No, I don't want to read about it!

 
As a self-appointed animal hugger (except for shady fishy sort of characters trying to slime their way past my legs under water and horses that kick me in the shins when I'm trying to keep their hooves clean and my lab/pointer mix when she's eaten some other carnivore's poop again and schtuff) I'm having a hard time finding blogs or tweets to follow that don't include a million posts per day concerning some horrible hell-man victimizing puppies or another litter of bunnies run over by a lawn mower, and honestly people, WHY would I want to hear or read about THAT? Huh?

It's depressing and discouraging and I remember it well from when I used to contribute to an animal welfare newsletter - by the time I had finished researching one article I had uncovered at least two other cruelty issues I hadn't yet been aware of. Yay.

What I hate most is sites that disguise themselves as cheerful places with names like yourdailycute or some such rot and then wallop you right between the eyes with a blind kitten's death after posting the scruffy, scraggly pics of when it was rescued and then sadly couldn't be saved. Honestly, it makes me want to.... grrrRrRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr them from here to next Tuesday.

I think I'll wander over to Happy News now....

Beach Bums

I haz a stick!

It's MY stick!!

 

Oooo, sis haz a stick!

 

Must... find... stick before other sis does!!

JACKPOT!! I digz now!!

Hey!! GrrrRRRRrrrrr!

I now haz an even bigger stick! HA!

Doga Non Grata

wallpaper from peeandpoo baby brand

The doga non grata in question would be Camina. As usual! An no, I am NOT posting pictures of the carnage because it's too gross for words. Yeah, even for blogs o_0.

Just imagine a 10 month old baby - that's when they're crawling and still drinking lots of milk or, as in our case, formula, which, in case you didn't know, makes muuuuch stinkier poos than breast milk. They're also on solids by this age, have been for up to 6 months or so now, but you're still introducing new stuff like smelly cheese every so often to get them used to dairy and whatnot and yadda yadda yadda, the point is, 10-month-old baby poop STINKS. It reeks. It's vile and wet and spreads like jam but sticks like peanut butter. It sticks to skin and surfaces and is still somehow highly smearable. If I were still in the field I'd create a highly marketable surface adherent from it. Then I'd be rich and famous and solve the global energy crisis by burning my baby's poo, cause with the amounts he produces you could fly at least twice to Rio in a day. And back.

Anyhoo, I digress. But you now have pictures of poo in your heads, yes? Good. Now picture a mangy, malnourished street mutt next to a big black bin bag full of... you guessed it... POO. That miserable mongrel would, of course, be one of mine. She's not so mangy or miserable anymore, 8 years down the line, but she has never acquired a sense of decorum (or sense for that matter, but that's another story for another day). Meanwhile, she can cock her head to one side and look at you with her loopy ears at half-mast and her furry eyebrows raised at just the right angle to resemble the scrawny little pauper of a puppy that used to rely on stuff like trash and leftovers and yeah, opp (other people's poo) for (gag) food.

Are we all back on the poop pics then? Good. So yeah, she's 8 now, and looks cute occasionally, but nothing, NOTHING can prepare you for an entire COURTYARD strewn with pooped-up pampers and a gazillion lumps of peed upon gel globules that are slippery when wet. Which they are. Cause they're swollen to saturation with PEE. Speaking of which, formula-fed baby wee? Also a whiff and a half. And then some.

So...there I was amidst the STENCH and the mess and the rotten GARBAGE interspersed with dog throw-up (because, naturally, 3.4kg of feces plus 400g of fuzzy fungi will, somewhat inevitably, lead to regurgitation of the aforeswallowed) and wilted bits of this and moldy lumps of that, and the cataclysm that is our cat surreptitiously rummaging for bits of diaper fluff to play with in the litter labyrinth now so thick, you could not see or feel the cement beneath your booted and plastic-bagged feet or triple-glove-covered hands... It. was. GROSS.

Of course, she's done stuff like this all her life, just never in such spectacular pooportions. We're talking at least 8 square meters (that's about 86 square feet to those of you on the other side of the pond) of pure, unadulterated, raw, gag-reflex-inducing SEWAGE, cause yeah, it had also rained on everything a bit, so it was like skidding on moss in your sneakers, except it wasn't moss, it was POOOOOOOOOP plus PEE GEL on this particular slip & slide.

I'd say Camina is moving up in the doggie world. Her fame must now precede her, what with her perfume a la poo-poo wafting from her hot dog breath towards aaaallll the other doggies from here to henceforth, even as we speak. I mean blog.

Sharing is Caring

 I learned something as of late...so I'm sharing it, that's what we're here for after all:

1. My goal in life is to become the kind of person my dogs think I am. 


2. The cure for unhappiness is happiness.

Doozer...

...just slid off the bed. Didn't fall, slid. She does that, the silly old goose :·P Then she puts on her surprised, very innocent face, which despite the gaps in her teeth, won her 'Most Soulful Eyes' at one of those fun dog shows for a charity we went to. In other words, she slid veeerrrrrry slowly, so she had time to lift her head and make the face. She did not, however, move in any way to keep from sliding. In fact, her butt was hanging off the edge of the bed for a good long napping while before she slid and that didn't bother her either. Dumbass.

Meanwhile, being deaf, if she senses a disturbance in the Force, she'll jump out of her skin in her rush to figure out what she's missing and generally get a few random air snaps in edgewise just in case an attacker is on the loose. Or something. I don't know, the dog is a mystery to me. But I love her, in all her silliness. Ah well.

Gone to the Dogs

Walking my "gods" (there's a reason for the anagram) is the only time during the day when everything else just stops, my brain stops spinning, the 83 different trains of thought hammering through my head slow down and it just gets real quiet, and my soul smiles because the girls just love existing so much with so little to show for it. Give them a field to stretch their legs in and their favorite company and they are simply and completely happy.

Jara's story (the one with the Yoda ears) is that she was born in a shelter to a rescued farm dog, along with 9 siblings, it was the cutest to go visit the lot of them and see 10 puppies of all different colors and fur lengths lined up along the fence of their puppy playground to see what was happening and who was visiting! She was reserved for another family which ended up taking a dog home from vacation in Italy, so I got her. She was such an attached sweetheart from the first day, walked on the leash as if she'd being doing it all her life and she stuck to me like glue from then on. Hates being alone and doesn't like strangers at all at first. She was scared to death of children even as a pup, so I don't know what happened there exactly, it hasn't changed much although once she gets to know a kid they become her best friend, just like everyone else :·) She's the kind of dog that wants "her" people around her at all times, she hates it when people come and go, and is happiest ruling the roost so to speak. She's a very good guard dog, despite being a total wuss when it comes to actually defending anything or anyone, with one exception: If a rival dog is running after her adopted sister Camina, she'll chase the sucker down til he's done for ;·P. She obeys instinctively and intuitively, and will do any trick in the book for a tennis ball. She'll also jump into your arms with all of her 40+ pounds if you open them into a hug and call her name. Great agility dog, cause she's so focused on you when she's with you and trusts you, so even when she's scared she'll jump through a tire or crawl through a tunnel for me. Gotta love her and her eagerness to please, what a daaawwwg!

Floppy-eared Camina was a street puppy until she was 3 and a half months old, and her mother must not have had a good immune system because she's got all kinds of funky stuff going on body-wise. She's such a clutz that the vets not only checked her eyes over and over again, but actually checked her brain fluid for neurological dysfunction! She's alright, though, just a little different, which is why we love her! At first she tried to growl or even bite when I took food away from her, but I gave her something tastier in return each time, so she soon learned that no one was going to make her go hungry or steal from her again. She spends her walks scouring the ground for food, like a cow grazing, in true Labrador fashion, and will eat all kinds of crrrrap if I don't pay close attention and let out a scary holler when she tries it! She's a little aloof in general but once you're at home and on that couch, watch out! She loves to curl up half on your lap and half plastered all over any remaining space. She also grabs her water bowl in her mouth when it's empty and tosses it at my feel with a disgusted look! At first she was with a family that had a small child, but they brought her back to the shelter because she wasn't trained at all (and she's the stubborn kind, mind you!), so Jara and I got to take her home :·) She was the only puppy Jara would play with when she was little, Jara was very shy, but Camina just put a big clumsy puppy paw on her in slow motion and they both fell over and have been friends ever since. 5 years down the line they still race each other across an open field, ears flying… one low and straight as a pistol, the other galloping like a loopy horse, tongues hanging out and those old puppy grins as good as new again!

My goal in life is to be the kind of person those two already think I am. They are both total mutts off the streets, shelter puppies, and I'll take that over purebred any day (though I admit I did always want a Lassie in my life). It usually means more work and higher vet bills, but there you go. I feel like an abandoned dog myself too often... I guess I just love the little bastards ;·D no matter how ugly or weird they are.

Here's to doggies!