Goodbye Cousin Vito

Remember my cousin Vito? My mom's cousin and his wife found him as a stray puppy in Armenia where they were stationed for 3 years with the American Foriegn Service. Here is Vito's Dogster page.

Well, Vito and his family (which now includes 2 month old baby Leo) left on Thursday for Bosnia, they will be stationed there for four years. After two years they will get six weeks of home leave, but Vito won't come with them then. They said for six weeks it's not worth putting him through all of the traveling.

Vito and his family have been staying at my Grandma's house this week before they left. So on Wednesday, my mom and I spend all day at Grandma's house. I got to see baby Leo again. My mom got a really good picture of him too. Isn't he cute? He liked me, he kept following me with his eyes. I gave him kisses and licked his bib, there was yummy stuff on it. He put his hand in my mouth and everyone was impressed at how gentle I was with him.


Vito, Amber and I all got to spend some quality time together, which was nice. We ran around outside in the yard a lot, and then we would all go inside too cool off in the air conditioning. Here we all are on the deck.

You can see Vito's mom, Kristine, putting his airline crate together in the background. I think Vito was very happy at my Grandma's house. He stayed there while his people went to visit Kristine's relatives in Pennsylvania, and he was really happy, he never acted sad. He got along perfectly with me and Amber.

When it was time to go, we were standing face to face, and my mom said "Say goodbye guys." and Vito gave me a kiss. When mom and I started to walk down the stairs to the door, Vito grabbed my leash in his mouth. My mom told him that we had to go, and then we tried to leave again, but this time Vito was standing on my leash! I don't think he wanted me to go. Later my grandma said that after mom and I left, Vito stood at the top of the stairs, staring at the door for a while.

We got emails from Vito's people from Vienna after the really long part of their trip was over. From there it is only an hour and a half to Sarajevo. They said that they were able to take Vito out of his crate and take him for a walk in Vienna, and that he was doing fine. I'm glad to hear it.

I will miss them all. It's too bad I won't get to see Vito again for four years. Take care little buddy! Don't forget me!