Our newest member! Not entirely by choice!

This little beggar of a kitten showed up just before it got really cold. I called the neighbours and no one said it was theirs (or they didn't want to admit it!). We already have three cats and certainly didn't need a fourth. I asked our neighbour across the road, if they wanted him in their barn. I mean, he is very sweet and cuddly but we don't need four cats. The ones we already have were hissing and swatting at him and the dogs kept chasing him. Talk about rejection from everyone. Anyway, the neighbour said he'd take him. So, to fool the cat, I drove him down our road and back again, then handed him off to the neighbour while I stayed in the vehicle then made a quick getaway. Not quick enough! 

The cat came back the very next day! 

(I bet you sung that sentence didn't you :-)

I didn't want to take the cat to the Animal Protection League as I knew they already had many cats without homes - so, I put up a poster in our school and yes, I was going for emotional manipulation of the children. 

Here's the poster.

It still didn't work. No one phoned! By now my eldest son, was calling the cat Elvis. 

*~*

I guess we have four cats.

Meet Elvis, our newest addition!

Yup! Christmas is coming!

Friday I got busy and wrapped some Christmas presents. I was in a bit of a rush and was wrapping in warp speed to be able to make an appointment.  All nicely wrapped, I popped the gifts I'd wrapped under the tree and got ready and left for my appointment. Two hours later I got a call, on my cell, from my son; "When are you coming home?". I could tell by his tone of voice something was definitely not good. "What happened?", I asked. "Hope ripped into some of the presents and she ate a whole bunch of chocolates".
Nine of the boxes I wrapped were Toffifee, the small 15 piece packages - I thought it'd be nice to give one to each family member for Christmas *~*. I asked my son to take the dog outside for a bit then leave her in the laundry room until I got home. I didn't know how much she'd eaten and whether she'd be sick or not. When I arrived home I discovered out of the nine boxes of Toffifee she had eaten 4 whole boxes - that's 60 pieces and she had also ripped into and ate a tray of cherries cordial chocolate which amounted to another 6 pieces. All in all I knew that wasn't likely a toxic level of chocolate but it wasn't good for her to have all that sugar in her either. (Strangely enough she was not climbing the drapes on a sugar high). I called the vet and their recommendation was to give her a tablespoon of hydrogen peroxide to induce vomiting!?? I didn't know you could ingest that stuff? So I grabbed my old children's liquid medication syringe and force fed her the hydrogen peroxide. The vet said we may have to wait about 20 min. for it to work so my husband and I watched her (she was outside), from the kitchen window.  Not even ten minutes later she emptied her stomach and an awful lot of chocolate was evacuated including the whole hazelnuts from the middle of each Toffifee. :-P I never even thought this dog could smell chocolate through plastic cellophane, cardboard and wrapping paper. I guess until Christmas is over she'll have to camp out in the laundry room when I need to go out. There are definitely some drawbacks to dog ownership! Ho, Ho, Ho!

Portrait of a DOG

Gracie, the day of her rescue

It has been a year ago today, December 1, 2010. Gracie was one of 24 Shepherds seized from a farm near where we live. She had been living with the other Shepherds in deplorable conditions. The rescuers found her hiding in a burrow she had dug out of the piled manure they all lived on.  She was 37 pounds worth of skin and bones, had bite marks on her ears and nose and was terrified of people. I have kept somewhat up-to-date on the page marked "Gracie" but I wanted to celebrate her one year anniversary of her emancipation here.

It has not been smooth sailing but it has been a slow and constant climb up from neglect and lack of socialization. 

Our first meeting

I will never forget our first meeting. Looking down on her in the pen was heartbreaking. She was so small and emaciated. Because of her longer guard hairs you couldn't see the boniness of her body but you could feel each vertebrae, each rib, hip bones and collar bones. She ran around and around the pen trying to avoid us but there was no where to hide. I asked if I could go in and I walked in and sat down with my back against the wall and just waited. She paced and did everything in her power to get as far from me as she could. I just waited and eventually she was curious enough to smell me, then let me touch her head and stroke her back. My hand could feel every vertebrae down her spine and she'd flinch when I'd touch her. I wanted to cry. I knew we had to take her home and care for her. She came home on December 6 and we installed her directly into the outside doghouse set up with a heat lamp. She stayed outside in the doghouse; firstly, to make sure she wasn't carrying any contagious diseases and secondly, we weren't sure how she'd respond to a loud, bustling household. She seemed to appreciate being in the doghouse and would run inside whenever anyone approached. I spent hours inside the doghouse, (it's big!), petting, brushing, trimming nails, cleaning ears, talking. I was allowed to do whatever I needed to do to her for her care and she laid stone still, hardly moving. She rarely even looked directly at me but always laid in the corner of the doghouse, probably hoping I'd go away quickly and not torture her. She was so thin, when I sat quietly, you could hear her heart beating from three feet away. 

It took three baths to finally clear away all the hard manure caked in her fur especially around her neck and down her tail, but the smell did not improve until summer when she went swimming regularly. She had health problems in the beginning and has come through them all. She was spayed as a requirement for us to adopt her as no one was sure whether these dogs had been line bred nor how healthy, psychologically, the pups would be and most importantly, none of these dogs were physically well enough to carry healthy pups. When we got Gracie we were told she was approximately 18 months old  but just watching her I knew she was probably only 8 months old. When she was taken in to be spayed the vet agreed she was likely 7-9 months old due to her immature uterus and it was evident she had not had a heat yet.

Gracie's first introduction to Hope, our Golden Retriever/Lab did not go very well which was my fault. Gracie was in her doghouse and Hope just "popped in" to say Hi! Gracie made the strangest sounds I've ever heard so I quickly hauled Hope out and kept them apart until the next day. I had been walking Hope and had her on a leash,  as we approached the doghouse Gracie came out and Hope and she were able to meet properly and they hit it off immediately. Hope became a therapy dog for Gracie. They played and wrestled and ran together. If I needed Gracie to come out of her doghouse I just brought Hope with me and Gracie would come right out to her. Without Hope, we had to drag her out of the doghouse which wasn't very good at breaking down the walls of mistrust.

Gracie's health is good now. She is still under her ideal weight at 52 pounds but she is shiny-coated and can run like the wind. She loves to fetch and play tug-o-war with Hope. She will be playful with me, at times, and will wag her tail sometimes. I have finally got a kiss on the cheek, this past Friday, November 25, 2011, when I was giving her a bath. :-)  She is learning "sit" and "stay" and has gotten fairly proficient at it. She is very wary of strangers and still barks and bristles at the boys but they are no longer feeling threatened by her and her barking is getting less ferocious. She has finally made eye contact without fear. I have officially started to train her and when we go to the pasture for time together she will make direct eye contact and wait with anticipation, instead of cowering fear, for what I will ask of her. She is not a perfect dog and we still struggle with housebreaking issues and her barking at people and not coming when she should but when I look back at her progress I keep the hope that she will continue to "become".

When we first brought her in the house to live, last February, she would hide in the dark corner of the bathroom, by the toilet, or in the portable kennel in the laundry room or any dark corner, and stay there for hours unless we took her out to go to the bathroom. Now she follows me all over the house, never hides in the bathroom. We took down the kennel because she wasn't hiding in it anymore and she will join us in the family room, when we watch a movie, and is presently laying, on her side, sleeping under the computer desk while I type this. I'm not sure she will ever be a happy, relaxed, friendly Shepherd with everyone, but she is healthy, loved and safe and we work forward continually.

We celebrate Gracies birthday on June 21 as that's the day we were officially granted the right to be her adopted family. She is no longer referred to as #19 at the vet's office and her file is in our family file with the rest of our furry family members. 

Happy Anniversary Gracie!

Gracie, giving me her full attention. One year later.