Thanksgiving at the Damn Dog house

The day started earlier than I wanted it to but I did not do one thing to prepare for a house full people,
 I thought I would get the pies done and out of the way, when one of the girls gets up and want to help. Got to love the help,so I became teacher, tutor and chef: It was not a bad job it did not require much energy, the one thing I was lacking. Then one by one the kids came down and before I knew it we were all in kitchen and everyone was trying to out do the others with what ever they were working on. Now Cuteness has become very important, so low energy has become high stress.

As dinner was cooking and pies cooling on the porch,  we went out to get a fun picture of all of us with my new fun shirt that says "Supreme ruler of the Damn Dog house"my friend Kathy sent it to me.

 We played awhile and my family arrived, Thanksgiving was off to a good start, then the scream came "Ma they're  getting the pies". I see one girl run into the house and 4 dogs came flying out the dog door to the porch.  I ran to the porch and found one of the pies on the floor. I really thought they were safe because all the doors to the porch were shut and locked I even put them on the grill out of reach. The only door I forgot was the dog door. What the hell was I thinking, silly me.

 

 I grab the camera and got one pic then they came in for the final kill.

 

Now we have more pie so this is not a disaster so I let the damn dogs have there Thanksgiving pie. 

Dinner has been consumed and we all settle in for the after turkey dinner snooze, Chiquita jumps on my lap and wants attention, as I ran my hand down her head I find the remnants of the pie all over her. I then check the other dogs and they too have pumpkin pie stuck in their crest, and tails. Okay 10 dog baths is a disaster as I am pooped.

 Two of the girls leave to get a jump on the Black Friday shopping and my family leave and now it is over. Then comes the second scream, " Ma this is why I don't want the dogs to sleep in my room".

Well their is your first problem they aren't sleeping you are!

   

Another Damn Dog

Recently I took in  new foster dogs.  She is about 4 or 5 months old and did not act much like a puppy but new she need to be socialized. I came home a couple weeks ago and found one of the dogs out of his cage and he tried to get out of the study room and tore a hunk of carpet up from under the door in the process.  With my out side voice I said "who left the dog out?" The girls all swore that they all put the dogs in their cages before they left. A few days later I find another dog loose and again yanked a small hunk of carpet up.  I am now hot and I upped  the volume of my out side voice and we had a meeting of, this better not happen again.  Then a day later I come home and the puppy is out along with another dog. The girls are all in an up roar as I am hammering them about not putting the dog up.  Then in there defence we check kennel doors and found that one of them if not hooked right would pop open and the dog gets out.  So to not have this happen again I yanked the door off so no one would use it.  So I come home last night and we are getting ready to feed the dogs. I grabbed the puppy and put her in a kennel, turned around to grab another dog and there she was again. What the hell, how did you get out. I looked back and the door was still shut. Well with this being dinner time the chaos is getting out of control so I don't have time to figure out how she got out so I opened the door and put her back in before I could close the door she shoved her head up through a crack in the top of the kennel and hauled butt to the kitchen. after I stopped laughing I grabbed the puppy again along with the camera and put her back in the kennel.  Needless to say she has become a Damn dog too.

 

Christmas comes early to the Damn Dog house

Some Friends have started a secret Santa for the foster dogs in rescue.  As I have many I know that there are Christmas packages coming for the dogs.  The girls can not stand to see a box come to the house it will drive them insane:as it is all about opening it, does not matter whats in side. Now I had a lot of errands to run after work so the girls started calling looking for me. I blew them off and finish my task at hand.  When I got home they did care where I had been they just wanted to open the box. Now I don't care about the box because I will need to take pictures and make sure I thank all the senders and I don't really have time at the moment to play with the box. The girls cannot let it go and the badgering starts"can we open the box?" NO stop bothering me about the box and put things away.  One by one they stop pick the box up roll it around in the hands and give it a shake. I yelled" it's dog bones leave the damn thing alone and help me". The box was picked many more times that night before I got a chance to check it out.  I did not recognize the senders name at first but did not think much about it till I opened it a found it was presents from my friend Kathy for me and kids.  I am not one to wait for Christmas to open things my thoughts is if I wait too long damn dogs will get it. As I opened the package with my name I found a T-shirt with the Supreme ruler of the Damn Dog house on it with the picture of my naked dogs and the butt name tags.  The girls heard me laugh and came to see what was up.  There were many more gifts in the box that was for the girls no names so it became a grab fest. One by one the tore into the packages and kept pulling out under pants. I am hysterical because I get it and the girls are clueless, finally the youngest said" Ma why do your friends send us underwear all the time.  I could not stop laughing long enough to tell her it's because I blog how the dogs eat your up.  "OHHHHHH I get it"  she says then start sifting through all the underpants looking for some that fit her.  There where various sizes, styles and color. Now survival of the fastest is the motto at our house those who wait loose. So now that the packages are all open then the arguments start.  Hey she has 4 pair.Ya look faster. Then one of them says Ma don't they know that Asians have little butts. That one sent me right to the bathroom.  I get back and they have all dropped their jeans and are trying on underpants. I look at one of them and she has 5 pair on at the same time and says" look Ma they all fit". What the hell you can only wear one at a time and after you take the 4 underneath off I am sure that pair will not fit anymore. Then one has a pair of thong undies on, that is clearly way bigger than two of the girls could wear at one time, and they are up around her neck. Now the sight of the the undies on back wards with the thong strap running up her belly and pulled over the boobs sent me into choking laughter that I thought I was going to need oxygen for because I could not breath, I was quit sure I was not going to recover from. Now I so wanted to take pictures of these kids with the underpants but knew that I would never be able to explain those pictures to the police. Thanks Kathy who knew a box of assorted underpants was almost the death of me.

The night before

I can’t say the last couple weeks have been good by no means.  Head aces, restless nights, moving a lot of dogs and stress at work, until last night when the drain just got to me. I had to run errands after work and with the time change it felt like it was 10 PM when I got home last night when in fact it was around 7PM. I stopped and picked up some fast food spaghetti and went home.  By the time we had groceries put away and sat down to eat I was just not up to it so I put my food in the micro wave to be eaten later and went down stairs put some laundry in and sat down to the computer.  I drank my coffee and went through my e-mails not really into it at all and feeling just plain bad. I put the dogs out put my jammies on and took a pill and crawled into bed and was tucked in along with the dogs before 8:30 PM. Now that is about the last of my memory. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to a beeping sound but rolled over and went back to sleep. Again I woke sometime later to the same sound. I through the blankets back and sat up to check it out and it stopped, I pulled the blankets back and went back to sleep. I got up in the morning again I hear the beeping sound but now it sound strange. As I am trying to get out of bed to see what it is I put my hand on the phone that is under me. I grab it and found it was on and beeping was letting me know if off the hook.  Well at that point it’s not only  off hook it is almost dead. I could not figure out why the dogs had dragged the thing into the bed but was glad they did not chew it.  The news has my total attention along with my coffee when my daughter asks me if this food is OK, “what food are you talking about?” I ask her. She pulled my dinner out of the microwave and I was mad at myself for going to bed and leaving it out. I forgot it when I went to bed so early I can’t believe I did that.” I wanted to eat it at lunch today,” I said, as she dumped into the trash.  I get to work and I get a phone call from my friend Donna. She asks me in a strange voice “do you remember our phone call last night?”  I said “ahhh  no, can you remind me what we talked about?” I have no idea what she is talking about and think she is pulling my leg. Now the laughter was loud as she explained to me the events of the night before.  She told me that one of the girls answered the phone and she heard her ask if I was sleeping and I told her no, and she gave me the phone.  I proceeded to tell her she caught me just in time as my pill was kicking in, big belly laugh came through the phone, and she said I fell asleep talking to her.  No way! I don’t have the slightest memory of her calling let alone falling to sleep during our conversation.  As we are both busting a gut laughing she said I mumbled something about sending some e-mail and then my mumbling fade off with mostly none sense and ended with a F you C K them at the end, leaving Donna to call out to me a few times with no answer so she told me good night and hung up.  Ok so my visuals have kicked in and now I understand why the phone was in bed with me and here I blamed it on the dogs. As I laughed I said so is this the first time someone fell asleep while you were talking to them?  Then the jokes started to fly between us and I had tears streaming down my face. My co-worker could not wait till I hung up to find out what the hell was going on.  I have chuckled over this most all day as I recall the last phone call because I have no memory of the first. 

The boys are gone...

In the past few weeks we have had 10 dogs enter the rescue.  It has been so hectic that blogging definitely got kicked to the curb as the needs of dogs and kids grew.  I can’t say I would ever recommend 14 dogs at one time.  At one point I had 17 in the van as I moved dogs from South to North. We have brought in many new reps and working on getting a few more.  This has become a huge hunk of my life to say the least.  I knew I had met the two ends of my rope as it was tightening around my neck, I have to move dogs.  I have never been one to take on a responsibility and then pass it on to someone else but this is just what I have had to do.  I feel guilty, overwhelmed and completely  incompetent.   I had to come to that moment when I had to say I can’t do this anymore and I did not like it at all. So now I have to search myself  to find out what could I have been thinking.  Reality sucks some times and this is one of them. I had to force myself to do what I thought I never would. Now the folks that are taking on the fostering of my dogs are great and very capable so that is not my problem. It is to start something I can’t finish. I feel like I gave up or something. My friends have been there to reassure me and comfort me through this time and never told me to suck it up and get over it. That’s what I call a friend.

I never knew the hooligans played such a huge part in my life  until they were gone. I find myself waiting for them to come racing down the stairs or wrestling on the bed as it move across the floor from their hardy play. I had to watch them like you would two three year old children.  They filled every crevice of my life and now I feel like part of myself is gone.  Letting them go to a new foster home was like letting 10 dogs go at one time. I never knew what an impact it was having on me till it was gone. They have left a huge whole here, although I do now have time to do some things that I could not do while they were here, it’s not the same. It has been such a trip having them here I am not sure I will have anything to blog about. Life sure is quite now.  But it only takes one e-mail or one phone call to fill it right back so for now I will enjoy a break from Chaos.