Chapter 4 wip

Chapter 4: Learning to Live, Learning to Love
We soon began to take on the characteristics of a nuclear family, albeit one with very hairy kids. As we got used to our pets, we planned our wedding. We decided that we would keep our wedding very small– only immediate family. We would take a trip to the south of France, Spain, and Italy. The pets were about eight months old at this point, and we had no idea how they would take to being left for three weeks while we explored Europe. After some discussion, it was decided that we would entrust the care of little Finn to my parents after the wedding, and take a trip to Prince George after the wedding to pick him up. Shake, on the other hand, would probably not be very enthused about taking a six hour car ride to the north; so we decided that we would ask one of Nicole’s employees take care of him.
Our wedding was to take place in Kelowna at the Immaculate Conception Church downtown. We spent the night before at Nicole’s parent’s house, and the pup spent the night in the run outside. Shake, of course, did not make the trip to Kelowna, vastly preferring the friendly confines of his own house in Merritt.
The ceremony went well, and our vows were heartfelt and emotional. The day flew by, and before we knew it the next morning had arrived. We talked to the guests that had come by for our reception, but soon the time had come for us to leave for our honeymoon in Europe. My parents bid everyone goodbye, and asked us if we could bring Finn out to the car so that they could begin their long journey home. I thanked them again for taking care of him, loaded his food into their car, and headed out back to get him.
When I got to the run, Finn danced around excitedly. Having been penned up without much company for most of the previous day, he anticipated a walk– probably down to the dock on the lake below the house. Unfortunately an unanticipated surprise awaited him instead.
As I put his leash on, I said, "We’ll be home in three weeks Finn. My parents will really love having you there. You’ll probably go on more walks there than you did in Merritt."
Finn, in his usual manner, simply cocked his head, smiled at me, and wagged his tail so vigorously that his entire gangly body shook.
I gave him a snuggle before admonishing him, "You know that you have to be really well behaved. Don’t beg for treats too much because manipulating your grandparents is not a very nice thing to do."
The same lopsided smile told me that we were probably coming back to a seriously overweight dog.
"We’ll miss you big guy. We’ll see you soon. Love you buddy. O.k.?"
I led Finn back up from the run and passed the lead to my dad. "Congratulations again Ken," he said.
"Thanks dad," I replied, "And thanks again for taking care of Finn. I hope that he behaves himself up there."
"I’m sure he will."
Turning to my mom, I added, "Don’t forget that he eats twice a day– he will get really sulky if he misses a meal. Oh, and he loves walking after supper. Um, and if he gets too out of sorts he loves ice cream cones. I know he’s not supposed to have them, but we give him one every once in a while. Not chocolate though– we’ve heard that it can kill them. Oh, and..."
She held up her hand to stop me, "Don’t worry about him Ken. We’ve had lots of dogs. Remember? He’ll be fine. You two have a wonderful holiday. We love you both."
Blushing, I replied, "Yeah, yeah. Thanks very much and have a great trip home. I hope he doesn’t cause too much of a ruckus."
We all hugged before they led Finn to the car. He trotted along behind them, and hopped right in when they opened the back door. My parents got in and waved one last time before turning the car on.
Up until that point, Finn had been perfectly behaved– probably because nothing seemed particularly amiss. The instant that the engine started though, he figured out what was going on. Turning to look out the back window at me, his little puppy dog eyes went wide in a mixture of terror and accusation. My parents waved as the car pulled away and Finn barked and leapt up and down in the back. Wanting to stop the car and let him out, but knowing that he would adjust soon enough, I simply waved to my parents and the heartbroken little puppy.
**********
Nicole and I left for Europe the next morning. The first leg of our trip was the flight to Toronto, which went off without a hitch. This was very good news because I have a strong aversion to flying. There’s just something unnatural about being tens of thousands of feet above the ground.
The next day we caught a connecting flight from Toronto to Barcelona, where our cruise was to set off from. Again, the flight was relatively uneventful, save for an angry glare from a stewardess over a joke about the efficacy of life preservers that are stored under seats for the event of a water landing. I’m pretty sure that she decided to get back at me by putting on Titanic as the in-flight movie for our evening flight over the North Atlantic. In any case, we landed safely in Barcelona on a day that must have been 40 degrees Celsius.
We caught a taxi to our cruise ship, and our honeymoon shortly began in earnest. We enjoyed the cruise, touring: Elba, Gibraltar, Rome, Florence, and other points around the western Mediterranean. We enjoyed the culture and history of the area, and one another’s company for the first week.
The second and third week were to be spent in time shares that Nicole’s father had arranged for us– one in southern Spain and the other in southern France. We toured the areas together, visiting everything from paleolithic caves to Carcassonne. The heat, the pace, and small disagreements got to us; and by the end of the third week we were very ready to return home.
**********
As we pulled up to our house, we looked forward to seeing Shake after a long absence from him and the dog. We got inside, dropped our luggage by the door, and looked around when he did not immediately come to greet us. After several minutes, we became a little bit worried. I went to the kitchen to grab his bottle of Pounce, and walked around shaking it– an action that invariably led to him sprinting to my location and dropping whatever he was doing at the time.
As I shook the bottle, I heard a furtive "meow" coming from the attic. Rushing to the bottom of the stairs, we called up to our cat. Shake’s little head peeked over the top of the stairs hesitantly, and he meowed and hissed. "He’s gone feral," I said to Nicole, "We might have to put him down."
Rolling her eyes, but smiling none the less, Nicole took the Pounce away from me and shook it. As Nicole was Shake’s favorite person, he stalked down the stairs to see who was invading his home. We fed him a few treats, stroked his back, and soon everything was back to normal. After the cat decided that it was o.k. if we stayed in his house, we decided that it might be best if we called my parents to check on Finn.
Picking up the phone, I was lucky to get my mom on the line. "Hey mom, how’s it going?"
"Everything is good, how was your trip?"
"It was great. Hey, how’s Finn?"
My mom laughed, "He’s fine. Don’t worry, he had a good month. He stopped whining once we got to Cache Creek. We got him an ice cream at the Dairy Queen there, and after that he seemed very happy."
I paused, relieved but a little bit offended. I was happy that he was o.k., but felt a little cheap to have been sold out for the price of a Dairy Queen ice cream. It probably wasn’t even a large. None the less, I felt a load off of my mind.
She continued, "So, when will you be picking him up?"
"Well, probably in a week or so if that’s o.k.. It will give us a little time to get things in order."
"That sounds great. We really look forward to seeing you kids."
"Thanks again mom, we’ll see you all again soon."
"Love you guys."
"Love you too."
After the call, we settled in to bed. Our honeymoon had been great, but it was nice to be back home with our family– well, Shake anyhow– and to know that things were well on the home front.
**********
We set out for Prince George the next Friday. Ideally, we would have taken Nicole’s parent’s SUV, but we don’t live in an ideal world. Her parents were away, and the explorer was therefore unavailable. Her little two seat RX-7 was fine for the trip up, but we were less sure that it would be ideal for the trip back. Not wanting to wait though, we decided to brave it.
Leaving early in the morning, we arrived in Prince George at around eight o’clock in the evening. We were exhausted, but happy to have completed the journey. My mom came out to hug us in the driveway. After the obligatory hugging, she asked, "How was your trip? Europe must have been so exciting."
"It was great mom. Really, really hot, but great," I responded, "Um, so, how’s Finn?"
"Oh, he’s fine. He’s out in the garage right now. We’ll let him out once you kids have everything unpacked."
"Ah, that’s o.k., let’s let him out and he can sit outside with us for a bit."
My mom smiled and nodded. I opened the door of the garage, and were greeted by a different dog than the one that we had left behind. Finn had grown both taller and broader in our absence. Unfortunately, it seemed that while his body had matured, his brain remained the same. He bolted straight for us and bounded in circles around us. I tried every command that Finn should have known– sit, stay, down– nothing worked. For several seconds we remained under siege by the speeding dog, no one daring to move lest they be run down.
Eventually Finn calmed down enough to receive some pets. We snuggled the squirming little dog for several minutes, before putting him in the outdoor run. He was so excited to see us that he did not even whine in protest when we went inside without him.
Inside, my mom wanted to know all about our trip. She listened with rapt attention. Europe having been a place that she had never had the opportunity to visit. We told her about France, Spain, and Italy. The castles and churches, Napoleon’s Elba and the Vatican. On recounting the trip seemed even more interesting than during the visit.
When we finished, she regaled us with stories about Finn’s stay with them. He had enjoyed himself and they seemed to have enjoyed him. He had managed to talk them into daily hikes in the wilderness at the end of their rural street and along the power lines. As I heard more and more about his holiday, it sounded like he had talked the grandparents into spoiling him rotten.
Having spent most of the previous month on the road, we only spent a few days with my parents before heading back home.
The morning of our departure, the three of us crammed into the two seat RX-7. Nicole decided to drive, as one of us actually had to have Finn sit on their seat with them. My mom frowned as I got into the passenger side, and then had the seventy pound Labrador pile into my lap. You could tell by her expression that it just did not seem safe to her.

As I pulled on my seatbelt, Finn quickly settled to a position that was half lying with his head in my lap and half lying with his butt on the ground. Luckily the seats were nearly as low to the ground as the car was, so it seemed comfortable enough. Well, comfortable enough for him in any case.

With the sure knowledge that our method of puppy transportation would be considered a bad idea at the very least, we tried to be sure to obey all posted speed limits and road rules. We took frequent breaks to allow me to get blood circulating in my legs, and to allow our pup to burn off some of his excess energy. It was a beautiful day, so we hit the A&W drive thru in Hundred Mile House. We enjoyed lunch at the picnic tables and fed Finn his usual A&W restaurant fare-- an ice cream cone. After lunch, we headed out of Hundred Mile happy that we were more than half way home.

Unfortunately, sometimes two young people driving a red sports car attract attention despite their best intentions to pass unnoticed. Hundred Mile House was known for it's speed traps at the time, and we encountered a police car on the road side with flashing lights a few kilometers out of town. Looking down at the speedometer as soon as we saw the car, I registered the fact that we were travelling dead on the speed limit.

A middle aged officer wearing a pair of reflective sunglasses walked up to Nicole's side of the car. His frown did not bode well for our situation. He looked into the window with an inscrutable expression that gave me visions of being told that our puppy transportation mode was not acceptable.

He drawled, "Do you realize how fast you were going miss?"

Nicole's expression told me that she knew exactly how fast she had been going. As his question lingered in the air, I could see her going through the possible answers to the question and analyzing the consequences of each path. I hoped that she would take the diplomatic route because walking Finn was fun, but walking him two hundred kilometers probably would not be.

"No officer, I was not looking at the speedometer," she answered, "I thought that I was doing the speed limit though."

"Nope, you were actually going nearly ten kilometers over. Nearly a hundred and ten in a one hundred zone," then added while glancing at me, "Nice dog. Is he a pure breed Labrador?"

"Uh, no officer. He's half Golden Retriever."

With that, the officer took our papers, wrote us a ticket, and let us be on our way. We were both annoyed and relieved. The rest of our trip was uneventful, and we spent much of it mulling over whether we had gotten someone else's ticket. At the same time, we acknowledged that we probably had gotten lucky that the officer had not decided to make us seek an alternate way to get our dog home.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. When we got home, it felt great to be there. We slept in our own bed, which had been a relative rarity during the previous month. When I awoke in the morning, I looked forward to spending time together and getting on with our new life together as one official family.