Follow up

The corned beef was great. I bought two, while Kroger had them on sale, and I baked the smaller (2 lbs pre-cooked) one for St. Paddy's Day. It was delicious, fall-apart tender, with intense, rich corned beef flavor. The mashed potatoes were these, from Cook's Illustrated Best Recipes and, really, there's no way they're not going to be good. I cooked the cabbage using the basic, pretty much foolproof technique from my big dependable vegetable cookbook. Dessert was…no, no dessert. (Are you kidding? We were stuffed.) Delicious, all of it, if I do say so myself.

As for the dog, JR, I took him this morning to the vet that the Shih Tzu rescue group uses. Okay, I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but I'm not positive which rescue group it is. I'm fairly sure it's DFW Tzus & More. I talked, emailed and texted the woman in charge, and—way more important—got a sterling recommendation of her from Lisa Collins, the women who fostered one of our dogs, who has a ton of experience, and who knows everyone in the rescue community. Lisa assured me that Cheryl (my Shih Tzu contact) is great, and that the group is very particular about placing dogs. Anyway, I took JR to the vet this morning. They'll check him out, neuter him, and give him the green light to go to one of the rescue group's fosters.

I felt more than a few pangs, just because he was so upset at my leaving. Poor thing! He was finally starting to relax and act like a regular dog, and this is going to be quite a setback. But in the end, or at least a week or ten days from now, he'll be much happier. Happier than he would have here, I think, since he'll have other little dogs to play with. I had no doubts about it being the best thing for him, but…well, that's the trouble with loving animals and being empathetic towards them. [sniff]

But still, I'm going to count that as two happy outcomes! And the Stars won last night!