With only two weeks left until we take off on the road again, with the wild west as our destination we are getting antsy to leave. The desert is calling us. Well valentine’s day started very nice, we had a nice evening hanging with Rachie and Donnie and then went home for some romantic time alone. Upon opening the door to the coach we saw torn pieces of cardboard and red material, and Jack acting as if he had just drank 5 tall cafe lattes. It turned out the remains were the box of dark chocolate truffles Sharon had given me earlier. And as many of you know, dark chocolate is highly toxic to dogs and all 10 truffles were missing. We read on the internet and realized how bad it was so we had no choice to race off to the emergency vet and open our wallets:( They made both of them vomit and upon inspection realized it was the knucklehead Jack that ate all of it himself. So he was the one who got the charcoal in his belly and an IV just in case. They kept him overnight and we left Jinny to keep him company, we did not sleep as we were worried sick. Finally around 6:00 I went and got them and Jack seemed just fine, they gave him a clean bill of health. The only side effect was he pooped out charcoal briquets, literally :) It is official, the first public showing of the One Shoe Diaries™ collection is set to take place at the Pensacola Little Theater in Pensacola. We intend to team up with Shoes that Fit charity to raise money and awareness for them. Idgroup is sponsoring us and we are currently trying to get more sponsors for framing. We are so excited, so anyone in the Pensacola area, mark your calendars, we would love to see you out there! Went kayaking at the Myakka River State park with our friend Kevin. We got a little angry at the people who felt like they had to tell us that the puggles would make a nice “gator snack”. Seems a little rude to say that I think, to put the image of your dog getting eaten by a gator into someones head is awful. But we left them far behind as we launched our kayaks down the river, and a beautiful river it was! Despite being very windy and having to paddle downstream to make headway the trip was quite relaxing, we did see the infamous gators everywhere, we spotted 16 and some very large. We got quite a spook when 2 twelve-footers splashed off the bank into the water just feet from us. We enjoyed a very nice day. We went to the HOH dog park for the last time for a long time. We got to say goodbye to our friends and Jack and Jinjer said goodbye to Bella, Bella, Al-Fredo, Ginger, Rocky, Alexi, Addy, Stella, Barney, Cici, and others. Their favorite buddy was Fredo, he is a fun-loving little pure bred Beagle who just loves to run. He loved to roll and wrestle with them, he would taunt Jack to get him to chase him by grabbing Jack’s ball. Just a few days back, poor Fredo almost knocked himself out when he was running from Jack full speed while carrying a frisbee which flipped up and impaired his vision and he ran smack into the metal leg of the park bench. He was a trooper though and shook it off to keep going. Another stunt he and Jack were in on, is a woman was sitting at the picnic table and Fredo grabbed her straw hat and ran, Jack followed after him and took it from him and ripped the flower off in a matter of seconds. The woman was very nice and only saw the humor in it and laughed along with everyone else. We will miss Fredo’s parents as well. The “father” was an older New Yorker, and so was his “mother”, they held their age well as they were a charming, attractive older couple. She was a bit of a nervous nelly, and at first it made us on edge, but it actually became quite an endearing trait because she just generally cared about her dog and everyone else’s well being. They seemed to take in life, they were well traveled, educated, funny and always classy. We will try to keep in touch with them as we travel. Well the day has come to uproot and move north…a bittersweet time as we will miss our family in Port Charlotte, but we are ready for some adventure!
