We Welcomed Two New Puppers

 We have a lot of animals. In the last year and a half we have welcomed a couple of young dogs who needed to be rehomed. One is a Great Pyrenees - her name is Luna. She is very BIG and very loving. She likes to bark which can be a problem since we have a neighbor who complains about all sorts of noises. She is on the right in this picture. Soft, white and hairy. Luna actually was supposed to live with my son and his wife - they live down the hill from us, but she would come up every day to hang out with the dogs at our house. When they went on vacation and we took care of Luna up here, she just didn't go home. She visits them now and then but our house is now home for her.

Noodle is a Golden Doodle who also needed a new home. Her owner had a sudden move and could not bring her dog because the person she was living with was allergic. So she has joined our family. Noodle and Luna are already best buddies. They look almost the same size in this photo but really Noodle is smaller than Luna. She is also very sweet. I am working on playing frisbee with her. She just hasn't quite figured it out yet. I can throw the frisbee for her once and then she just wants me to chase her around the yard because its "her" frisbee and she does not want me to have it. 

We love them. And they love us. Best way to be.

Dog Ears Go Flap

 Darby has a lot of ear problems. Some dog types just do. She is not a pure bred dog, but must have enough of something to make this an issue. 

When she was pretty young her ear flap swelled way up. Not sure what made it happen but it went away. But she has had a constant struggle with "dirty" ears no matter how much you clean them. She will get an infection in them and then after a few weeks she is good again for a while. 

Little kids can be like that too. Some just have ear infections. Some never have any.

Darby is having an issue with her ears right now. So she shakes her head and her ears go flap flap flap. She is on medication so in a couple of weeks she will be flap free again. 

Through it all she is a good dog. She yelps once in a while if her ear gets banged by something (person, other pet, doorway). Poor sweet thing. John is better at giving her medication. I am better at cleaning her ears. Teamwork. 

She is 12 or 13 years old, so getting on in years. She likes to lay under a desk if we are working in the office at home. Or sleeping in my father-in-law's room. He has the comfy chair, a nice rug and it is always warm in his room. A good place for a nap. At night she sleeps in a big dog bed on my side of the bed. 

If she wakes up at night she likes to have a dog cookie to make her feel happy and go back to sleep.

Just like my father-in-law, she sleeps a lot. Snoring and farting away.

Living in the Animal House

 I have a lot of different animals.... mostly here because of needing a place to stay. 

I will start from some of the ones longest here.

Darby is part pitbull. When her owner had to move to Florida, he could not take her since they had laws again pitbulls. I will tell you she is the sweetest dog. Not real big but solid muscle. She loves to go for walks. She sleeps on the floor next to my side of the bed. And when she can, she will take a piece of my clothing to bed to sleep with. We've had her since she was maybe 1 year old. She is now 12 or 13. Getting old. A little bit confused. Poor eyesight. Bad hearing. But when you rattle the leash, she is the first one ready to go and will pick up another of our dogs leashes ready to take them too. 

Kitty Bumpus is an outside cat. He was left here and is a feral cat. A wonderful hunter. Took a long time to get him to trust us, but we started feeding him and after a while he would bump against our legs to say thanks. Thus the name. We've had him at least ten years too. Occasionally he will get on my lap, especially if I am eating a turkey sandwich while sitting on the front porch. 

Mrs. Fuggles is an African Sulcata Tortoise. She walked into a neighbors yard in 2009. They thought it was the box turtle I had lost several years before so they called me up. If you know anything about box turtles and sulcatas, you will know they are quite different in size. haha. Anyway I walked down the street, took a look and said, nope that is definitely not my turtle. No one claimed it and they could not keep it so we put it in a wheelbarrow and brought her home. Put her in the fenced area around our shade house. After I had her for 3 or 4 months, one of the other neighbors mentioned it might belong to someone else on the street that had been taking care of a tortoise. They didn't even know she was gone. They came and looked at her (about a month later.) Said yeah that's her. But they never came back to take her. They dropped by one more time and then moved away. We saw the man several years later and he said - you have my turtle... Of course I thought - no, I have my turtle. I figure after 4 or 5 years she was mine. 

Anyway she is pretty funny. She loves watermelon and will come running to eat it. Or even faster if I put out an ear of corn. Watching her eat corn is like watching one of those funny old cartoons. Chomp chomp chomp... 

Regarding her name - -  Fuggles is actually the name of an English style hop. Our brewer said its not a very good hop. But I just liked the name. 

I had to come back and insert this part here - A friend of the family had a red slider turtle, Skeeter, that had always lived in an aquarium. I had a pond so we fixed it up and we put her there. Another friend had a red slider appear at their house. So we ended up with that one too and named her Tildy. Apparently they grow to fit their environment so Skeeter has grown a lot. Tildy was already pretty good sized but she has grown too. We have fixed up the pond area with lots of plants in the water (we have the most ginormous water hyacinths I have ever seen) and out. And of course added some gold fish that the herons come and eat every once in a while.

Next up is the two kitties. But they were gifts to our younger son for his birthday one year. They are brother and sister. Pumpkin, the orange one is a feisty little girl. Marshmallow used to be pure white, but now how orangey brown tips on his fur so he looks like a toasted marshmallow. He is shy and very sweet. 

When we moved my Father-in-law down here to live with us, we also brought his Border Collie, Bella, and his grouchy feral cat, Matilda. Darby loved having Bella to hang out with her since she had been missing her friend who had passed away.  Matilda decided I was her pet so she moved into our room and bosses everyone around from there. Darby was fascinated with the lift chair we had for grandpa and stays there a lot. To heck with grandpa using it.

This year we had a sudden influx of new puppers. In February my oldest son and wife (they live in our office down the hill) took in a Great Pyrenees dog who was 15 months old. She had been in two homes already, the last one being an apartment. Way too small for a big dog. She stayed at the kids house at night, but as soon as they let her out in the morning she was at our back door ready to come in and hang out at the "animal house". When they went on a work vacation, Luna stayed with us and she has not gone back home except for occasional short hour long visits. She was pretty skinny when they got her, but after eating at the kids house and then coming up here and eating with our dogs she has filled out to a nice over 100 pound pyrenees style weight. She is a very affectionate sweetie pie. She loves to surprise people by goosing them since her nose is at that handy height.

We thought this is a pretty full house. But a relative of a relative suddenly had one day to move and no place for her golden doodle to go, so she came to live with us in June. Since she had mostly been in a crate, being in a house with stairs (never been on them before), a big yard, lots of other pets and lots of love from lots of people, she felt right at home. Her name was also Bella but our granddaughter renamed her Noodle. She is the sweetest thing. She sleeps on our bed at night. It gets a little crowded when she stretches out - she is not a small dog. She also was pretty thin and weighed only 33 lbs and was always hungry. I took her to the vet this week and she is up to 44 lbs and looks much better. 

That's it for now. Hopefully the pet list is stable since the animal house is pretty full.