She's One of the Family!

Piper. To my grandma this is a funny and weird name. She thinks it is way too hard to say, especially when it is a dog’s name. She thinks it is difficult to call out the name Piper when yelling for a dog. To me this is the perfect name for my dog. Piper just turned two years old on September 12, 2009. As you can tell from that right there, I love my dog to pieces because I even know her birthday. She is a Yorkshire bischon mix. She is a golden-tan color and is no joke, the cutest thing ever! Obviously I am a little biased considering she is my baby but everyone says how adorable she is. She is considered one of the family and since I am an only child, she is like my sister. Sometimes my mom will say to her, “Go find Sissy” referring to me as her sister. It’s just normal for us to consider her a person. My boyfriend always says she even understands us when we say something to her. I will tell her, “Go find mom” and she will kind of look at me and then dart off and find mom. No joke, I really think this dog understands us when we speak to her. It is crazy! We also enjoy dressing her up in little outfits. Now we do not put her in the stupid, crazy, outrageous outfits but for instance, she gets cold in the winter so she has to wear a sweater. She looks so cute when she is in her sweaters. She has multiple in fact  but this weekend my mom and I were at Marshall’s and we found this little Christmas dress. It is soooo cute! Its red and has a little ruffle at the bottom with a little bell on top. You cannot say it is not adorable. So Christmas morning when we are opening gifts, she will be wearing that dress. We also always give her gifts on Christmas. We’ll wrap treats in wrapping paper and she will paw and lick and bite at it until eventually she will rip it open. Or if she is having an issue with gift opening, we’ll rip it a little and help her out. The only reason we actually ever got Piper was after years and years of me trying to get a dog we finally did. We had a Jack Russel Terrier, Lil. We had her since I was five years old and I always thought she would love to have a ‘little sister’. So we finally got Piper after my dad did thorough searching. The ironic thing is, is my dad is veterinarian and people always ask how many animals you have, thinking we have a lot. Well no, we actually only had one dog up until two years ago. On November 1, 2007 Piper came home! But unfortunately in April of last year Lil died  but having Piper definitely made the loss a lot easier. She helped all of us cope with the loss of our baby, Lil. The sweetest thing about when Lil died is right when she was about to go, Piper seemed to know. She layed her head on top of Lil’s and stayed there until she died. There are not too many things as cute as that. Although that was a sad time we have had our closure with Lil’s death and are now fully enjoying Piper’s personality. This dog has one of the biggest personalities I have ever met. She can express just about every emotion humans can and she also ‘talks’ as we call it. She will let you know exactly what she wants, when she wants it. And you can usually decipher her noises and actions to precisely what she wants. When she wants food or water, she will stare you straight in the eyes, whine, and look at you with this look. When she wants to go outside, she whines even harder and usually does a little dance of sorts. And to try to demonstrate how spoiled my dad has made this dog I will tell you a few things. When she wants to go outside she will always have a specific door she wants to go out of. Either the front or back door. If you go to the wrong one, she will refuse to go out that one and will bark and whine and basically yell at you until you let her out the correct door. Usually I will just grab her and throw her out the door I am at because I do not have the patience for her neediness  Also when she is outside in the backyard and dog is walking in the street, she refuses to run in the yard with the dog. No she has to come to the back door, scratch like crazy, and then dart to the front door and expect you to let her out there. She uses the house as a short cut. It is unbelievable that she does this. That is all my dad’s handy work. He thinks it is funny that she will do all that. I find it highly annoying. O well I still love her to death. My aunt always jokingly says when she dies she wants to come back as one of our dogs because we treat them so well.

Some people will read this and think I am absolutely nuts because I know some people who do not view animals in the same way. Some people think animals are not meant to be that involved in families and I guess maybe I can understand their point of view but I could never imagine my life without dogs and animals. I am so tempted to get a dog and somehow sneak it in my dorm room and it can live with me. It would be amazing if that could actually happen. So to everyone who is reading this, if you have animals, are they as much a part of your family as Piper is in ours and if you don’t have animals, do you wish you did?

Home :)

Home. Home is where the heart is. That’s what the saying is, right? Do you agree with that? Is home a special place to you? Somewhere you can go to and always feel comfortable. Somewhere that you could spend forever at because you love it so much? Well that is how I feel about home. I went home this weekend for the first time in a month. To some people being away from home is not that long but for me, that is forever. I never thought I would be away from home that long for a few more years. Once I had my life a little more established at school. Well obviously I was wrong. The month actually went a lot faster than I thought it would. It only seemed to get difficult once the last week came and I think that is because I knew I was going home in a few days and I was just so anxious to get there. My roommate was in the same situation as me except she has not been home since we’ve started school, where as I have been home once. We both tried to make the week go by as fast as we could, made the days go fast by occupying ourselves. Well Thursday finally rolled around and we were so excited. We just had to get through that day and then we would pack all our stuff up that night. So as that day flew by, I tried to get all my final work done because of course I was not about to do homework while I was at home. So everything was ready and I got to bed around 1:30am that night. When my roommate and I woke up Friday morning we looked at each other and smiled and said today is the day. Man were we excited! So as they day went by my dad finally got there and picked me up around 1130am. We went and ate and then were on our way to home. All that day I had butterflies in my stomach because I was so excited to get home and see my mom and hang out with them and see my friends and my house and my dog and my car and my town and of course to see my boyfriend Zane. Never would I have thought that I would have gone to college with a boyfriend so he has only made the four hour distance even more difficult and made my missing of home even worse. This was the moment I realized how much I missed home. My dad and I just got off the highway and were cruising through town when I see an F&M sign. F&M is a local bank and apparently I miss this bank because I smiled so big and got this feeling of longing to be back home. That sign represented my life back home and where I want to be. I got home, loved on my dog Piper, through my first load of laundry in the washer and was off to see Zane because my mom was not going to be home for a while so I felt it was the perfect opportunity. Now see Zane lives in my neighborhood, but that drive from my house to his house felt like the world’s LONGEST drive. I was so dang excited to see him. It had been a month since I had seen him and touched him and given him a hug. When I saw him and finally gave him that hug, both of our eyes actually got teary because we were so darn excited to finally be together. This felt like it would be the best weekend of my life. I hung with him all that evening. The next day he had two baseball games so it was my day to hang with my parents, which I was absolutely fine with. We just sat in the living room and did nothing. We just relaxed and enjoyed each other’s company. Then that night Zane cooked dinner for me. That was special for me since he has never done that. Well we enjoyed that dinner and then went to his friend’s house. Now this was not a good thing we were going to Zane’s friend’s house. The night before when I was taking Zane home, one of his best friends called and said a girl who is a senior at my high school had been in a car accident. This was a scary moment for our entire school and community. Just five and a half months ago we lost a girl who would have been a senior this year in a car accident. She had been thrown from her jeep and was in a coma for a few days. During a school function on Thursday April 23, 2009, word quickly spread that she had passed away after going brain dead. Literally our entire school started crying and we definitely do not come from a small high school. We have between six-hundred and eight-hundred kids per grade but this still affected everyone. Sarah was a girl who everyone knew. She was friendly to everyone and was a very religious person but in a respectable way. Losing her was devastating and confusing. Back to present time, Saturday when I was hanging out with my parents, I got a text from my best friend. Kacy, the girl in the car accident the night before, had gone brain dead that morning and died in the early afternoon. I could not believe this. It had just happened five and half months before. And both of these girls are within the same group of friends so I cannot even imagine what they are going through. Now when Sarah died it was a huge deal. Her viewing drew an amazing amount of people and it said a lot for her. The entire school and community were affected. Well Kacy is also someone everyone knows and loves; she was a star golfer, had a chance to win states in a couple weeks and was also a very religious person in a very respectable way. Compared to Sarah, Kacy’s impact on our school and community is going to be absolutely huge. This is hurting a lot of people. Kacy’s impact on the community and individual people during her life was huge. They are going to have to hold multiple services to accommodate all the people. School is basically optional tomorrow because so many people will be hurt. I wish so badly I could be there this week to be with everyone and attend all the functions and memorials in her honor.

Now the reason I have decided to tell you about this is for multiple reasons.
1.) I want to see how everyone feels about home. Is it somewhere you miss and would love to go back to or is somewhere that will always be home but you do not need to be.
2.) I wanted to tell you about what I went through this weekend at home and kind of make everyone realize home is amazing but stuff still happens, good and bad.
3.) I want you to know about Kacy and I want to continue her legacy and let everyone know about her and maybe this will hit home to you. A lot of people have lost people in high school. People you were good friends with or people you just knew who there were. Regardless, it hurts to know someone that interacted with the same people you did everyday is gone. And we won’t see them until we reach Heaven.
I hope everyone loves their life and is living it to their fullest happiness. I also hope everyone loves their home and feel it is somewhere they can go. I know it is for me and I can’t wait to go back on Thursday!!