Hold My American Beer And Watch This

I had planned the tour to the USA to start Monday after the Canadian Border Collie Association and Western Canadian Championships. After I had dropped off the blood samples at a Cranbrook veterinary clinic, I made my way down to the states....I was going to meander through a part of the states I had yet to explore. I crossed at a station where I was the lucky one to get stopped. I waited inside hoping they wouldn't find the vaccine that I had left over, or the needles. They waved me though, and I thought they probably looked at the state of Dora and thought they didn't have enough time to spare to rummage through it. I stopped at Eureka for a fill up, and then got a call from the vet clinic. "You need a Customs number to ship the blood over." Well, I knew I had done it before without any such number, and asked if they had ever sent blood to the States before. The answer was no, and a bunch of apologies and I got the feeling I wasn't going to get any help whatsoever. "I'll come back for the blood", was my response. So, 10 minutes after crossing the border, I was crossing the border again. "How long were you in the States?" "Ten minutes, I forgot something in Cranbrook." I don't think he heard me, since he asked if I had any major vehicle repair while I was in the States. I wanted to say "No, you idiot." but I thought better of it. In any case, I got back into Canada and back to Cranbrook to get the blood back, and then phoned the clinic in Wetaskawin and found the proper courier to use. I phoned them (FedEx), to find a drop off point, and answered the invisible lady on the other end of the phone. "Would you like to find a location close to where you are calling from?" Since it is a Calgary based phone, I was expecting the answer from Eunice(which I call all pretend prompt people on the end of business phones) to be somewhere in Calgary. "Cranbrook, British Columbia." was her answer. As I screamed into the phone since I was by that time 3 hours from Cranbrook, Eunice prompted, "That is not the correct answer, please try again." Oh, I tried again. "AAARRRRGGGGHHHHHH!!" Funny, I had the same response from Eunice again.

In the end, I found a drop off place in Calgary, and after the morning of cleaning out my Dora so the border patrol wouldn't have a second chance of finding contraband articles, I set out for the Soldier Hollow trip. I stopped at Naomi and Bill Shields to work the dogs after I had dropped off the blood in Calgary....during rush hour. What a misnomer. By the time I had worked on the quirks in the dogs, it was 8:30, and I set out for the south. I drove until I ran out of gas (me, not Dora). After a few hours of sleep, I started out again. Hopefully we will find another library that will have a computer, and the ongoing beer saga will continue.