Animals | Page 2 of 3 | Coffee, Clutter and Chaos

Mar, 2015

Daydreamer Award: My dream animal…..

Thank you to “S” over at Doorknobs That Lock for nominating this blog for the Daydreamer Award! I’ve enjoyed her blog for years! We have TONS in common: two mom family who became a family with a school aged child, teenaged son, son is a Boy Scout, and a love for blogging. 🙂 I really love her photos too, she is really able to capture the essence of her subjects in her photos. They truly are beautiful!! Please check her out!!

The rules for the Daydreamer Award are as follows:

1. Thank the person who gave you the award.

2. Complete the challenge they set you.

3. Select a blog or blogs that you want to give the award to. (The amount of blogs you select is unlimited!)

4. Tell them about it and set them a challenge.

(Please include the rules in your post)

So my challenge from S is: Describe your dream pet(s) — what animals would you share your life with if you could?

This is a great question because I already have more animals than I should…lol In fact, someone once told me that a person qualifies as a “cat lady” when the number of cats you have exceeds the number of people in your household. When we had 4 kids living at home the ratio was perfect since we had 3 cats. Then i saw this adorable tabby at the ASPCA, and he just practically threw himself at me……how could I refuse those big green eyes????? So now we have 4 cats. We would have still been okay, but then (as they do) the kids started growing up and moving out. The oldest two moved out, but technically we are still okay because we have 4 people who live here with 4 cats……that means we are still one person/cat ratio away from being “cat ladies”. The bad news is one of the kids graduates in a couple of months. Luckily he will not be moving out right away….as he is planning on living at home for a couple of years and going to Community College. Also we have one very old cat….

But those really aren’t my dream animals….. If I could have an animal that I could really build a relationship with, it would be a horse. Not just any old horse, but the horses I had the privilege of seeing while I was visiting my friend Gail in South Dakota. She is a Cheyenne Indian and is married to Alex Richard who is the great grandson of Chief Red Cloud, the famous Lakota Chief who treated with the US Government in the 1800s. Gail and Alex have some beautiful land, and their neighbors in Lonesome Valley are members of the White Plume tiospaye (family). These family members have horses and buffalo, and many other majestic creatures on their land. The horses that Percy White Plume has on his land are beautiful, domestic and strong!

They were majestic creatures with just the right mix of domestic and wild. Domestic enough to be sweet and safe, but wild enough to be true to their Great Plains spirits. Here are some pictures of them:

The horse that caught my eye was the Paint (brown and white) horse in the third picture. He is the leader of this group and he is magnificent. This group of horses walked right up to my car, and put their heads in the window, as if they were looking for a treat.

So although I do love my cats and my dog, my dream pet would be one of these horses. But I guess they wouldn’t really technically be a “pet”, but instead a companion because I would never want to break their free spirit…..

I would like to nominate Robyn over at Breastfeeding in Combat Boots for the Daydreamer award and my challenge to her is: to tell us about her Dream gig. She is an author and motivational speaker so I would like to know where is the dream place for her to talk about breastfeeding and why?

The Most Amazing Dog I have Ever Known!!

In tribute to Throw Back Thursday (#tbt) I have decided to repost the FIRST blog post I EVER wrote. In 2008 I decided I wanted to write. My blog was called “Glass Half Full”. My writing style was a bit different, but not so much!

Have any of you ever had a “forever dog”?

This is the animal that rides in your car to do errands with you, the one who you confide in, tell your problems to, is your best friend, playmate and psychiatrist all in one. This is the dog who turns a horrible day into a fabulous day merely by greeting you with love an affection. No matter how your day was, the minute you walk in the door, you are the most loved and important thing in the world!

I have had the joy of having a forever dog. Some people are lucky and have more than one in their lifetime. I have not been blessed in that way. Now don’t get me wrong, those of you who know me are aware that I currently have two dogs, and I do love them. But they are not like my Amber.

: BEST dog Ever

Amber was a dog who found me. In 1992 I was stationed at a Reserve Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I was outside taking a smoke break…..don’t judge….we were all young and dumb once…… , and this cute little puppy runs up to me trailing a rope around her neck and jumps on my white skirt with muddy paws. There were 4 of us outside. Why she chose me???? It was love at first sight. I had never even owned a dog in my life, but I decided that if nobody came to claim her by the end of the day I was going to take her home to care for her until her “real” owner showed up.

This was rural Arkansas folks….no chips…no tags…no collar. Just a rope. So I took her home, and within a week I decided she was mine. I named her Amber, and thus became a 15 year love affair. We did everything together. Ran errands, watched tv, went for walks, etc. I was young and single, and Amber totally filled my heart!

: Joe Cool sitting on Amber

She thought she was a lap dog, even after she turned into a 40 pound lab/pitt mix. You could never convince that dog she did not belong in my lap cuddling. She slept in my bed, and I even had an armchair that was “hers”.

During our time together I moved to 6 states with her, drove across the country with her, got married, had two kids, got divorced, and she was with me through it all. I knew I could always count on Amber for unconditional love and support.

: The Genius “playing” with Amber

She got out of the yard one day, and was struck by a car. She was about 9 or 10 years old at that time. The emergency vet was sure she was going to die that night, and gave her drugs to make her comfortable. He was shocked when Amber was making a strong recovery the next morning. I wasn’t. I knew what she was made of. She did recover from that head injury, although she lost her right eye, and had ruptured her ear drum (she was struck in her head by the car). She also had a new bump on her skull that wasn’t there before, but she was happy, and loving just as before the accident. She ran a bit crooked after that, but her injury never slowed her down.

Looking back on it, I do think it was that injury that eventually took her life, although I will never truly know. One day she started walking in circles and had nystagmus of her eyes. I called the vet, who promptly sedated her and thought maybe she had some vertigo going on that was a temporary thing. Amber was 14.5 years old. She recovered, but started walking in circles again within a couple of weeks. The vet decided she had a brain tumor and there wasn’t anything we could do except make her comfortable. She was too old for surgery, so we made her comfortable, and did the most humane thing, which was to gently put her to sleep. We were all with her loving on her when she died. Her head was in my lap, being covered with kisses by myself, my partner Karol, and our children. She was covered in a blanket to be kept warm, and we all laid our hands on her to comfort her while she gently passed to the Rainbow Bridge.

Amber was the best dog EVER!!! She was an amazing friend and confidante! She was my best friend. She is missed tremendously, and I will never be able to love a dog quite the same way. I can only wish that everyone can have a love experience like mine.

It was amazing!

Amber was amazing!!

I really miss her!

Nov, 2013

The three P’s: Puke, Poop and Pee

Have you heard of the three R’s??

If not, that means you are a young’un, so I will tell you. They are: reading writing and arithmetic. Now for those of you who have just heard this for the first time I KNOW arithmetic and writing don’t start with “R”, just go with it okay??? I did not make it up, so you can’t blame me….. if you want to know the origins of the phrase the Three R’s check it out here. So….moving on…

I only referenced the Three R’s to talk about MY version of the three R’s which in my house is known as the three P’s……poop, puke and pee. Although I have children (human children) the three P’s do not relate to them. Only on occasions when they are sick, or have had too many hotdogs (The Genius), or scarfed down his food too fast (Joe Cool), or had too much Mountain Dew and Candy (The Hunter).

In my house the 4 legged children are the owners of the Three P’s. It started years ago…….. When we moved into our current house we had carpeting in three rooms downstairs. The dining room, the living room and the family room. Within a short time Karol’s cat Max had peed all over the living room carpet, and so we laid down Pergo (to the tune of $500.00). Then he peed all over the dining room carpet….Pergo again…($700.00 there………it was a larger room). Not being satisfied with destroying two rooms already, he moved onto BIGGER territory and destroyed the family room carpeting. Again, we put down Pergo flooring (BIIIGG room…..$1000.00). Karol had to hold me back…I wanted that cat’s hide. But he was her cat, and although I cried, and screamed, and begged….I actually even tried reason alos. But no matter what I said she just would not give up her cat…….sigh…..and I would not give up her…so therin lies the dilemma.

Okay, back to the present. So now we have lovely Pergo floors in the downstairs rooms, although my beautiful Karol has not yet COMPLETED the floors, and I still do not have baseboards three years after the Pergo was placed….(if you know my Karol, please ask her to finish my floors…peer pressure might work…)

Well, besides Max the cat we also had a very old German Shepherd (also Karol’s animal) named Dakota. He lived to be 11, which is ancient for a 115 pound German Shepherd. Because he was old, he had medical problems of an old dog.. .arthritis, cataracts, bad breath, etc. Well, a few months before he died he injured his spine, and had to be placed on Prednisone, to reduce swelling, because he couldn’t walk. So we gave him prednisone and he got laser treatments at the vet and 4 vet visits and $500.00 later he can walk……….however, he was pretty much restricted to the kitchen because it is hard for him to walk on the Pergo floors because they are slippery, and it hurt his hips. One night after his injury we had steak for dinner and fed the scraps to Dakota and our other dog Bailey (who has also peed in my house)… BIIIIIG mistake. For days after we fed it to him, Karol would wake up to the pungent smell of dog poop. Did I mention Dakota is 115 pounds?? Can you imagine the size of the piles??? So like a good partner she picked them up before I woke up.

The Prednisone made the problem worse, because that caused him to have diarrhea. …nice visual huh? So, one day I went to school in the morning and came home to a smell I couldn’t quite recognize…..I walked into my kitchen and there was dog poop smeared from one end of the room to the other. Apparently Dakota had stepped in the poop and spread it all over the room……that was an AMAZING day!!! It had WIN all over it. Thank God for my Shark ……..

Finally, our last P…Puke. That P belongs to our cat Emmitt! Emmitt is my favorite animal. I really don’t know why except maybe that he is beautiful and sweet and loving….all attributes I like. So Emmitt is an indoor cat, all of our cats are actually. Emmitt is not allowed outside, so of course he sneaks out every chance he gets. We have taken to squirting him with a water bottle if he goes near the door, so he can’t dash out the minute it is opened. Well, there are times no one seems to notice him and he escapes and starts gobbling grass. He is almost always retrieved quickly, (4 kids, remember…..), and brought back in. However, usually within one hour he is making this horrible yowling noise which is immediately followed by him puking up the grass he just happily gobbled…….LOVELY!

This post is VERY visually appealing, isn’t it…..??

So, when I came home from school the day of the poop spread from one end of the kitchen to the other, was the same day there were two puddles of puke, one on my persian rug from Iran, and one in the foyer….AND Max had peed on the bathroom rugs, and I had to throw them away, as I had already tried to wash them from the last time he peed on them……sigh….

Our other animals have also contributed to the stains in our home:

Bailey- he also poops and pees inside, but NEVER pukes…..yet

So this is Bailey…he has pooped on the floor multiple times, peed on the chair he is laying in and on the couch (always when he is napping, so I think he has a bedwetting problem…can dogs be bedwetters?) And he has done something no one else has done….chewed a hole in the carpeting on the stairs all the way down to the wooden floor….isn’t that special?????

This is Ash. He has actually never puked in the house, or peed or pooped anywhere except the litter box

This is the baby, Rascal. He has puked, but never pooped or peed anywhere he shouldn’t. Good boy!!

Anyone need a new pet? I have some I MIGHT be willing to part with….but not Emmitt!!!!

Category Archives: Animals

Mar, 2015

Nov, 2013