an $8 shot that they give to every dog that comes into the pound. Once I found that out, I spent some time trying to figure out if there were ways around this. I figured the quarantine fee was sort of non-negotiable. But in the County Code, it made it sound like it was optional for the animal control worker to impound the dog. So, I tried to argue that given our environment, there's really no chance that Goldie would get rabies. But they told me that beyond the "code", they have a policy that any dog bite to the face that breaks the skin, they take the dog in to the pound. I asked them to mail me the policy. I haven't received it yet.

Today, we went to a reception for our friends, Phil and Denise, to celebrate Denise's recovery from a rare form of Valley Fever. What makes this so remarkable is that Denise is the only person on record to have recovered from this disease who was also 6 months pregnant. She went into the hospital July 18 of last year and came home earlier this year on March 30. It's been an incredible ride and it was fun and exciting to see today how far Denise has come. Phil had kept up a blog this entire time chronicling the journey...so if anyone's interested in reading through it, please do so. Just go to: http://pullingfordenise.blogspot.com/.