Evening in Bellworld

Hello everyone!

We just sat down and realized that we were overdue on a post here! Things have been very busy for a while now, especially in the evenings and weekends when we get a chance to work on projects. However, we've had some exciting events happen recently and we want to share everything with you!

We received two very important titles in the last few days. Last Wednesday, Hannah passed her Canine Good Citizen's test at Springwood park here in town. We were very excited, and Hannah got a hamburger, so she was excited too. We also have a team of my volunteers training dogs, and one of the girls made it through with her train-ee with 7/10, which was a great first try for the shelter dog. We were both very proud.

The other exciting news that that one of the dogs from the shelter and I passed our test to be a therapy dog team! Hannah is way too excited to be a therapy dog, and Rufus doesn't listen well enough, but Wagner and I passed the test using only hand signals yesterday. We still have some paperwork to do, but will be beginning to visit hospitals and such very soon! We're hoping that by working with our local team, we can get a new people into therapy dog training and find a wonderful home for such a wonderful dog. You can see pictures of him here.

Nate's been plugging away on the website, which is now up and running. Highlights include online applications that users can fill out, stat tracking, a lost and found page he programmed, and a header on each page that displays random images when you load the page. Go to www.helptheanimalsinc.com and take a look! He's been working very hard, and we're all very proud of him. We presented all of the information about the website at the HELP board meeting last Monday, to cheers! I think it looks great, but he says he has a list of tweaks he'd like to make. His other project lately has been working on the bathroom, putting up drywall, repairing the old plaster, and building a wooden frame as pictured here.



If anyone has any interest, Nate and I have a cat that we are trying to place. We have spent weeks getting Ying (pictured below) healthy, and now that she is, we want to keep her out of the high-stress, high-bacteria environment of the shelter. She is very loving, sleeps by our heads every night, and is talkative! If anyone you know has room for this loving girl, would would appreciate it. We have to take a cat who's throat closes when she gets stressed and needs injections.



I am headed to Chicago Monday through Thursday of next week, and am very excited about that. I have some cousins there, and it should be fun to visit them. I'm chaperoning a trip for our church(meeting), so there will be high-schoolers with me. I feel a little strange about being responsible for them, but we'll see how it goes. Ahh!

Peaches has finally gone to a new home, which leave us with a bitter sweet feeling. It took four adoptions for her to actually go, and the house feels emptier now that she's gone. It will be very strange when we go to bed tonight, to not have her cuddling down with us. She did really like the lady that she went with, and I just talked to her at home and she said Peaches is settling in nicely, so we're hoping that all goes well. We just got a new one, named Juno, also pictured below.







Last night we saw Rockapella in concert here in Richmond, and it was a great show! Nate knew them from an old PBS show he used to watch called "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" and I knew them from their amazing a cappella. If you get a chance to see them, we highly recommend it!

We got to test our wedding cakes this weekend, and you all will love them! We're doing white-lemon-berry and chocolate raspberry. Yum yum!

Love to you all!