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

Lazy Liars

Facebook is an interesting social adhesive and influence these days eh? From your first breath of air, you were entitled to a facebook page filled with pictures of you, lots of friends you don’t like (the few you actually care about were in those pictures of your face... but they had to be cropped out. Unavoidable casualties I’m afraid.), and nagging messages about events you will never give a shit about. Hell, the damn updates can call out from your pocket –your pocket for gods sake- since the cell phone has become the new computer.
The entire affair is accepted as a sort of god given burden that everyone loves to hate, but hey- you were saddled with this blessing, and that means you are tied to it for life. Like a spouse. Or an extra digit. Or a spouse with an extra digit but also lots of money; sadly accompanied by a tight-knit family and their very wily lawyers. Life sentence. Boom.

It is just another medium for fuckery.

So humor me and let me tell a hypothetical story.

Person owns horse. Person agrees to lease horse to other people in other state. Other people have excellent facilities, reputation, and have leased a different horse from a friend of the Person for years. Friend’s horse has been shown, ridden, loved and well cared for. Nothing sketch about the frequently updated pictures and messages through that cursed Facebook.

Person agrees to lease horse to People.

Let’s say the horse went to People of another state in.. oh... December of some year. Horse arrives and messages are exchanged for around 2 weeks after that.

Person and Friend of Person spend the next few months trying to get any response at all from People. Thanks to Facebook, there is at least some record. Calls and such can be liberally scattered around for seasoning.

Person had not heard a single word about their horse from People. Mystical forces (?) blocked computer and phone communications from People. Until April. Which contained an e-mail. From People, to Person (both addresses were the same as those they communicated with in December) regarding Person’s horse.

Just because I am not subtle or polite, this is the real deal. As far as hypothetical things go of course. Click the damn picture. Please.

There is no happy ending. Even in the hypothetical. Friend of Person, Person, and People were friends on Facebook and the horse-related questions were ignored through Facebook the entire time. Dead is dead.

Maybe I am being too sensitive. Maybe 3 months is still within the grace period of, "whoops your thing died and my life is kinda hectic. Well can't get dead-er! Meh- I'll tell 'ya later." If you are going to bullshit someone, then you better bullshit them properly and dignify them with some deception!

Foffdaughter: Fetching

I hate going to the food store to hunt for prey. Dread, loathe and resent it. When there is a looming lack of food (dog/cat, both dry and canned) and clean litter, I resign myself to the mission. (Supplies of two-legger food? Who the hell cares? Make like a vulture and be game to scavenge for your damn meal!) Eventually, unhappily, the drive is made, the car is parked, and the feet are shod. From start to finish, the entire domestic task is really just a mad scramble to get back to the farm. A disgruntled whirlwind of dog, Foffdaughter, and cart will manage to collect clean litter, food for the dogs/cats, disinfectant wipes and few if any other items.

Load up the car, drive home, ignore the sensible approach to unpacking, and instead carry everything in one trip. Unlocking the door is always the same; fumbling with the 35 lb tub of litter, the key, the door, bags of dry cat/dog food... And then it occurs to me. Every single time, I have this dawning realization that I am being totally irrational. Why should I struggle to get food + litter into the house when I could just not? If I didn't feed the cats, it would lessen their daily massacre of every litterbox, which would then require fewer cleanings and therefore less litter.... I wouldn't need to carry either of them inside! Food is the fuel enabling the production of feces, and without it....

It is a fleeting thought which becomes lingering guilt.... And the cats gorge themselves on low-calorie anti-fat-cat food which becomes feces in quantities that are comparable to droppings left by an entire herd of bison .

When is it mine?

One recurrent problem I have with feral cats is deciding 'when is it mine?' My original ferals, the remainders of a 'trap, spay/neuter , relocate to my hay barn' project moved 6 felines about three years ago, and are now down to three. The two mother cats disappeared the first week they were given their freedom. One of the female kittens disappeared after a year here. The remaining 3 have had a series of travelers/house guests hopefuls. One at a time, they come, stay, eat catfood and then they go. A small grey one was here for months. A grey with black stripes followed, briefly. The current one, BigGuy, who has been here off and on for a year now, will allow me to touch him. None of the others will.

If you feed it, and touch it, is it your cat?

A month ago, an odd little grey tiger stripe showed up. He would allow touching, and loved to twine around ankles. He was very aggressive to our other cats, and unpredictably and severely with me. He actually bit and scratched. We had had a friendly session, him being petted and twining, as I sat on a hay bale. He wandered off, and I was sitting, contemplating my next task, when he turned toward me from three feet away and launched himself full-on onto my knees. He fell off when I stood up, and howled at me, whipping his tail. I opened the barn door, in case he was feeling confined. He then spotted one of our cats outside, and blasted after him.

Foffdaughter set up getting him neutered. The next day, after recovering in our tack room, he disappeared. Two days later, he came back. He shows up maybe twice a week, eats, may spend the night in the tack room, but then takes off. I am not sure how I can schedule his vaccination updates, since I never know when he is here! I guess he is my cat, sort of? Hard to say. So far, I am unclear if neutering will alter his aggression issues with people, although he is not as aggressive with other cats. Now I am feeling guilty for not neutering the BigGuy, although he is much more difficult to touch, and I suspect would require manhandling into a feral trap. When is a cat your cat? It is easy if they are housecats, or at least come inside some of the time. If a cat "belongs" to your cats, does that make it yours by default?