A letter recieved from Shado

Hooray, another great letter from my pal Shado in Arizona!  I will answer it to his Mom's blog at
http://arizonabren.blogspot.com/ so about TUESDAY you canfind my answer there!

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Shado



Dear Stella,

Wow, I think it has been a long time since we wrote each other. I have a lot to tell you!

We got new neighbors. Two labs, one black and one chocolate. They seem like really neat neighbors. We don't bark much at each other, but we know when each of us is across the block wall. A tiny bit of whining expresses a "hello", "hey there", or just "you there?" They moved here from Wyoming and I think our summer heat has hit the whole family pretty hard. BUT GET THIS - they also have a cat! A CAT!!! We don't know the cat's name, but we see it a lot. It uses their doggy door to go outside. And when it is outside, it walks the walls around our house, it walks on our roof, and it sits at our front door. Since none of us (me, Toby, Sophie, Gus) know much about cats, we usually bark at it. And you know what IT DOES? It sits on the wall AND stares at us!!! Can you believe that? It doesn't flinch, it doesn't run away. It just sits and stares. Once in jumped into one of their trees that has branches that hang over into our yard. I thought, "it's not going to last long in that tree." But it sat there and stared at me for at least 15 minutes. WHAT IS IT WITH CATS???? You have one for a pet, right, Stella?? Enlighten me! And why don't the two labs chase it? I can't wait until you explain CATS to me!

I'm sorry you have such horrible thunderstorms. Does your thundershirt help? We will be getting lots of thunderstorms in the next few weeks, when Monsoon season starts here. We usually get BIG dust storms (they call 'em habubs), and then gully washing rain and LOTS of thunder and lightning. And then the power goes out. Once the power went out for a long time. You know, even with the rain, it doesn't cool off and so we sat in misery with temps about 105 degrees.

Anyway, B. reads to us when the thunder starts. I think she hopes that her voice and storytelling will make us forget about the thunder. It doesn't always help. But we sit in the closet with her, and she reads. My favorite book for her to read is "Walter the Farting Dog". Do you have that book? It is great. It was B's dad book, and B inherited it. We should send it to you. You know, Toby's name should be Walter. We can send you Toby, too, okay?

Well that is it for now. We had our cousins Ondine and Holly Ann visit from Prescott. Ondine is a black lab, Holly Ann is a goldie. They stayed with us for a few days. I'll write about THAT event in my next letter.

I think of you often, Stella!
love with kisses of treats,

Shado

The rest of Shado's family, front row Toby, Sophie, Shado, Gus
and Cousin Vinny in the back