Getting Lucy II - (Or, "Thank God I Have a Box of Old Clothes in the Trunk!")

Chapter 2

So off we went to get Lucy, the newly-named dog. We drove to the sound of my Beatles anothology blasting. I sang along (i.e., yelled at the top of my lungs), Andrew occasionally grumbled.

We met Lucy's old owner in a parking lot of Wal*Mart (she was a classy woman). She said Lucy came with a doggy bed and toys, but apparently she ate too much and got sick on all her stuff (the dog, that is) so the woman threw it all out. That was fine, I just bought another bed and some toys at Wal*Mart.

The first picture of Lucy I ever took.

And so began the drive for hell. What should have been a one and a half hour drive became three hours. At first it was great; she happily sat on my lap, as cute as can be.

But after 15 minutes, she started drooling a lot, then gagging. Eyes wide, I screamed "SHE'S GONNA HUUUUUUURL!" as I frantically grabbed a plastic shopping bag and held it in front of her face. She then vomited in the bag.

Hardly detered, I turned to Andrew and said "I caught it! I actually caught it! We are so going to rock at this!". He gagged in response, although I didn't need to put a bag in front of his face. We stopped somewhere and threw out the bag.

Twenty minutes later, it happened again. This time, I had no bag. I ended up with a very disgusting pair of pants. Luckily, I had a box full of old clothes in the trunk of my car, so I hid beside my car and changed pants on the side of the road. I may have accidentally mooned a few people.

After that, we moved her to the backseat on her brand new bed. Another fifteen minutes later, her bed and the floor of my car needed cleaning. Lucy looked both confused and proud of her ability to produce magical food. We, on the other hand, were not impressed.

We hadn't even completed half of the trip.  

At this point, Andrew was on the verge of crying. (Ok, not so much crying as completely disgusted and regretting getting the dog.) In an attempt to encourage bonding between the two, I made them take a picture together. It was then that I realized that I had lost the hubcap off my passenger side wheel. With a nauseous dog and a quasi-hysterical boyfriend, I was not going to form a search and rescue party for it. I decided to cut my losses and keep going.

Love blossoming, or foreshadowing of disaster?

By the end of the trip, she had managed to vomit five times inside the car, and three times outside. It was not pretty. And yet, I was so excited about finally having my own dog that I wasn't even fazed. I was in love. Andrew said he would return her if it didn't mean having to drive another 3 hours with a puking dog.

And so began our first day living in our first house (that technically wasn't ours yet.) But the days of trouble were far from over....

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