July 24, 2000

What a week! We had plans for last week to be filled with company, but around here things never seem to go as planned! Early, early (even for me!) on Sunday morning Mark was experiencing severe abdominal pain. The second he agreed to go to the hospital, I knew he was seriously sick! Sure enough, it was his appendix. They ended up sending him by ambulance to the city of Edmonton. After over 7 hours of waiting in the Emergency room, he went in for surgery and had his appendix removed. He was allowed to come home on Monday.


Once again, big thanks go to our friend Roger Morey, who at the drop of a hat rushed over to feed the puppies on Sunday morning, fed the whole yard on Sunday night and then drove to the city to pick me up from the hospital. I don’t know how we would ever get by without Roger and his wife, Pauline!
My best friend, Lynda and her daughter were going to be in the city on Monday and had planned on staying the night at our place, but that was cancelled. Mark spent the whole week basically sleeping. He started work this morning, but will be restricted to ‘light duty’ for another week or so.

Thursday my 2000 Iditarider’s parents, Lara and Alice Baker stopped by the kennel for a visit on their way to Alaska from New Mexico. Lara has been an Iditrider himself on a couple occasions and I had met them both at the start of the Race last year. It was nice to get a chance to visit without all the commotion!
Friday friends of ours from Ponoka were supposed to be bringing their 6 dogs out for the weekend. Jackie and Rick are just starting out with their team and wanted to run with us for a bit. Unfortunately, Mark still wasn’t feeling up to par, so the visit had to be rescheduled. Jackie did come out for Saturday and Sunday and brought one of their dogs, Hugi, who is a NorthWapiti dog, out of Striker and Breezy’s 1999 litter. What a treat it was to see the handsome boy again! The weather turned out to be too warm to run anyway, but I was grateful for Jackie’s help around the yard! Especially when it came to giving the 'computer litter' their shots and removing Surge’s stitches (he had his dewclaws removed a few weeks ago). We also spend some time getting some pictures of Keesa’s litter of puppies – so hopefully I will get some of those up on the site soon! The pups are 8 weeks and so cute!!

Today I have some friends bringing their children out to play with puppies (good socializing for the pups!) and need to get into town for some more dog food – other then that, it should be a nice relaxing day!

All for now
Karen