Rent-a-Dog

Have I mentioned lately that I love dogs? 'Cuz I so do. Sadly, the fact that I currently work 45 hours a day keeps me from being able to own a dog (and yes, I do know there are only 24 hours in a day--but at my job, I am expected to accomplish approximately 45 hours worth of work per day). Thus, I have a cat. While amusing at times (see photo below--where Nico decided she would attempt to scale our closet of drawers (and yes, the strange, old brownstone we live in has a custom-made "closet of drawers")), cats simply aren't dogs. I don't know why I didn't, say, think about this fact prior to adopting a cat off of the streets of Harlem . . . but yeah, I'm me. So I apparently didn't. Oh, Nico . . .

Well, an amazing thing happened today, runners . . . Wilson and I got to "borrow" a real, live, barking dog! Meet Nell, the rockstar of a puppy-dog we borrowed. Isn't she super-fluffy-cuddly-cute?

Now you may be wondering how exactly we happened to "borrow" a dog. Contrary to popular belief, the owner of Nell does, in fact, know we borrowed her (well, kinda anyway . . .). Our landlady and her kids went out of town for the weekend, and her nanny/live-in babysitter/pet-sitter girl simultaneously decided to go to Philly. Thus, the only pet care option remaining for sweet, sweet Nell was Wilson and I (god help her). We were asked to let the dog out every so often into our tiny backyard, but instead decided we'd "borrow" her and take her to the park for a walk. We had lots of fun on our hour-long walk. Here are some photos to prove it (and just as many of my failed attempts at being "artsy"):

And my favorite photo of the day . . . As if it's not weird enough that the person who put this post up is looking for a yorky to mate with his/her own female yorky, if you look really closely, you'll notice the contact name is none other than "Stud." Is this for real?!

Needless to say, we had a blast (especially Nell, who doesn't get taken out for walks nearly often enough--it's actually kind of sad) . . . Nell attempted to pee on everything in sight, and also managed to scare quite a number of obnoxiously rambunctious children into screeching at the top of their lungs (yeah, she's quite ferocious, let me tell you--look at that mean, mean face of hers). We also encountered a lemonade stand in the neighborhood on our way to the park. A couple of entrepreneurial little kids were selling cups of their lemonade for just a quarter a pop--what a deal! Wilson and I were going to purchase cups of said lemonade on our way home from the park, but sadly, the stand had closed down by the time we got back (child labor laws, maybe?). It's probably for the best--that lemonade was probably PACKED with sugar. And think of everything we can do with our extra 50 cents now . . . or something like that.

Well, that's about all I have for now. Hope you're all having a fabulous weekend! May it never ever end :)