Sparklers

We aren't animal lovers. We love to see wild animals out in the boonies, but other than that we prefer not to be around them. I know, I know, I know...you love your pets. And your dog or cat is probably the best dog or cat on earth. The thing is, we don't like your dog or cat. It doesn't matter how many times you tell us that it's so sweet, or so smart, or the cutest thing on earth. In general, we tend to think that your dog or cat smells terrible, leaves hair all over our clothes, has an annoying bark, and is pretty disgusting. And most dogs seem to like to stuff their noses right in our crotch, which you might think would be something that we would enjoy, but it turns out that it is a rather violating feeling.

I'm telling you about this lack of pet love because, first of all, I can't think of anything better to tell you about, and secondly, because we just spent a week on the Oregon coast with some good friends and their pets. Since I am going tell you about these people and their pets, I am also going to tell you how we came to spend time with these friends and their furry little monsters.

Before we got to the Oregon coast, we brought our little home on wheels to Bend Oregon to get ready for some fun in the snow and some time on the slopes. Once we got to Bend and got our little home set up in our campsite, we spent some time with our good friends Eric, Ann, their little man Bjorn, and Ann's parents Sue and Wayne at their Sunriver “cabin”. Their so called “cabin” was larger than 188 of our home-on-wheels put together and was complete with a west wing, east wing, game room, a gourmet kitchen, a dining room with seating for about 20, and enough wine to get the entire Italian army intoxicated. We spent a few days catching up, ate some incredible meals, shared lots of laughs, and Brenda enjoyed enough wine to make her move quite a bit slower than her usual self in the mornings. They are a great family and couldn't have been more welcoming...especially since we barged in on them during the holidays. We had a great time.

We had planned on spending a pretty big chunk of time in Bend, but on the day after our arrival came a big storm with tons of snow and sub zero temperatures. As the days of the storm progressed, temperatures got colder and colder. We saw a low of -6 degrees at night which if you haven't guessed, is really, really, really cold. It's so cold that our “4 season-winter rated” RV decided to freeze solid. Inside of our little home was actually toasty warm with the heater cranked up, but the water lines and the tanks and the drains all completely froze so that our home was basically uninhabitable...no water equals no washing dishes, no cooking, no potty, and most importantly, no water to make coffee. At 10 degrees outside, all of our plumbing still worked. At somewhere around 5 degrees, all of the sudden things stopped working. Apparently there is a limit to what our little home on wheels can take. And since it wasn't supposed to warm up past about 16 degrees for a high for the next few days, it meant that nothing would thaw out. So we decided to leave our frozen home in Bend and make a trek to the coast to visit our good friends and their pets in Tillamook Oregon on New Year's Eve.

Jonathon and Jen (aka Team JJ) moved out to Tillamook about a year ago and have been inviting us to visit their little slice of paradise every since they moved. What better time to visit Team JJ than when it is so cold outside that an Eskimo would be crying for his mommy and when our little home on wheels is frozen solid. They had been telling me that they got a “beach house” but they failed to tell me that their home was actually on the beach...not down the street from the beach or that they had a peek-a-boo view of the beach...it was on the beach. You could open the door, take a few steps across a sand dune, and put your toes in the water. Pretty amazing place with an incredible view. I can't tell you how nice it was to wake up in the morning and sit by a toasty fire while drinking a great cup of coffee while watching the waves break just outside the wall of windows that were keeping the cold weather out. Incredible.

So here is where the lack of love for pets comes into play. These friends of ours had gotten a dog and a cat before they moved into this incredible place. They used to text me pictures of their dog and tell me how much they loved their new and fluffy bundle of joy, they would tell me how sweet this dog was, and how this was the best dog on earth. “Good Lord...give me a break!” I would think to myself. Well, the time had finally come for us to visit our friends and to meet this smelly and disgusting mutt.

This mutt turned out to not be a mutt at all. She is a purebred German Shepard that has gone through hours and hours of training. She is sweet as can be, she can catch a Frisbee flying through the air (pretty cool), she is trained to remove a gun from an intruder (we were shown this little stunt with a toy gun...also pretty cool), she doesn't beg from the dinner table, with a simple command she becomes a ferocious guard dog, and with another simple command she becomes as sweet as pie again. Pretty amazing...for a dog. Even with all of the fancy tricks, we were still thinking about putting the dog in a bag with a bunch of rocks and showing her how close the ocean is to her lovely home.

Since we were there on New Years Eve, we had to take care of some needed celebrating. This could be the wildest and craziest New Years that we have ever experienced. I won't fill you in on all of the exciting details because this blog is intended for families, but I will tell you that there was streaking through the quad, a large amount of wine consumed by Brenda and Jen, extreme puzzling (this was actually the big event of the night...a jigsaw puzzle...I told you it was a wild night), and there were fireworks that we shot off of the balcony into the ocean.

Back to the dog. When Brenda started in with the sparklers, the dog went nuts. I'm not talking about being a freaked out dog, I'm talking about a dog that loved the sparklers more than life itself. It went absolutely crazy...and so did Brenda. All of the sudden Brenda and the dog had a connection...they both loved the sparklers. Years of dog training went out the window when the sparklers came out. Brenda and the dog were both so excited that the “long hairs” (the local hippies) at the party next door were complaining about the noise. The sparklers became a nightly ritual that included both Brenda and the dog becoming so wildly insane that it was almost unbearable. And by the end of the week, the mere mention of the word sparklers would send the dog into a frenzy...sorry Team JJ...Brenda ruined your dog.

It turns out that after the sparkler connection, Brenda started to sort of like the dog. After a few days of sparklers, they became best friends. They became such great friends that they would cuddle up on the couch in front of the fire and watch the waves break on the shore together and they would take long walks on the beach. It was sort of romantic. I fell in love with the dog when it caught the first Frisbee that I threw and actually brought the Frisbee back to me. Incredible. It seems that we don't hate all pets. Just yours. Team JJ has a pretty great dog. It's such a great dog that by the end of our stay, we were trying to figure out how to stuff the dog in a bag so we could sneak it out the door and hide it in our car for us to take home...then we remembered that we would have to pick up the dog's poop. I guess we won't take the dog because that is disgusting.

Beyond the dog and the fireworks and the wild night of jigsaw puzzling, we had our first relaxing week of our trip. Team JJ had their personal masseuse come to the house to give us massages (WOO HOO!!!), we watched amazing sunsets, ate fresh seafood (mmmmmmmmm), and really left feeling like we just spent a week at the spa. It was GREAT!!!

We are now up in Seattle for a couple of days and will be heading back down to Bend to get back to the skiing. Hopefully our little home on wheels will be thawed out before we get there.