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.

Pets of Hurricane Sandy

The feeling of helplessness is one of the hardest things for me to deal with.  I remember back to Hurricane Katrina and all the people and animals left behind in its wake.  To see the days and weeks pass with the images of death and destruction coming at me from every form of media, was much more than I could deal with.  To see the animal tossed to the curb so folks could get on a bus and get to safety was unbelievable. I can remember a friend of mine who lived in Mobile at the time was rescuing dogs and putting out of town rescue folks up in her house, doing everything she could with in the confines of no power and no water.  Then came the tsunami in Japan that displaced half the country. A group of dedicated vets and vet techs started to help the pets of disaster. We now have the technology to spread and share information and to help, I am proud to be a member of the Blogger Disaster Response network.  I have added the links for the immediate needs of the disaster stricken coast.  Please share and spread the word to help get the animals of disaster help.


 Blogger Disaster Response network members will be the first to know about World Vets initiatives. For more, please visit worldvets.org or facebook.com/worldvets.

With Hurricane Sandy and the pets who need help being such an immediate need we wanted to share a few articles and resources we gathered. Many of these links are updating as information changes so be sure to check back frequently:

Hurricane Sandy Lost and Found Pets https://www.facebook.com/SandysPets

Shelters accommodating pets: http://www.examiner.com/article/monday-evening-update-pet-friendly-evacuation-shelters-for-hurricane-sandy

PetFinder shelters/rescues in need: http://www.petfinder.com/blog/2012/10/30/help-is-needed-after-hurricane-sandy/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=social+media

Red Paw Emergency Relief Team is on the scene in PA: http://www.redpawemergencyreliefteam.org/

Baltimore shelters preparing for cleanup: http://www.examiner.com/article/some-baltimore-animal-shelters-without-power-preparing-for-cleanup

Road trip from Hell

There is a lot to say about a long road trip, trapped in a van with 4 teenage girls and 17 dogs; now one might be in shock as they read 17 dogs. But they're small so if I do the math and take the average dogs size is about 40 lbs. and the average size of my dogs is 10 lbs, times 17 is 170 lbs divided by 40; I only had 4.25 dogs with me. Then add some rain, pop up camper, mix well and be parked on a bridge when the highway gets shut down due to a traffic accident 20 cars ahead of you. Then the wonderful world of peanut size bladders click in, The girls already having a predisposition for the dramatics, have gone into their Oscar rolls for the evening and the damn dogs are up for nominations in there leading rolls pee pee dances in the van.

I have no interest in the drama going on in the van just in the length of time we will be on the highway. I can see the emergency crews working on getting the truck and its camper along with the 5th wheel and the truck it's with strewn across the highway and the cab of one of the semi's that is facing the wrong direction with its trailer across the highway looking like a huge capital L, and the other semi that now looks like a ball of cooking foil tossed out, cleared away. My shoulders are now touching my ears and I have a head ace and neck ace from hell. I hear one of the kid’s say they want to get out and pee. I said "which side of this bridge looks good to jump from or do you just want your stuff hanging out for all to see"? I then get the pleading and threats of peeing in the seat if they are not allowed to pee.  Okay I will just rub your nose in it, so help yourself. Wow that set off a wild fire of verbal complaining. Then they start thinking out of the box and ask if they could just pee on the pee pad we had for the dogs. Are you nuts back there just slap pee bands on the dogs and take your mind off it. The rain just kept coming and the windows fogged up so I turned the car on every now and then to clear window during a window clearing I found the car in front of us had some engine problems so a few folks are out and about trying to help get the car started again. Thank GAWD for cute guys; it sure did take their minds off the pressing urgency of their bladders. I ask one of the girls to put her arms around the head rest of my seat and rub my neck. Now this is something they have done for me before as the long drives we do, can give me a big pain in my neck. They again start thinking outside of the box and the girls tell me to pull my shirt up and they will rub my neck oil on it and really make it feel better. Don't worry Ma no one can see in here. Okay what the hell I can use a back rub and can't pee so might as well get a back rub. Now the shirt is over my head and one of the kids is rubbing the right shoulder/back and another kid is rubbing the left shoulder/back and dogs are hopping all over the place. I look up to see if the cleanup has progressed any further, when I decide to turn the wipers on to see better and hit the light switch instead. I thought I would break my neck trying to get my shirt down and the girls are laughing at me for showing my stuff to the cute guys. All I could do is laugh at what the other cars must have thought when the lights came on for the strange show going on in the van next to them.

I had to drive long into the night to try and make up some the lost time. But with two more traffic jams due to accidents on the highway I knew I would never be able to meet up with my contact the next day. Now it is hard for me to believe the excitement that went on in the van when we saw a KOA but I was even happier then I had been all day. It took me a while to figure out how to register us at one in the morning without waking the whole camp grounds. Keeping the all the dog quite, putting up the pop up and walking the dogs in the rain did present a whole host of problems I was not prepared for. The little bastards did not want to pee in the rain and I am soaked to the bone and tired and sleepy. So I put them in the pop up spread pee pad on the floor and went to sleep knowing my chances of a wet bed just went up 200%. Something about too much stress and no sleep makes those odes seem acceptable. Morning came about 30 seconds after I closed my eyes and the camper is about to roll away with all the dogs bouncing from one bed to another in an excited pee pee dancing. Now I have not seen myself but I also am not thinking how scary I am at this point and started slapping on the harness and leashes. I chased the girls out of their beds and gave them each a hand full of leashes with highly excited dogs bounce around on the ends of them. I am out the door first and looked up to see another camper walking bye, the look on his face set my red flags off like a wild fire out of control. I passed my handful of dogs off and moved quickly to the bathrooms a mile away. I opened the door and scared myself as the thick layer of hairspray on my 10 hairs got rehydrated and dried again in a manner to give bed head a whole new meaning. After the necessities were taken care of I looked for a hammer to drive the scary hair spikes down. No hammer lets rehydrate again, Wrong move on my part. Now I have no time to shower and no time to play with my hair so off I went trying not to look anyone in the eye.

The next morning was equally as bad and now my clothes are nasty from crawling around in the mud and underbrush the night before. Again I dropped into bed around 3 am to awake to a much more horrifying reflection in the mirror the next morning. As I am so not caring how bad I look because I will never see these people again.... LOL, I met a women with a beautiful white standard Poodle and a little black puff ball, of course I need to oogoogle over them and tell the lady forgive me as we have had a long weekend and it was not all good and we have a huge drive ahead of me so I can get home tonight. Oh where are you from? Michigan. OMG so am I, she said "what part"? Lansing. I am too! I am not sure how to describe the amazement at meeting someone from my home town so far from home, or the fact that we have communicated through e-mails as we are both very linked to the dog community in Lansing. So now, my I don't care because I will never see these folks again, is making me back stroke through the apologies of my appearance. I will dress much better when we have coffee soon to put faces to our e-mails and names. But I am real sure the mental eraser will not work on this one.  Never say Never…..

What color is shock??????

Tonight you could have colored me shocked; I was on the phone talking to a friend and one of the girls is trying to tell me something and I don't want her to bother me.  So I blow her off and she comes back a few minutes later and starts again, Now patients is not something I have very much of, so I save the small amount I have for work, and tell my daughter to get lost I'm on the phone, "Beat It". She turns and grabs an envelope off the top of the pile of opened mail, scratches something on it and passes it back to me.  As I'm standing there with the deer eyes in the headlight look, I tell my friend on the phone she may have to come by and pick my butt up off the floor as my kid just ask me to dinner for the first time.
This being one of her first steps into adult hood it caught me by surprise. She just started her first job a couple of weeks ago and when she got the first pay check it was so exciting. First thing she opened a checking account and got a debit card, then the cell phone that does everything except talk for you. Wow! Broke already, who knew that would happen? The Mom in me kicks in and starts cautioning her about spending everything she earns.  Remember you need to save some and not spend it just because you want something: you must discipline yourself and resist the temptations of just buying stuff.  Now I am sure she is thinking that’s easy for me to say, the person who hates to shop……
The fact that she wants to pay for my dinner and her sisters with her second check was a total shock, right out of left field and I never saw it coming.  Now she never saw the sticker shock coming as the 50$ check was handed to her. I did have my moments of gloating when she swallowed hard as she looked down at it. But I caved and left the tip.  I must say it was a different feeling being taken out to dinner by my daughter. It’s like putting 40,000 miles on your car in one year and you have never sat in the back or passenger seats.