2,728 Miles!

The day after Christmas, we loaded Ziva and the boys into the van and headed for Arizona for sunshine and snow. Ziva slept away the drive ( I wish I could have).
Ziva enjoyed long naps in the sun. We visited the Tucson zoo where she was clearly the most interesting thing (live prey!) the Bengal tiger had seen in a very long time! Ziva was too busy enjoying all the exotic zoo scents to notice the tiger, but we quickly moved away, just to be safe.
She found the cool air and snow extremely energizing! We found a few spots where we could let her safely off leash, and she bounded happily through the deep snow, occasionally stopping to gobble a mouthful of powdery snow.

After a day in the snow, we returned to the hotel for a splash in the pool and soak in the hot tub. Ziva found the water most interesting but demonstrated admirable restraint.

Speaking of restraint, we recently attended the Seton Hospital Mock Surgery, an open house and tour of surgical suites, complete with simulated surgeries. The halls were teeming with dog-loving children and crowded with displays of polycystic kidneys and severed toes.......and a real, live therapy cat. My son Evan gravitated to the cat and started chatting with her handler. He mentioned that a dog (Ziva) was soon to come around the corner. Rather than being on alert for any unusual reaction from the cat, the handler scooped her up. As Ziva and I rounded the corner, he thrust the cat mere centimeters from Ziva's shiny black nose and said, "Does she like cats?" Well, Ziva is good but I wouldn't have bet money on her being THAT good. Her nose twitched like crazy and her tail flapped, but she sat and behaved with the utmost professionalism. Whew!