The worst part of visiting my parents is driving home.

Yes, I will miss Moms cooking/baking. Yes, I will miss having real food (weird how the totally not organic food we get from local farmers is still good). Yes, Focus on the Family and AFA make a long drive longer (today they passive-aggressively ignored the Prop8 ruling, and instead focused on only talking about traditional marriage and gender roles. did you know that treating men and women as equals is why we have the homo gay in the first place? also, Obama is a secret Muslim, pronounced moo-slim.)

The worst part is breaking up Arnie and Daisy.

You all know who Arnie is.

Daisy is a black lab, adopted by my brother shortly before he got married. Shortly after he got married, his wife got pregnant with twins. And they had just moved to a house with a tiny yard. And, he had two other labs.

:-/

So Daisy and her older brother Duke went to live with my parents (the oldest lab Speckles stayed with Bro). My parents are very much dog people, and we have a big yard, and then Arnie would have two puppies to play with when I visited, so, YAY!

No yay.

Duke and Arnie have tried to kill each other. Repeatedly. Multiple independent occasions. Ironically, its always been the socially accepted yellow lab that starts the fights, while Arnie finishes them by running away. So when I visit, it becomes an elaborate game of keeping the Christians and Cannibals separate.

Fair Daisy is poor Juliet.

Daisy is a sweet, shy dear. And frankly, she is smarter than some human children I know. And, she is madly, madly in love with Arnie. And Arnie loves her too. Every time I come to visit, they PLAY PLAY PLAY PLAY from as early as they can wake someone up (5.45-ish :-/) till they collapse at about 8 at night. Wrestling, tug-of-war, tag, wrestling, ball, tug-of-war-with-something-else, more wrestling. THEY HAVE SO MUCH FUN!

Heres a little video I took on my iPod:

Today when I was packing up to leave, Daisy was positively frantic. This normally calm quiet girl was fighting Mom to chase after us as we left for the car. She threw herself at the door (clawing the hell out of my parents brand new front door). Mom put her in the back yard so she could see us drive off, and she was throwing herself at the fence. It was actually really disturbing, again considering what a mellow sweet pea she normally is. When I called my parents when I got home, Mom said she wouldnt leave the back yard. She was just watching the street waiting for us to come back.

Arnie is totally bummed out.

Its heartbreaking. And theres just no good solution.

I cant take Arnie and Daisy, because I have no yard for them to play in, thus defeating the purpose of them being together. And, because of my weird scientist work schedule, I could never be at home as much as she would need me to be to pee.

I cant leave Arnie at my parents, because he and Duke will kill each other, at some point.

I cant take Duke, because Duke is suicidal when Dad goes to work. He cant live without Dad. Also, he can be a ‘mean’ dog. He needs to be at my parents where he doesnt have to interact with other people/dogs much.

But I thought of a novel solution– See, Arnie is ‘bad’ around me, cause he is ‘protecting’ me. Duke is ‘bad’ around Dad, because he is ‘protecting’ Dad. Mom has absolutely no problem with any of the dogs. They are well behaved and do everything she says.

So, basically to make everyone happy, I need to leave Arnie at my parents, and take my Dad to Oklahoma. Its the only way. LOL!!!