Blessed Puppy

Every one of our dogs has been to St. Jude's Church in Pharr, TX to get sprinkled with holy water. There is a lovely outdoor walking area and places to pray. We usually go to the store, buy four candles (one for each member of our family), light them and place them in one of the prayer areas and blessing the dogs with holy water.

Mackenzie went when she was a baby, Spencer when he was a young puppy, even April shortly after we adopted her. Since the last time we had been there they had posted a sign that dogs weren't allowed.

We arrived and parked and I had noticed a little dog running around the baseball field across the street while we were driving in. That same dog ran across the street straight toward us when he saw Audrey jump out of the car. So I yelled at him and scooped up Audrey in my arms while kicking and screaming at him. This dog would NOT leave us alone. So I was yelling at the dog and we were all trying to scare it away (it seemed to be a nice friendly dog, but being a stray, we didn't know if it had any communicable diseases) when finally Mom opened the car and I was able to get her umbrella to keep him away.

Once we had scared the stray dog away we walked through the gates and over to the holy water and blessed Audrey (she was of course scared of what we were doing - sprinkling water over her head- and wanted to drink the holy water instead). We stayed for a while and she sat nice and quiet while people were praying. It is quite a far drive to St. Jude's plus we ran a couple other errands while we were out so overall she was out with us driving around, and running errands for probably 3 hours. I don't know whether it was the holy water or not, but she behaved beautifully all the way home.

Oh and tomrrow I am going kayaking with Mackenzie and some other friends and their dogs. It should be a fabulous day. :)