New Safety Tip

No matter how funny it looks, do *NOT* laugh at the Saint Bernard when he trips over his own feet. While Harley is too well-behaved to bite or jump on you, he *will* hip-check you at least five feet. Ouch.

Um, Bella

Forgot to introduce Ms. Bella. She's a 13-inch Beagle who will be 6 years old on August 11.

Bella came to us from friends in Colorado. Bella behaved like a lot of other beagles, and decided she didn't care for the new baby. Well, the baby is now 3, and Bella was still alternating between being nice and attacking. When she deliberately attacked and bit the baby, Bella had to go.

Have no fear - here is where Bella will stay. My youngest is 27.

Weird things...

...that the dogs do. Yes, my dogs, even the long-term fosters, are strange. Or as my vet put it, my dogs come from shelters, so you can figure there's already something wrong with them.

Bella has her own kennel in the living room. Why not? Sally has her's, and Bella is even smaller. Since Bella is so short (or vertically challenged), I put a small (ie, holds *maybe* two cups) water bowl in her kennel, just in case she can't reach the 5-gallon bucket the big dogs use. So who drinks the water in the small bowl? The Saint Bernard. Two slurps and it's gone and Harley is mournful, depressed and still thirsty. And now Miranda has joined in with the "two slurps and it's gone" water bowl draining.

Bella again. She's gotten used to the big dogs - as in, she no longer hides behind the couch cushions, but instead goes in and out with them. Well, she's learned her lesson about letting off a warning bark in front of the dog door. Three giant monsters come barreling out the door, wanting to know just what had the nerve to invade their territory, and Bella is flattened against the recycling bin.

Bark likes to sleep outside on the back stoop. In the rain.

Miranda will not go to sleep until she gets a (used) snotrag.

Two years she's been here, and Miranda still can not climb a set of stairs.

All the dogs, as a treat, get canned dog food one night a week. It takes Sally three days to stop sulking that her every meal isn't sirloin bits in gravy.

I don't want to know how he does it, but virtually every morning Bark comes in soaking wet. Yes, even when it's not raining.

Local wildlife: 0 The pack: 4+ 1 opossum, 2 birds, 1 snake and countless mice.

Sally firmly believes that she's invisible when she's in her kennel. And she will bitch you out if you disrupt her fantasy.

When scared, Miranda used to hide under the bed. I say used to, because she eventually broke the slats holding the mattress up and brought the bed down on her head. Bed is now on the floor, Miranda has a kennel to hide in.

Harley likes to play a trick on all the other dogs. He lays in the doorways, blocking them entirely. Then he pretends to fall asleep. The other dogs know that, if they step over Harley, he'll get up in their face yelling, so they spend up to 30 minutes trying to figure out how to get past the furry barrier. Meanwhile Harley is watching with one eye open and laughing at them.

Rainbow Bridge

Elwood crossed the Rainbow Bridge on May 9, 2009. While he was only moderately ill, he simply gave up and willed himself to die. I think he was tired of fighting his physical and mental illnesses all his life. Elwood is seriously missed by myself and the rest of the pack. The house seems too quiet without a coonhound bellowing hello every night.

Thunderstorms and other phobias

It seems that, no matter what, I always have at least one dog who is phobic about thunder. This one is Miranda. Thunder starts rumbling and she forgets all her other phobias so that she can crawl up next to a human for comfort and safety. Meanwhile Harley barks. I think he believes that the thunder is another huge dog who is challenging him - so he yells a challenge back.

Sally? She sleeps through everything these days.

Coming to the pack!

A new dog will be joining the pack in the near future. Bella, a 5-year old 13" beagle has to find a new place to live due to her biting the child in the family she's grown up with. I have no young kids, have no grandkids, and have no kids who come to visit. (Those that are stupid enough to shove their hands through my 5' tall fence deserve what they get.) Since Bark will be going home in about 6-8 weeks, Bella being here will be a boon to Miranda - she'll have a new playmate then.

Photo soon. I have some, just no editing software on this machine. So, later....

E-Man

Mr. Elwood is up and down. Since going back on Previcox, his hip/back isn't quite so painful - in fact, he's only yelped once or twice, usually when one of the other dogs runs into him. However his appetite has been off the past couple of days and he's not really been eating. Maybe nibbling a bit and, as usual, begging for treats. The vet wants to wait a couple weeks before repeating his blood tests to see if his BUN levels go down and, at that time, we'll also sedate Big E and do xrays to see if it's arthritis, bone cancer, or something else. I think the vet suspects a neurological problem - I do recall there being a neurological disorder that is mainly found in coonhounds, but can't recall the exact details. Have to locate my hound health book again to check up on it.

Oh - one funny thing that I just remembered. Black and Tan coonhounds look, at least in coloring, very similar to Dobermans. Same markings in fact, but coonies have long ears and long tails - mainly because they're not docked at birth. I was fostering one young coonhound who was adopted by an older couple who lived in NJ. The husband had had a redbone and loved it. The wife was partial to little lap dogs. Anyway, they adopt Beau and off he goes to live the high life in NJ. One of the things we encouraged all adopters to do was to, within a week or so or adopting, take the dog to their vet to be checked out. The couple did so, and the woman called me that night, angry beyond belief. Apparently her vet had never seen a coonhound - so he told her she had adopted a Doberman. This was a "Doberman" with long ears, long tail and a deep bay. Eventually Beau did return to me, but not due to the breed confusion. Rather the wife won out - she'd never wanted another coonhound and complained until her husband gave the dog back up. All of which started a new practice in our rescue group - interviewing *both* spouses to make sure they both wanted the same kind of dog.

Need a Wig?

There's one thing I really don't like about long-haired, feathered, double-coated breeds - even though I have two of them.

It's not the shedding. Hell, they blow coat easier than the beagle mix, who sheds so continuously you marvel that she's not bald.

It's not the volume of hair. You can shed out a double-coat simply by running your fingers through their coat and gently(!) pulling. Or go for broke and use a slicker (though you'll go through about 4 of those each year. And forget about a Furminator. I don't care what the commercials say - they can not penetrate a heavy coat worth a damn.)

It's that, in the spring, every time they go outside, those long, lovely feathers on legs and tail pick up, and bring back inside, tons of pollen. Specifically, strands of oak pollen. Harley, as a rough coat, is the worst of the bunch because the pollen (and leaves, sticks and other bits) just don't sit on top of the hair, clinging for a free ride. No, it all buries itself deep in those curls and hides, making it nearly impossible to brush out.

I swear that if this keeps up, I'm going to start vacuuming the dogs.

Dead Things

Tonight was a first. I'd been out back, cleaning up the piles of poo, occasionally scraping up the flattened and mangled toy when I (finally) spot something that doesn't look quite right. I'm asking the dogs "Where did you get that toy?" when it dawns on me.

It's a dead oppossum.

There's at least one possum that lives (or lived) all the way in the back of the yard, hiding in the pipes that have been put down for drainage. Every 6 months or so, one of the dogs will head out late at night and start barking madly. A quick check with the flashlight, and the possum will be spotted crawling down the top rail of the fence.

I don't know which dog got the possum, or if it was dead and they found it, or if someone decided it was a really cool toy, but it wound up dead in the middle of the yard. It had been there long enough that rigor had set it, so I suspect it was killed in the early hours of the morning, just before I left for work. No gaping wounds but I'll be honest - I didn't check too closely since possums remind me of nothing more than giant mutant sewer rats.

Oddly enough (or maybe not so odd) my Hindi neighbor wanted to see the possum after I picked it up. He said he'd seen *something* in his yard late at night but wasn't sure what it was. Yep, it was the possum. I don't think he'll be asking to look at dead critters any time soon now.

And yes, I was *very* happy that this was one thing that Bark did not decide to retrieve and bring in the house for later playtime.

ETA: The Great Opossum Killer has been determined to be Harley. We figure he grabbed it to make it squeak - and it didn't. Harley was also the one who tried to steal the body back when I was picking it up.

Sunday Dinner

As an extra-special treat, on Sunday night the dogs get a can of food mixed in with some of their usual dry food. The minute they see the cans come out, they all start dancing in the kitchen. After eating, everyone hits the floor in a blissed out stupor.

Weird Things The Dogs Do

Harley loves to have his ears rubbed. I mean, *loves* it. Well, Bark is a jealous little sucker and, when Harley starts his happy moan during an ear rub, Bark gets all in his face. So there's been few and far between ear rubs for the Harley. Guess he got tired of waiting, because the other night he woke me up with his moaning. Seems he figured that if no one else would rub his ears, he would, and he was deeply engrossed in rubbing his head on the floor.

Miranda is terrified of wind - to the point that, when the wind blows with some speed, she looks for a place to hide. Her old hiding place was under the bed - until her big butt broke all the support slats and the bed went on the floor. There's now a dog crate (covered with a blanket) next to the bed for hiding. Will she use it? Nope. Instead she pressed herself flat on the floor next to the bed on the theory that, if she can't see a window, the wind can't see her.

Elwood is convinced that jelly beans are special pills that make scary things go away. Seriously. When he's having a panic attack, he'll go to the bin where the jelly beans are kept and whine and nudge it with his nose until someone gives him two. I have no idea if jelly beans are bad for dogs, but they stop the panic attack so does it matter?

Sally is fairly normal except for one thing: she hates all non-white people. I have no clue where she learned that behavior since I didn't adopt her until she was about 4 years old. But let a non-white person walk down the sidewalk and she's out there, rooing and alerting her ass off.

And people think that dogs have no personality...

The Pack

For as long as I can remember, I've had dogs. Ok, there was that short period of time in my 20s when I had cats, but I've sworn never to speak of it. At first, my dogs were beagles or beagle-mix. Now? Not so much.

There's Miranda, the almost 5-year old bloodhound. Bloods are goofy and are the clowns of the canine world. With that face, the wrinkles, the long ears and lips so big they have their own name, you can see why. They are ruled by their nose and by their ability to sleep anywhere, even standing up. Life is entertaining with Miranda round - she used to hide and sleep under the bed. Then her ass got too big and she broke the bedframe.

The 7-year old Saint Bernard is Harley Earl. He has a wicked sense of humor, and lives to play jokes on humans and fellow dogs alike. He's in charge of the house, but he's too lazy to keep tabs on everyone so he delegates. Unless there's a thunderstorm. Then he's out in the middle of the yard, barking his fool head off at the thunder. I swear he thinks it's another big dog, there to challenge him for pack leadership.

Elwood is the crazy 11-year old Black and Tan Coonhound. No, seriously. He's crazy. He hears voices. It will be 10pm, everyone asleep and quiet, and he'll bolt off the couch and run outside howling. Well, he'll start outside. He always stops and looks back to make sure his posse is following him. If they won't, he slinks back to the couch and grumbles for 30 minutes about how unfair life is.

Smallest of the group is, you guessed it, a beagle-Treeing Walker mix. Sally is 13 years old and rules from her kennel. The door is always open so she can meander as she wants, but she will literally spend 23 hours a day in her kennel. Considering the size/weight difference between her and the other dogs, I don't blame her.

Bark is this half-year's visitor. He's a 2-year old Golden Retriever, staying here while his daddy is in Iraq. Bark is... different. He fetches leaves. Usually those you've just raked up and he feels they should go back to where they were before. He has an unholy fascination with squeakers, and my yard is littered with flattened and de-stuffed toys that Bark has performed surgery on. He's also taught Miranda that the bathroom contains many fascinating items, such as toilet paper. A roll left out (or put on the holder even) is a roll that is no longer usable due to slime.

These canines, plus the Spousal Unit, are who I share my life with. So fasten your seat belts; it's going to be a bumpy ride.