Month: April 2016

 

Polly got here a week after Bates.  I wanted a little black Papillon puppy. As luck would have it, we found Fletch and Bates before Polly and just knew they were meant to be part of our family.  We had decided not to adopt anyone over age 3 after having special needs pets for so long.  That rule went right out the window and we adopted Fletch estimated to be 5-6 yrs old and Bates estimated to be 6-7 years old.  Then we found this little black Papillon puppy.  It made no sense to adopt two dogs in two weeks, but we could not pass up either one.  Turns out they are like two little soulmates that were just destined to be together.  I can’t imagine one of them without the other because they are two peas in a pod.  They sit like this, sleep like this, share their food and food bowls and toys and blankets with each other, and play so gently with each other.  Polly still cleans his eye and cleans his ears.  This was when she was still growing and under 5 lbs.  She’s a whopping 7.9 lbs now.  It’s a little more even when they wrestle now but she is not intimidated.  She knows she can trust him completely.  They are truly best friends.

This boy had come so far since we got him.  When we first adopted him, he would sit across the room from us and just stare.  He did not like photos.  Even his adoption photo online was just a side shot.  He avoided eye contact like the plague.  Now here he is looking right at me and letting me take his photo.  You see his wingman Bates right next to him and Polly is on the step below them.  This is our big happy baby hanging out with two of his best friends.  Enjoy!

This is the week Cali came home 10 years ago.  She still had her other eye and it was neon green with a scratch visible in it.  She spent a good deal of that month just observing the dogs from her tower.  We learned that even a completely blind dog can climb onto her tower as well so we had to move the chair further away.  This last one is Klunkers visiting Cali’s kitty condo.  When we replaced this one a couple of years ago, the new one had 4 levels, one of which was just a couple of feet off the ground.  Beethoven loved sleeping in that section and Cali didn’t mind at all.  I will find that pic and post it later.

These two kids were with me through so much.  Moving out of my parents’ house, high school graduation, meeting my husband, college graduation, grad school graduation, buying a first house, moving out of  town then out of state, the loss of family members and even the unexpected loss of friends way too young, new jobs, promotions, traveling the world quite a bit, health challenges, and finally settling down.  I’ve seen some really cool things in my life, but coming home to a house filled with this much love is the best.  It is a blessing that not many people get to experience.  I’m lucky that my kids are that special.  My husband had a 16 year old cat when we met as undergrads.  I joked with him that I was a single mother and that he had to accept me and both my kids if we were going to be serious.  He understood quickly that my house would always include dogs, cats, or both.  For our honeymoon, we asked each set of parents to dogsit one dog.  His parents were inspired to adopt their own dog.  My parents also ended up adopting as well.

 

 

 

We already had dogs when we met Cali.  She was welcomed into our home and given a couple of kitty condos so that she could sit and sleep and eat way off the ground, far out of the reach of the dogs if she wanted to be away from them.  Other than using them for exercise and for watching the birds in the yard, she really didn’t need them.  As you can see, she’s just fine cuddling any of the dogs or hanging out with all of the dogs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the goofy happy smile Prancer had the day we brought her and Klunkers home.  She fully loved running as fast as she could go every time we were outside so she looked like this quite a bit.  She would run the entire yard and jump over any obstacle, up on the retaining wall, over the swing and outdoor furniture.  The other dogs would just wander the yard casually and sniff here and there.  Not Prancer.  She had to run at all times!  This one is a little blurry because of that but you get the idea.  She loved every single minute of life.  It gave us great satisfaction to watch her have such joy in the simplest things.

This is in the side yard at my parents’ house right after we adopted this cutie from a locally owned petstore where someone dropped off the whole litter. This picture is framed and on the bookcase in my foyer to this day.  She is the reason I am a dog person.  She was part terrier and part daschund and 100% bravery and curiosity.  Everybody that met her really loved her black, brown and white face.  She also had a little brown spot on her back just before her tail.  As she aged her face quickly became light grey and white so you would never know she started out like this.  We were lucky to have her 16.5 years.

 

I’ll give you a second to take in all that cuteness.  We went to Petsmart to get the tennis balls for Libby and stopped by to pet every single rescue while we were there.  You never know where they will end up or how they will be treated after they leave there, so it is nice just to spend a minute with each one of them petting them and giving them kindness and a calm moment.  When I reached in to pet Klunkers, he fell onto my hand.  He turned around and I saw something was different with his eyes.  I commented that he must have been sleeping.  The rescue volunteer said Actually, he was born with no eyes.  My heart just broke right then!  I immediately wanted to protect him and make everything ok for him.   Anyone will adopt a “perfect” pet, but I wondered what would happen to him since his abilities might be different.  I asked to hold him.  The volunteer told me that he was part of a package deal with another dog (which my husband was already holding!) so they would have to be rescued together.  We already had 3 furry kids at home so we had to think really hard about it.  When we wanted to trade so he could hold Klunkers and I would hold Prancer, Klunkers wrapped his paws around my neck and would not let go.  We pried him off my neck and met them both.  Three days later our application was approved and we were back to pick them up.  It was one of the best decisions in my life.  Absolutely!  Klunkers had a terrible name before so we mentioned a few options in front of him, and each time he would wag his tail at Klunkers.  So, he picked that name and it fit him well. I feel like he is an Angel that picked me too.  We got him 5 months before my Dad died, he was with me through a very prolonged illness that even stumped the Mayo Clinic, and then he passed away 6 months after the doctors finally figured out what was wrong with me.  He literally was the footprints in the sand that got me through.  He was going through his own medical issues as well and somehow he always managed to beat the odds.  For 6 years anyway.  I am still not ready to re-live all of that but I promise I will get there and share his life story.

 

This is another example of Libby using every ounce of her tennis balls before letting them go and moving on to the next one.  As long as she could still do some activity with them she would keep playing.  This one was split in half except for the tiniest millimeters of plastic holding the two halves together.  When she tossed it off the couch or kicked it, it would wobble this way then turn another direction and stop flat. Her breathing echoed louder in the ball because she always walked around carrying it in her mouth and tried to never set it down. Sometimes she would still have them in her mouth when we went outside to walk them and she’d leave it in the yard.  After she was back inside and realized it was outside, she would wiggle and whimper until we opened the door and let her retrieve it.  Then she was back to hours of playing ball.  In this photo you can see the part of her ear that is missing pretty clearly.  It just added to her charm.

This is Libby taking a break from playing with her tennis balls.  She was part chihuahua and part rat terrier, or as we used to say chihuahua from the neck forward and rat terrier from the neck to tail.  Our vet even said she had the classic chihuahua face.  I think that is why her body stood out as so different because people expected to see a tiny chihuahua body too.  I think I read that rat terriers can get to 16 lbs.  Libby was 12 lbs.   She was all muscle and a big sweet heart too.  This was one of her tennis balls on its way to destruction as you can see from the felt hanging off of it on both sides.  She would keep playing with them until the felt came off, then she would shake her head and toss the felt, then run to it and do the same thing again and again. She would even sleep with her piece of yellow felt just like she slept with her tennis balls when they were new and whole.  Unfortunately PetSmart eventually stopped getting those specific balls.  She would not even touch the tennis balls from Target, Publix, Walgreens, Kroger, Petco, online or any of the local pet stores.  She did finally play with catnip balls that we got at the garden center.  We found a stuffed soccer ball, basketball, and football that she would play with too.  It was super cute watching her play with the tiny soccer ball because she could kick it around and stop it and turn it on a dime, just like any soccer player would do.  We call this chair in our house the Prayer Chair.  It is where Libby and Klunkers both sat in our laps to get their lactated ringers.  Whether it was me or my husband administering them, we would both be praying for our kids to heal and for more time with our kids.