LTD

Lucy the Dog in the Ryder truck on the move from VA to IL.

Many of you who will read this blog have met and are well aquainted with Lucy the Dog, our resident beagle, practice child, and generally adorable trouble-maker. Some of you have inquired as to Lucy's transition to living the big city. Here's what I can tell you.

Lucy's first day in Chicago (back in June) was not great. She was wonderful on the ride up. She loves the car and pretty much slept and sniffed out the window when I was willing to have her sit in my lap. When we started moving in to our 15th floor apartment, however, she freaked out and started barking incessantly as we made trips between the truck and the apartment. This ultimately worked out well for me, because I got to stay in the truck with the dog, cut boxes and furniture out the web of rope Wes created, and move them out to the edge for the guys (thanks Jon D.) to move. The neighbors forgave us this initial chaos, and Lucy has learned to live with the coming and going that's part of living in a mid-rise apartment building. She has mostly stopped barking when neighbors go in and out of their apartments, but she is definitely still a doorbell when people knock at our door. She has gotten used to using the elevator and can usually predict which one of the two will arrive first.

She's made a lot of friends in the building. Tubby lives just across the hall, and Winston, a cute Cavalier, is at the end of the hall. There are probably 20 dogs in the building total. Some are friendly, some are not, some wear sweaters (Lucy is prejudiced against dogs that wear sweaters, even when it's really cold outside -- see Weather Terminology in Chicago posting). She is sad about the fact that the apartment is all hardwood, which makes it hard to play rope, and that all the city's dog parks are several miles' walk away from our building. She gets out several times a day to pee, poop, and socialize, and a couple times a week for walks (save when we had the huge snowfall). Most of the day, though, she spends on or trying to get on furniture. We've found a (very expensive) vet and (reasonably priced) kennel, where she spent five days over the Thanksigiving holidays.

Overall, she's doing well and has adjusted nicely. There's not much to see out the windows except for when the building across the street has its windows cleaned -- and THAT really gets her worked up! Wes and I are definitely looking forward to the day when we can add another puppy so Lucy will have someone to play with all the time, but we know we can't do that until we're in a house with a yard. Until then, she's stuck with us!