Jay Richards

Twenty years ago I would not thought of having four boys and five pets with a most awesome wife. The four boys are incredible and I knew Jonell was my soul mate for life the moment I met her. Still making adjustment on five pets. In reality we could only have one dog at this point. Lucky, of course, was a stray we adopted. Few years ago we thought his days were numbered so we decided to get a border collie so Lucky could "train" him in on how to act at Maplelag. When we purchased Fly the border collie, Jib (the runt of the litter), looked heart broken to be removed from his brother. We decided to take home Jib as well. This past Fall you might have seen a post about Boots, the cat, that wandered in during pictures during a outside wedding ceremony and mother of the bride asked cat to be removed. Cat came inside, made some calls after the weekend to locate owner but not luck and Boots is still with us. Few weeks ago we adopted a Yoda dog named Lily. Everyone seems to be getting along pretty good as long as everyone respects the elder dog who has pretty good patience.




The other day Lilly and Boots squared up during some shiny hockey action. I had Boots prepared with body weight since had her on a high protein diet.


Probably the most dramatic pet experience was last week a group of skiers were skiing on the lake and one of them came running into the lodge yelling "Jim fell through the ice" There was a guest named Jim that had asked about skiing on the lake at lunch so we knew exactly who it was. TJ and I were right there so we blasted on to the lake with the snowmobiles and ropes with stomachs empty feeling. As we made it near the north end, we ran in to two of the skiers and they said everything was okay. Jib the dog, had fallen through near the beaver house and feed pile and day skier Dan pulled Jib out. We were all relieved it wasn't Jim. The message of Jib came through as Jim.



Jonell didn't like this photo.....Jib pulled out a frozen raccoon head the other day and was chewing on it....Jack said "pretty much sucked the smarts out of that coon" Not a pretty sight but not everything in life is pretty.