He came to the window but unfortunately the wolf had vanished. After calming down I looked it up in our animal book and know that it was a coyote not a wolf. We knew there were lots around as we hear them howling at night, but to actually see one during the day was really amazing.

On the subject of dogs, this week we heard from the family who took our puppy from us. They say she is doing great and has grown lots. They sent us some photos, which was really nice. We are really happy to know that she is living a good life and obviously enjoying it.

She is getting big now!

According to the weather we are in for a huge storm tonight and 20cm of snow, so we have battened down the hatches and tested the generator and are prepared. It is ironic that before we had the generator, through the summer and autumn months we had half a dozen power outages. Since we had the generator installed, we haven’t had one! Not that I am complaining, I prefer not to have outages, but can you believe it?

Oh, I nearly forgot. We have been watching one of our squirrels frantically collect nuts and bury them all over the garden. But the other day we were watching him and he kept disappearing under our upper deck. We went downstairs to look out the window, which is under the deck and saw what he was up to.

There is an old discarded bird next under the beams and he has literally filled it with peanuts until it is overflowing. It was very funny watching him. See pic below for the result.

They simply adored her, which is very understandable as she is lovely and cute. Widget also seemed to like them and lapped up all the attention she was getting.

After spending about an hour with us going through everything we had done with her so far regarding vets, training, feeding etc they left with her.

We were very sad to see her go, however we are extremely confident that she has gone to a loving home and that she will continue to thrive there. They have promised to keep in touch and send the odd photo over as she grows. We are glad we turned the other people down, even though they were actually prepared to pay more for her.

Our house was very quiet once she had gone and it will take us a while to get used to her not being around anymore. We had got used to one or other of us being followed around the house by our little red shadow.

Anyway, the basement is progressing. Most of the structure for the walls is now in place, as is one set of French doors. Hubby spent most of yesterday working away and is doing an excellent job.

He is however; constantly bemused by the standard of electrical work he comes across. In a past life he was a qualified electrician, so knows his way around the subject, but stares in utter amazement at some of the ways the work is carried out in Canada. It has not been done wrong by Canadian standards, but apparently some of the techniques used were phased out in the UK fifteen years ago!

Today he aims to do some more to the basement, whilst I will do some baking, which I haven’t really done since being here. I also have to force myself to do some ironing – boring!

Firstly, Widget the puppy is going. We started to advertise her for sale late last week and immediately had a lady very interested. However, after talking to her it became apparent that she was a senior person, as they put it here and we were concerned that she would not be able to give her the exercise she would need in the years to come. The lady agreed that she did not want to be taking a dog for a walk for a couple of hours a day etc. In the end we made the decision that she should not have her, for the sake of the dog.

Then we had another couple wanting her, but were concerned that they worked long hours, however they seemed really nice so we were contemplating allowing them to buy her. However, just as we came to this decision we had another family contact us.

This family consists of a teenage daughter, mother and grandparents. The daughter is the one the dog is for, but her mother works from home so could be with the dog all day and the grandparents also live with them, so she would always have company. This made our decision very simple – they could have her.

I know some of you reading will think that we are mad turning down offers, but we want the right home for her as she is so affectionate and loves human company so much we could not bare the thought of sending her somewhere she would not get the attention she deserves.

The family are coming tonight to collect her. This is a very sad time for us as we have grown to love her so much. She is a delightful puppy and will be a fantastic pet for the family. But this is best for us to protect hubby’s health and for her to make a new start as early in her life as possible.

On to a more light-hearted subject, hubby is in the process of building some walls in the basement to divide the rooms. We are also installing some French doors to allow the light to get to as much of the basement as possible. We are also contemplating the idea of using one room as a hot tub room. We both like the idea of a hot tub, especially as we now don’t have a pool. So, once all the room dividing etc is done we will make the decision about the hot tub.

It is pouring of rain this morning and we had a thunderstorm early today, apparently the rain will be around for the rest of the week – great! Widget hates the rain; she is definitely a fair-weather dog. She takes one looks outside when we go to take her out and if it is raining tries to pull us back in, looking at us as if to say “no, it’s ok, I’ll cross my legs till it stops.” We will miss her.

As I mentioned before my husband has had an allergic reaction to her for some reason and it is really affecting his health. He cannot be expected to take medication for the next 10-15 years to counteract this, so Widget must go.

Fortunately she is extremely affectionate and playful, so hopefully will adjust well to a new home, just like she has done with us. We are gutted that she has to go, but our health has to come first.

Isn’t she just adorable

We will be selling her at a huge loss, money wise, but that will be a small price to pay for getting our health back and also finding her a good future home.

We will have to stick with the animals we have in the garden, chipmunks, rabbits, raccoons and squirrels etc.

She is incredibly affectionate and seems to be getting the hang of toilet training. She will now sit on command too, which I was quite impressed about after only a few lessons.

She has settled in really well and seems to love both of us. The problem is hubby has developed an allergy to her, which has meant that he has been quite unwell these last few days.

We now have to make a decision as to whether we keep her or not. If we do hubby will probably have to take tablets etc for as long as we have her. Obviously this is not a good thing to have to do, but likewise we really don’t want to loose her.

However, his health is more important, as at the end of the day, I have no doubt that she will find another excellent home quickly.

I will update with our decision.

We had the idea of driving down to Nashville with a stop or two on the way, having a couple of days in Nashville then driving to Memphis and having a couple of days there and then make our way back home.

However, just when we decided we would take the trip, we found a puppy! Well not literally found, but we have been considering buying a puppy since we got here and we had a couple of breeds in mind including Vizsla’s and goldendoodles.

I had become a little disgruntled with the doodles as the prices seemed to vary so much and most people wanted in the region of $1,500 – $2,00 for what is essentially a mongrel. Now I have no problem with cross-breeds, we have owned others in the past and they have been excellent pets, but this doodle thing seems to be getting out of control. So we decided that we would like a Vizsla, however they are quite hard to come by, so when we found one on Friday we were rather pleased.

We collected her on Saturday and have called her Widget and she is nine weeks old. She was born exactly 10 days after we landed!

She made the journey home from Toronto without incident (from either end) and has seemed to settle in really well. We have had a couple of “accidents” but she is already learning to go outside if she needs the toilet. She loves to have a toy thrown for her to retrieve, so that is one skill we can build on.

She seems to love us and loves to be with us. She also seems to have a foot fetish and doesn’t want to leave them alone.

We are really pleased with her, but now our trip is off. In fact a lot of things in our lives will change now as, certainly for the first few weeks we cannot leave her too long on her own. It will all be worth it in the end though. We both think she is very intelligent and will be an excellent pet.