Some faces

Olaf (02/12) hasn't changed except for size.

Penelope is one of the bedroom cats at the Sett. She and her sister (Calypso) were found ~2 years ago as kittens, living under the railroad tracks.

Wintry at 21 years old (post bath)

Nigel and Albus (background) at the pre-beige Nest

Update rescue beagle

I did a dumb thing the first night we had the beagle. (She has had about 12 names in a row. We cannot agree, so I will wait.) I Googled beagle rescue. After a few clicks, I came across someone who had asked for input on a forum. They were thinking about getting a dog, and had always liked beagles. What followed were 25 or so comments, outlining in detail why she should NOT get a beagle. Escape artist, food thief, difficult to housebreak, impossible to train, clingy, and sometimes aggressive. After reading that, I was pretty discouraged.

But this is day 2+. She is curled up in a recycling bin about 3 feet from me, quiet and calm. We introduced a crate yesterday, and she has adapted well. She has had one housebreaking accident. So she is doing great at the house breaking. She today is finally (ridiculous, it has not been that long) listening and not jumping on the cabinets, and I think when I said "Sit" her brain engaged as her butt went down. The wild sneaky look is leaving her one eye. I am rather amazed at her progress.

The challenge will be introducing her to our other dogs. She misses canine company. I am not sure our den will be good for her, largely due to Molly. And I doubt this beagle could be trained to an underground fence. But time will tell. Two months, then the spay procedure. Then we can decided what comes next. Oh, she weighs 18 lbs. Foffdaughter and Friend weighed her yesterday. That will be interesting to check on in two months. It kills me that she is curling up in the milk crate we use for recycling. Does she need her own chair? With polka dots, like her harness and leash, purchased yesterday?

Surprise, sort of

WonderVet was examining the newest walk-on candidate for our canine den when I came home from work. I had looked in her mouth, seeing missing spots where teeth should have been and bad gums, and concluded she was an old dog.

"I don't think she is very old. Most likely 2 or 3. 5 years tops." spoke WonderVet.
"But why do her teeth look so bad then?" I was puzzled.
"Most likely it was due to her lifestyle." he said dryly, like always.

The good news is, once she is fed to the point of normal weight, wormed (started), and spayed (maybe in two months once normal weight is achieved) she could live a long life span as a pet dog, rather than a slave dog. Assuming the heartworm test is negative which he thought it would be. She is very sweet, but very untrained and very very persistent when she wants something. We have a gate built-in to block dogs into our kitchen. This little one can slip between the bars of the gate. My goal is to get her too big to do that!
And now we need to teach her how to be a good pet dog. The hard part begins.

Foffmom: Again

So it was 5 or so, and husband was coming home. "Come to the window" he urged in an excited voice. Must be an unusual bird, I guessed as I walked over. Nope. It was a starving beagle with one eye, a scrape over the absent eye, and the demeanor of a dog who has known little human kindness. She fell onto the food we brought out and finished it in a frenzy. She knows no commands that I can determine. Her nails are trimmed. Her ears are clean. But she is clearly starving or seriously ill.

Here is the ethical issue: she wears a collar, similar to another dog who showed up here years ago. A hungry skinny terrified beagle who we naively returned to the name on the collar, a guy with a gut overhanging his belt. Of course. A guy who did not even seem to know for sure which of his dogs was lost. I do not remember the previous guys name, we are trying to retrieve it from our faulty memory banks.

It may have been the same guy, the style of collar is the same. But I am not returning this dog to the name on the collar. I felt very bad about returning the previous dog, as she was too thin, too cringing. The owner said she had been lost for a while. But then he contradicted his story about the length of time the dog was missing. And then he took the sweet, cringing little beagle home. That is not going to happen to this dog. I wish I had realized what I was dealing with in time to save the last beagle. But this time I know better. We will see what the WonderVet says tomorrow.

Same old, same

In the hay barn, we now have two feral male cats, intact, which means they are determined to kill one another. Or at least cause damage to ears, eyes, heads, and necks. I will discuss improving them with WonderVet tomorrow. Just to keep the peace.

Our neighbor has moved. She had been feeding a little grey feral cat for two years, left when a reprobate finally moved her horses, chickens, etc after a year of not paying board. She couldn't catch her cat. The elderly neighbor took on feeding the wild feline, and I think has enjoyed doing it, particularly in the last year after becoming a widow. She justifiably needed to move into town, to an apartment without acres to mow and weedeat. So now I am feeding that feral, until the new neighbors move in, at which point I am hoping they will feed her.

A rattie update: Foffdaughter's rat, Jam, is staying with me this winter. Jam has impressed me with her wily intelligence, and her ability to manipulate me. She practices delayed gratification. The other rats, given a treat, run off to find solitude to eat it. Jam runs off, hides the treat, and comes back to climb on the cage, begging and looking hopeful. This pays off, as she gets another treat. She hides this, and gets back to the act. We both finish this exercise happier than before. Genius rat.

Public vs. PSD

Repetitions of 'shit people say to service dog handlers' is static when Gibbs and I are out, but there are the rare moments of what the fuck just happened? Two different stories from that category:

#1) An elderly man was convinced that Gibbs was a seeing-eye dog, and I had trouble changing his mind. It was probably my failure to communicate clearly, but since we were in line to check out we just kept mis-communicating. I guess it was his way of killing time. Several minutes into the chat:
Elderly Man (suspiciously): "So if that isn't your seeing-eye dog, where did you get it?"
Me: "He is my dog, although he isn't a seeing-eye dog."
Elderly Man (not joking at all): "Did you take a blind person's seeing-eye dog?"
Me: "What..?"
Elderly Man: "Y'know, like without permission."
I still have no clue what to make of that curious exchange.


#2) Gibbs and I were walking through the hospital, on our way to an appointment, and a woman with two offspring were walking in the opposite direction. The mother and I did the polite 'eye contact of hallway travelers' during passing, and the kids did a quick glance from me to Gibbs. There was no squealing, no pointing, not a single gasp, and I felt a flash of unexpected relief A second or two later, I heard the mother talking to her young. "Anytime you see a dog wearing a vest like that, it means don't bother them because they are working."
For some reason this had an emotional impact on me. I didn't run after them and thank her, but I feel like I should have. Thank you to those strangers. Carry on.

Mild and Polite