Abigail vonSaucyPants (Abby) is here.

Abigail (Abby) has arrived in Fredericton!! We only had a first name selected but on the long drive home, Abby received a last name too. We now call her Abby vonSaucyPants! She is everything that her foster mother described and MORE! A big thank you to Delia for rescuing Abby and for the love and care that she gave to her during her critical first few weeks. We left Fredericton the morning of January 9, 2009 to pick up our new girl and on the way stopped in Bangor, Freeport, Kittery and stayed the night in Portsmouth, NH. Too excited to do much shopping we did manage to buy Abby a new bed at L.L.Bean, which she decided was worth a chew on the way home. We wanted to arrive in Windham, NH early so we could find the "Park-N-Ride" pick up location, which we easily found (the GPS borrowed from my brother-in-law was a big help). Being almost an hour early we decided to take a quick drive around Windham and stopped for gas and some snacks. While pumping the fuel, we spotted the trailer carrying the doggies driving up to the stop sign...almost 45 minutes early! We watched the trailer turn towards the drop off location and our hearts took a few extra beats because we knew we were just a few minutes away from getting our new girl. I am not even sure that we paid for the fuel we were so excited!! We arrived just behind the trailer, grabbed the leash and dashed to the trailer which was barely stopped. Kyle, the nice man opening the door to the several barking dogs, could see our excitement and nicely said "dog?" we said "Teri" and he yelled back to someone "crate 62" and within 30 seconds.....there she was! She was the first dog off the trailer. From the moment she came off the trailer her kisses started and the tail started wagging and it has not stopped since. We wanted to keep her away from the other dogs getting off the trailer, just to be on the safe side, so we took her to the other side of the parking lot for some exercise but she was very interested in watching the other dogs run around too. She was trembling so we put on the coat that we bought for her, knowing that she was leaving Arkansas and would not be use to the cold weather, we bought a coat. She tried her best to get that coat off but was unsuccessful!! We had brought a crate with us, borrowed from Abby's furry friends Jack and Stella, but somehow Abby flashed her beautiful eyes and we "thought" she wanted to be held instead. We left Windham, NH around 1:15 and drove for about an hour before we stopped to "get a real good look at Abby". She had another 20min run, sniffed the snow etc and quickly got back in the car and pee'ed in the crate! Thank goodness we came with supplies for such an event. We discovered that she is not use to walking on a leash but that is okay, a little girl can't be expected to know everything at first. That will be homework over the Winter. She continued to play with her new pink puppy squeak toy and after about 3 hours (thank heavens) she flopped...finally some quiet! We bunched up a down filled coat and she slept on Martha's lap with her head on the coat for a long time. Martha continued to rub her belly and ears while she slept and it didn't seem to matter what we did, she just slept in a deep sleep. We arrived at the Border around 9:00PM (our time), we stopped and put Abby in the crate and got her papers out and told her to behave for the nice Customs Officer. LOL! We waited in a short traffic line at the Border before advancing to the booth. We went through the usual "how long have you been over, anything to declare?" to which we replied "we picked up a dog" we were handed a slip and told to advance to the Customs Office. We took in all of Abby's papers and the Officer inside asked "value of the dog" to which we wanted to say "monetary or emotional?" Anyway we had no problem at Customs and were on our way within 10mins. We stopped and got Abby back out of the crate in St. Stephen where she fell asleep again. We arrived home and made some very important introductions to Abby's feline siblings! Three cats headed for higher ground... Abby slept from midnight to 8:00AM...the entire night! What a good girl. She is so well adjusted, friendly, social, lovable we think she is perfect. As Sunday begins we can only hope that the magic continues! Until next time.