numerous updates

Topaz

Ok, so it's been a long while.  Topaz was adopted a while back.  This happened while I was on a 2 week trip for work, which was weird because I never got to say goodbye to him, but I suspect that was best for him, because hopefully he'll forget all about me.  The hardest part is not being able to explain to the dogs that this arrangement was only ever temporary, and I'm not passing them along because I don't love them, but because that was the deal, and that they are going somewhere where they'll get to stay forever.

Coffee

One of the most annoying and angering parts though, is when the dog is adopted and then RETURNED.  This happened with Coffee, who was our next foster after Topaz.  Coffee was sweet as can be, and much lower-maintenance than Topaz, much less demanding and so easy to be with.  From the first day I brought her home, within minutes we were taking a nap together on the couch with her sleeping right on my chest.  She was just really laid back.  Bafflingly, she had been with the rescue for like 2 years already.  I couldn't understand it.  She had some housetraining difficulties, but that's not unusual, and that was really the only problem I could find.

After a few weeks, she was adopted.  After maybe 2 weeks, I got a call from her new adoptive "mom" who seemed a little tentative about things, not very positive, and said Coffee seemed indifferent to her.  As the conversation moved along, I learned that Coffee had been diagnosed with strep.  STREP.

Imagine for a moment that you are a little creature who has just been moved to a new, strange home with a person you don't know, and then you come down with strep.  You are sick, miserable really, in a completely new environment, and you are with a stranger.

So, the lady told me she though maybe she adopted the "wrong dog" and that she might look into "exchanging her for that other gray poodle."  Em.  No.  You seem to have confused adopting a dog with buying a sofa, said I. (In my head.)

Needless to say, Coffee came back to the rescue and that woman was not permitted to adopt another dog.  But then I went on vacation for 2 weeks, so I never saw Coffee when she came back, and the weekend I came back, she got adopted again, this time (itdamnwellbetterbe) forever!  But oh, I miss her sweetness quite a bit.

Transporting

Today, I participated in an across-the-country dog transport run.  4 dogs were traveling from North Carolina to Michigan, from a high kill shelter in the south to a rescue.  I only had to transport them across one leg of the trip, from Dayton to Lima.

They were a wonderful, well-behaved bunch.  Three males had the back seat to themselves.

Tripp, the sleeping guy in the front there, had the right idea.  And soon, everyone else followed his lead.

Up in the front seat next to me was a sweet, parasite-ridden girl who was absolutely fascinated by the windshield wipers.  (Until it was her nap-time too. She was alert and awake most of the time, though.)

This poor girl is carrying around a litter of puppies inside her, in addition to a horrible case of heartworm.  As I stroked her head while I drove across the Ohio countryside, I couldn't stop thinking about how strange pregnancy must be for a dog, who doesn't get to have the knowledge that she's pregnant the way a person does.  It never actually occurred to me before: animals can't really plan, so they're never "expecting." No one explains to them "you are going to have babies."  They just do what they know, follow their instincts, and one day, crazy weird things start happening to their bodies, and they kind of know what to do, and then puppies are coming out of them.

Meanwhile, in this girl's case, worms are crawling around in her blood.  Who knows what kind of horrible discomfort heartworm causes, and she certainly has no knowledge or understanding of that either.

Thinking about it made my heart ache, so I just kept scratching her ears.  She seemed to like that.

Up Next...

Tomorrow I go to pick up 2 little pups out in Nowheresville, Ohio.  More on that soon.

learning to play

Toby has recently learned to play with "toys."  Not normal dog toys usually, but the most popular plaything we have around our house: empty toilet paper rolls.  Only recently, after living with us for going on a month, has he figured out that he can pounce on them and throw them up into the air and carry them around and chew them, and boy does he enjoy it!  He runs around and jumps into the air excitedly, tossing the chewed cardboard scraps over his shoulder.

Then, he discovered a new interest: empty plastic bottles.  Truman loves the sound they make on the wood floors, so I gave Toby one (under supervision) and he chased it around making a racket.  Toby took interest, and then something completely new happened.  They began to play tug-of-war.  It was awesome to see this frightened, skittish little guy suddenly figure out one of the greatest joys (I suspect) of being a dog.  They were evenly matched.  Sometimes Truman would win and run off with the bottle, sometimes Toby would win.  But they were tugging hard, with Harriet acting as a useless referee, barking at them when she felt they were acting inappropriately.

Seeing him playing, carefree, not anxious that I'll abandon him, appearing so well adjusted and normal-dog-like, it was clear that he's coming a long way.

Since he's coming along so well, I feel like I can also poke fun at him a little.  Recently, I figured out who he reminds me of.  Behold, the likeness:

discovering herself

Sometimes it's a metaphor, but in this case, I mean it pretty literally.  Charmin appears to have discovered her reflection in our full length floor mirror for the first time today.  At first, she seemed to think it was a door-- she kept trying to walk into it, head-butting her own reflection.  The mirror has some lovely nose-prints now.

The mirror is upstairs, meaning she also discovered how to go up the stairs in our house.  However, she has yet to discover how to come down them.  I had to carry her back downstairs twice, which she was a good sport about.

I started reading about Amish puppy mills yesterday, which is where Charmin came from.  Truman's mother also was, sadly, a puppy mill dog from Arkansas.  Apparently, to keep the massive groups of dogs from barking too loudly, they have a method of "de-barking" the dogs, which means hammering a metal pipe down the dog's throats to destroy the vocal chords.  I respect cultural differences and all, and I get that not everyone views dogs as friends the way I do, which is fine.  For some people it seems acceptable to treat them as livestock.  Unfortunately, we treat livestock pretty horrendously.  If they were treated like the animals on my great grandparents' farm, I could deal with it.  But when they don't get medical attention for oozing sores and exposed bones and eyes falling out of sockets, and when they get carried around by the leg because the farmer doesn't really want to touch them, I think that goes beyond treating them like animals.