Okay TiB, some advice? This little dude has been with me for four weeks. He was 12lbs on homecoming and today weighed in at a whooping 30lbs. Now, my question. I had christened him Ray Lewis - he has been called that for four weeks. However, I have a nagging feeling that he’s more of a Bart. Thoughts?
Like all my other dogs, a purebred Heinz 57 from Wahpole Island. I’ll post pictures of mom and dad in a bit.
Here’s more pictures. 1. Photo from today. He’s getting leggy. 2. Photo with my oldest, Abraham, a Newfie cross. 3. All four dogs on the couch. 4. The puppy and my middle dog, Rodney, as an old timey photo on an abandoned cabin.
This guy has been hanging around all this time, but often leaving for a few days at a time. So we decided we needed to take him to the vet to get him checked for a chip and any shots he may need. He also has a badly swollen paw pad. The vet drew blood to test for Feline Leukemia and FIV. Negative on the Leukemia, Positive for FIV (and an ear infection)... fuck fuck fuck. I knew all this time there was something a little off with him. He's somewhat active, still has energy to jump up to a table where we set him up with a box with blankets to sleep in. But he mainly just wants to be inside and sleep on the couch next to me. With my wife's asthma, him sleeping in the house is not an option. We do let him in for hours at a time and he normally just sleeps until he wakes up, wants to eat or go out to do his business and then immediately wants to come back in. Our options were to to euthanize (no, nope, never), send him to an FIV no kill shelter 4 hours away (looked at it online and it's already got @ 70 other cats there) or to try to keep him inside. He already had an accident and made a huge stinky mess in our bedroom so we weren't even entertaining the thought. So now we've gotten a litter box and moved his bed into our storage room which is climate controlled. He's going to have to sleep there during the nights and I guess he will be an inside cat except for bedtime. My wife is the one who wants to do that even though her asthma has been pretty bad since he's come into our life. But she's just as dedicated to giving him a good life as I am.
So here's a fun story, everyone: We walk at a gravel pit as a group with our dogs on the weekend. Usually 3-6 people, somewhere between 6-8 dogs. Weekend before last, on the leg back to the car, we noticed that my terrier and lab (pictured in the posts above) were missing. Very odd. I whistled, and NOTHING. Now, this is REALLY strange. The dogs might run off but you can usually hear them and they always recall to a whistle. This was dead silence. We all became concerned. My cousin took one of her dogs and started to walk him to the car, as he had injured his foot. The rest of us doubled back to try and see where the dogs might have gone. As we walked, you could sort of hear barking way off in the distance. Myself, my cousin and my nephew spread out trying to hear where they were. My dread was that one of the dogs was surrounded by coyotes. It took some detective work, because every time we walked towards the barking it seemed to suddenly come from another area in space. My nephew crawled to the top of one of the sand piles and soon figured out why: the barking was coming from a hole in the ground, in a ditch directly in front of us. My cousin, who's a big dude at about 6'4", scrambled down the ditch to see if he could tell what was happening. All he could see at first was the hind quarters of my lab mix. He called out, "I can grab Rodney, but I don't know what he has a hold of." It turns out, dear friends, what he had hold of was a +20lb raccoon. My terrier, being a terrier, crawled into a hole to see what was there. Surprise! It was a vicious animal. I can only presume that a death fight ensued, and but for one mitigating factor the terrier would have been dead or so badly injured he couldn't be saved. What still scares me to think about is that we never would have even found out where he went. It was all underground. The mitigating factor was Rodney. Rodney ripped the coon out of the hole, grabbed its throat and shook it until it was dead. Finli took a pretty decent cut on his face and needed antibiotics for his eyes; mercifully the eyeballs were missed. I THOUGHT Rodney came away unscathed but, seven days in, the scabs are starting to heal and you can really see the shellacking he took. It latched onto his snout at some point and just clawed the shit out of him. So, I guess the moral of the story is be careful walking in gravel pits. Also, I guess, don't crawl into holes unless you are prepared to kill things with your face.
So 3 months in and I seem to have a dog. She is a fucking nutter, but highly intelligent and has picked up most commands within hours of being trained. Recall is also developing nicely, as are some whistle commands.
My one cat is getting fat. In a bit of a drunken Amazon moment, I saw a motion detecting laser pointer thingy as a cat toy, and I thought it would be hilarious if I put that around her food dish as a distraction. And yes, it actually is fucking hilarious, because it's working. She's too busy chasing the red dot to eat... so it's almost like she's eating when she's bored... I can relate.
She's been sitting there now for hours waiting for it to show up... when she gets bored and it's not there (she stopped moving after it timed out), she gets up to leave, which triggers it again.
So it's been a terrible week. I thought everyone here should know, because we all love each other's pets: ________________________________________________________________ Abraham C. September 1, 2008 – March 15, 2021 What is there to write about such a good dog? Abraham started his journey with inauspicious beginnings. He and his sister were abandoned at a dump on Wahpole Island when they were less than five weeks old. Infested with fleas and shaved due to skin infections, the kind souls at the Sarnia Humane Society rescued this puppy and brought him to good health, which he would enjoy virtually uninterrupted for almost thirteen years. He was always a good dog. Easy to train as a puppy, relaxed and lovely to everyone who met him throughout the whole of his long life. Not much of an athlete, but eternally graceful and light on his feet. He was also a blood donor. When he was young enough to be eligible, he donated blood 14 different times and helped who knows how many other dogs who were sick. Really, though, words pale to do justice to this sweetheart of an animal. He was calm, and kind, and loyal, and so many other things. Everyone who met him was taken in by him, and I don’t say that lightly or to exaggerate. I have been blessed to know dogs that were brave, dogs that were smart, dogs that were loving but in the whole of my life I only ever met one dog who was perfect. Rest in peace, you good old dog.
Really sorry to hear it.... I will never forget the look on his face when we were giving him and Finn popsicles, and they were happily licking them, until Abraham said "fuck it" and just put the whole thing in his mouth. He knew it was wrong, but he wasn't about to give it up, either. Just sat there with those big eyes, waiting for us to look the other way so he could take the whole thing. He was a great dog, and will be missed.
The week before it was around 0degrees(32) and last week it has been around 20(70) So the wife has been taking the dog on super long walks in the sun. Do you think she looks happy?