This afternoon, our rabbit, Oscar, passed away. He's been with us since 1999, a couple months after Marci and I moved into our first apartment in Halifax. Oscar was funny, gentle, smart, and full of personality... we miss him terribly. :(

Marci and I spent some time tonight looking through old photos and reflecting on some of the memories we have of him.

• His "happy dance" where he would run around, flip himself up, and twist around in the air, landing in the opposite direction from which he started.
• When he first met Pickle, who was just a kitten at the time, and made a record 9-foot leap from one end of the hall to the bathroom. Pickle simply meandered off in the other direction nonchalantly, of course.
• When he chewed through the hose connecting the toilet bowl to the plumbing and proceeded to flood the entire bathroom.
• When my brother Keith was holding him, remarking about how cute he was, and Oscar peed in his lap. ;)
• When Bebop was just a kitten, she crawled into his kennel with him and we caught them laying next to each other spooning.
• The way he would "peek" his head up over things to see what was going on on the other side.
• When he wanted attention, he would pick his food dish up in his mouth and fling it around wildly.
• He was once a TV celebrity in Bedford, Nova Scotia.

So this is about two months overdue, but...

Say hello to the newest member of our family. :)

So far the reactions from the other kids are:

Pickle: "Whatever. When are you going to feed me?"
Bebop: "You leave me alone, I'll leave you alone."
Oscar: "What are YOU looking at?"
Cooper: "DIE!!!!!!!!!!!"

Her hobbies include rolling around in the grass, swinging her tug-of-war toy wildly (which we've since dubbed her 'dog-chuk'), racing around excitedly in the park after she successfully does her business, and carrying rawhide bones around in her mouth gingerly, as though they were prized treasures.

We're not exactly sure what type of dog she is, since she was abandoned at the vet clinic Marci works at, but a flat-coated retriever looks pretty darn close.

She just got back from having a triple pelvic osteotomy (try saying that three times fast) to treat hip dysplasia. She has to take it easy for 8 weeks and then we'll go racing around the park again. :) (Yes, that's right. Webchick goes outside every now and again these days. ;))