i lost my senior great dane girl 5 weeks ago to bone cancer. it was sudden and shocking and i still look for her. my remaining dane girl and eden were joined at the hip, pip took the loss very hard and had been grieving so much, it broke my heart. i contacted pip's breeder and one of her former co-owners and asked that they keep an eye out for any adults that any breeder friends might be considering a new home for (retired show dogs, etc.). the co-owner gave me the contact information for one of her people who had a dane boy she had been looking for just the right home for and the rest is history. meet "flighty foto my way", call name "frank". frank will be 4 years old on 5/31. he is a very sweet boy and he and pippin hit it off immediately at our meet 'n' greet friday. they do zoomies numerous times a day, sleep curled up together and are just a perfect pair. pippin is so much happier and that makes me happier. even though i miss eden terribly, i am beginning to heal now that pip is feeling better. frank is a bit on the thin side because he lived the last 4 weeks with a female dane who was going through a heat cycle and when that's going on, intact males ignore food, do a lot of pacing and fretting and routinely lose weight. he's eating like a horse so i'm confident he will gain and be back to his normal weight soon. i'm giving him a few weeks to settle in and then i'll make an appointment to have him neutered.

Thanks all; sounds like I'm not the only one that has trouble deciding from time to time. I agree with the difference between liking pictures in a book or online versus living in it. I remember about 4 years ago, maybe 5, I loved the shabby chic pink look. I just knew I wanted it. I did two rooms in all white - one has lots of light blue accents, the other pinks and lavenders. They looked really good - straight out a magazine. I hated both of them. Even though I liked the look, I couldn't stand being in the rooms. One was redone in rich reds and gold and black, the other in, uh, gold, and rich reds. Hmmmm .... I'm sensing a pattern here. Thankfully (at least I *think* it's a good thing) I uncovered a new element - something that's going to restrict my choices a bit and therefore hopefully make the decision less stressful. When I was ripping up the various kitchen flooring layers .... carpet on top of pad on top of old vinyl on top of underlayment ... I accidentally ripped up a piece of the underlayment. I didn't mean too, was planning on putting the new floor (hadn't decided yet, was waiting on updated budget figures) and guess what I found? Yup, the kitchen had hardwood under there too! Hallelujah! It, however, is different than in the rest of the house. It's a wider plank, wider spacing, a MUCH more casual look and a more porus wood - meaning if I use the same stain it will not look the same and will likely look funny where they join. That led me to choose a contrasting stain choice so that it looked purposeful. I was torn between ebony (with cream cabinets), weathered / distressed barnwood (with either cream, black or barn red cabinets) and whitewash (with black cabinetry). Today when I started sanding, it became clear that I was likely not going to get it sanded white enough (without sanding down so deep I hurt it) to do a whitewash. The floor has gaps and grooves and the stain color fills those low spots. Trying to sand down that deep will leave me with a paper thin floor. That takes that color out of the options.

Well, I would be sure that no food is anywhere that they can get into, not even crumbs. I found that they liked to run under the kitchen cupboards behind the baseboard. So I took the bottom drawer out and placed a mouse trap there. That usually did the trick. (But then you seem to be catching them well.) I suggest you see if you have a bottom kitchen drawer that exposes the under area of your kitchen cupboards. Then be sure that no petfood or anything else is available to them. They can chew through sacks.

I won't even begin to list how many cleaning products are in my house. It's. Absolutely. Terrifying. That being said, I'm working on getting rid of much of it and using more natural/earth friendly methods. One thing that I am having a tough time giving up is my toilet bowl cleaner with bleach. I just haven't found anything that makes me feel like the toilet is as clean as when I use some bleach based product. Just mixed up a batch of baking soda, essential oils (eucalyptus and peppermint), a little bit of Dawn dishwashing liquid, and enough water to make a paste. This was used to scrub the tub which gets absolutely horrible because it's an old porcelain tub (but the finish was messed up from the previous owners)...it got it as clean as the harsher cleansers I've used with about the same amount of effort. Bonus is that it smelled lovely, way better than most cleaning products you can buy in the store. Looking forward to hearing more about some of the alternate cleaning products that people use.