Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

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  • One Down, Two to Go

    Darby has gone home.

    Her mom came by to pick her up, appropriately armed with a crate that is almost too small for Darby. Still completely suitable currently, but seriously, Darby will outgrow it so fast. This is really a big deal to me because it is the same size crate I used to keep all three of the puppies in together! Wow.

    First we did paperwork, and I told her all about the feeding schedule and amounts, and sleeping schedule. I don’t expect them to keep the same schedule, but just so that they can make a smooth transition. She asked a lot of questions, both about current things, and about how Darby came to live with me to start with.

    Then it was time to bring Darby down and hand her over. I came around the corner with Darby and the woman’s eyes lit up with joy. She took Darby in her arms and quietly told her, “I love you already.”

    Darby greeting her new mom.

    We put Darby’s first collar on her, a pretty pink collar hand-me-down from her new sister, a Cavalier, who has outgrown it. I had to make it smaller so it would fit, but I know Darby will outgrow it rapidly too.

    I was thanked very warmly for taking such good care of her and raising such a wonderful puppy. I was hugged tightly. I was told to call any time, and that I was welcome to visit Darby at their home.

    Maybe I will.

  • Last Darby Day

    Today Darby goes home.

    Darby was the last of my trio to attract the attention of an appropriate applicant. I was a little offended, because I sure thought she was adorable. At first she had no applicants at all, not even inappropriate ones. Luckily the phone eventually started ringing, and this past weekend she had a date and it went very well. Timing being what it is, she is the first to leave. Webster will leave on Saturday and Mindy on Sunday.

    This family seems like a great match for Darby. They have another dog, which I thought was really important for Darby. They have a large fenced backyard. They had a dog in the past who caused a bit of trouble, so I know that even if she turns out to be as clever as I suspect she will (I warned them) they will be willing and able to deal with it. They even have a relative who is a vet, so they always have somebody to call for health advice.

    Not only that, but they have also agreed to try taking in a foster! There was a dog that needed a place, and everyone was full.

    So, I was really happy about it, right up until the phone conversation last night when I needed to schedule Darby’s pick-up time. At that point I just wanted to scream, “Mine. Mine! MINE!!”

    I’m still happy about it. I know I don’t really want to keep her. We are not the right family for her. It’s just my life the past few weeks has been completely wrapped up in these puppies. They needed me desperately when they first got here, so I opened up and gave them everything they needed. They are now starting to get independent and really fun (and troublesome) and I just so want to see how they turn out. I am attached. It is a very different kind of attachment than I’ve felt to any of the other foster dogs, and different from my intense attachment to Bear. I suspect it is a watered down version of how I will feel when my daughter moves out. It is a proper and natural leaving of the nest, and I am glad Darby is ready. Except Darby will never come back to visit for Thanksgiving, and that makes me a little sniffly. Or maybe it is allergies.

  • Help Find Char’s Forever Home

    I had beautiful Char over for a visit today. She is such a terrific dog, and the right match for her has STILL not been found. This makes me sad. Both because I know she deserves her very own family, but also because somewhere there is a person who is missing out on this dog.

    We had a wonderful visit. Indy had a great time playing with her. Indy has been a bit bummed since Bear left us. The puppies don’t cut it for stimulation. The fostering thing is a balance. The foster dogs help keep Indy active, but if they won’t give her a break when she needs one, that becomes problematic. Char is nice to her, but doesn’t want to back off and let her rest when she needs her rest, and at almost 16 years old, my poor geriatric dog needs her rest. Playdates are the perfect solution with a dog like Char. She is playful and works to engage Indy. Indy spends some time playing, and then Char goes back to her foster home.

    As nice as it is to visit with her, Char really needs to find her people.

    Surely there is somebody out there who enjoys lots of hikes and a good long game of fetch. Somebody who would like to provide Char with snuggles and kibble and a good supply of toys. Please help Char find that person. Let her have a rescue story. She is very clever and would like to be trained and given a mission.

    Char is located in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. This is her petfinder page.

  • Who wouldn’t love that face?

    darby.

    Darby has a date tomorrow. I’ve been feeling sad that she hasn’t had any serious inquiries. Is stressed me enough that I tried making a commercial for her. Mindy got multiple applications for her, and Webster has had a hold on him from the start. Some people have called about Darby, but not followed through. When this happens I worry that our photos are not presenting them in a good enough light, or I am not doing enough to help them become a better pet (not so much with a puppy this young, there is only so much I can do and she is in the same place as her littermates). I suppose that makes me self-centered, thinking it has something to do with me, but I do want them to be appealing and interesting. The more people who apply, the better chance we have of finding that really special match.

    Darby reminds me of London, so of course I have a bit of extra emotional investment in her placement. Well, that, and the fact I MADE HER. Yes, I am super emotionally invested in all their placements. I always am, but there is something about all that bottle feeding and sleepless nights and feeding tubes and concern about keeping them alive that intensified it a bit over how I’d normally feel after so few weeks with them.

    I heard from Laney‘s family. She is doing very well. She is in puppy kindergarten classes and is super smart at learning commands. I’m so thrilled they have her in classes.

    So, fingers crossed for tomorrow. Darby doesn’t need multiple families to apply for her. She just needs the right family to do it. Laney only had one applicant too (Corbin had multiple – Black Dog Syndrome?), but it was the right family.

  • Mealtime at MsTori’s Orphanage

    [vimeo 20605572 w=400 h=300]

    Feeding Time at the Orphanage from Ms Tori on Vimeo.

  • Trendy Tilapia

    Tilapia has become quite the trendy fish lately. I see it on more and more restaurant menus. I hear people talking about eating it. I see it in “regular” (i.e. middle class) grocery stores at prices far above what it used to sell for.

    I have never eaten it, and don’t have any desire to. I’m not saying I won’t ever eat it, but I certainly won’t be making the choice to order or buy it myself. This is fairly odd, because I am generally an adventurous eater who is up for trying almost anything once.

    Tilapia used to be a “trash” fish, very cheap and found in markets in lower income neighborhoods, and I never saw it on restaurant menus. Now, that isn’t what I have against it. Lobster used to be a trash fish too, and I quite enjoy lobster.

    I feed my own dogs (never the fosters) a raw food diet. Now London was kind of known for eating anything and everything. He never want off his feed for little illnesses, he has only ever turned down food when he was literally dying. He also ate a door, a remote, a box of tampons (including the box, but carefully removing the wrappers), a Costco sized bottle of Liquid Advil, and the list goes on.

    Because a lot of what is great to feed dogs are odd cuts of meat that don’t often make it to the typical middle class white bread American table, I often shopped at ethnic markets or markets in poorer areas in order to find things like chicken feet, and lamb heart and the like. I like to give the dogs fish, especially being a husky and a husky mix, which as originally bred consume a lot of fish for protein source, but I don’t feed it all the time because of the expense. The dogs always looked on it as a special treat, and London was especially fond of salmon.

    Then one day I spotted tilapia in the market. It was below my protein price point for dog food, and I quickly bought a package to take home to the dogs.

    I prepped their food bowls that night and plopped them down and both dogs dug in.

    Then both dogs spit out the tilapia and stared at me, “What the fuck is this shit?”  No amount of coaxing or refusing to offer them anything else would convince them to eat it. They carefully ate all the other things around it, and left behind the tilapia in disgust.  They think cat turds covered in kitty litter is the best treat ever, and they outright refused to eat tilapia.

    So yeah, whenever I see it on a menu, or hear people talking about making it, I always just think of it as the one thing that London totally refused to eat.

    It just isn’t appealing to me.

  • New and Fluffy

    There has been a steady influx of puppies to the rescue all winter. This is not standard. Yes, some puppies are born year round, but there is a tendency for cycles to have it be a much lower birthrate during the colder weather, because this weather is harsh. Not only have there been a lot of puppies, but they are all coming from further up north, where it is even colder.

    Like, one mother dog was turned in with a litter of three puppies, but she had originally had 9 puppies and 6 had frozen to death.

    Anyhow, another puppy was transported in yesterday. An orphan, probably a half week older than our batch were when they came in. Since they develop at such a fast rate, that half a week makes a big difference. He is the only surviving member of his litter. Because he is alone, we’ll try to get him some time with our orphans on a regular basis so that he gets proper dog socialization, even though it will be a bit thrown off by their age difference.

    He is adorable. A puffy ball of fluff that right now looks a lot like a Burmese Mountain Dog mix, but probably isn’t, since that breed is not common in the area he is from.

    Anyhow, V stopped by yesterday to pick up supplies because mine are not on bottles anymore, and she stopped to let me meet him. She gave him a bottle here, which he took eagerly. Yay! Hopefully no feeding tubes will be needed for this one. After he was full and checked over for skin conditions, we let him meet our three.   He wasn’t really interested yet, he is a little young, but they sure were. Darby was the first to rush over to him, which I love, because I’ve been saying she needs to go to a home with another dog. She hurried over, body posture as friendly and enthusiastic as can be, “Hi! We should play! Let’s Play!” The other two soon followed. Mindy also was all friendly body posture, but more tentative, “Hello. How are you?” Webster was all boy dog. His stance was strong, and he wasn’t unfriendly, but he definite wasn’t friendly either. “Hello stranger. What are your intentions?”

    Unfortunately, all too soon the new little one proved that he has a serious case of diarrhea, so we quickly separated him from my gang, and did a bunch of cleaning. I then got out the precious stash of magic white powder that had stopped the onslaught of poo water from our gang, and passed it along.

    I’m glad nobody asked me to take him, because once I saw him, I couldn’t have said no, but I am still not getting enough sleep even though these are weaned. I’ll try to get photos of him soon.

  • Cuteness Saves Lives

    My precious babies have all reached the Piranha Puppy stage of development.

    Too bad I am not into body piercings.

    It is a very good reminder why I do not want to keep all of them myself, even though I kind of still want to keep all of them myself. Luckily, even if I went insane, the rescue would keep me from making that mistake.

    doggy bag.
    Mindy

    I am really, very fond of each of them.

    Mindy is very sweet and full of snuggles. She likes to play with toys and her litter-mates, but is usually the first to break off and head for lap time.

    Darby is the most adventurous of them. She is clever and a bit demanding. I think she’ll do best with an experienced dog owner, and would also do better in a home with another dog, to help keep her from getting bored.

    Webster is a Zen Apprentice puppy. Mind you, he has not mastered Zen, for he is still very much a puppy, but there is a little stream of calm that appears to run through him. He is very food motivated, which might explain his size and pleasant plumpness.

    Unfortunately all three pups have loose stool again.

    Meh.

    What? You thought you might escape without a poo comment? Wrong blog. So, back to the food tweaking for me.

  • Trash Talk

    One of the major WTF?s when I moved to Minnesota was the fact I needed to choose a garbage collection company. Everyplace I’ve ever lived before, there was just one company (or the city directly) that serviced any particular area. Some places we got a bill, other places it was included in our taxes, but there was no choice involved.

    Here, you choose a company. There are several different companies that service our neighborhood, and on trash day there are a stream of trucks from various companies that wander our streets. Sometimes people from other companies knock on the door and make special offers for switching companies. It is annoying and I don’t think it is very efficient, but hey, competition does keep prices down, and if you are willing to switch often, you can probably get really good deals because of the X amount free offers.

    We use Suburban Waste Services. This week, Monday was President’s Day. When there is a holiday before your trash pick-up day, everything shifts by one day. So, we (and many neighbors) put out our trash one day later than usual. Our trash did not get picked up. At that point I went to look at their website (yes, I should have done it BEFORE) and discovered that President’s Day was not one of their holidays this year. I had missed trash day. From what happened with neighbors, it seems like some companies servicing our area shifted, and some didn’t.

    This was totally my fault. They send out a schedule at the start of the year. I had multiple ways to verify when our trash day was, and I failed. It super sucked though, because we had A LOT of trash. Like, 5 person household, instead of our normal three, all the puppy related trash. Our trash can was overflowing, and overflowing with things that did not smell excellent.

    We sent Suburban Waste Services an email explaining that we had messed up and put trash out on the wrong day, was it possible to arrange for a pick up still?

    “We can get you picked up today, just leave it out and I will send a truck over.  No problem, have a great weekend!”

    Awesome. That is why I don’t switch to get free X when people knock on the door with offers. Suburban Waste Services has always responded quickly to our email queries, and they’ve always been helpful about any requests we’ve had.

    They showed up so quickly to handle the missed trash pick-up, that I didn’t even have time to take out yet another bag of puppy gross. That will have to wait for our normal pick-up day next week, which we’ll be sure to get right.

  • So Much to Type About

    Puppies!

    We still have them. They are up on petfinder now, but they are not available to go to homes until after March 9th, so we still have a couple more weeks of puppies.

    I believe that I can declare all three puppies weaned now.

    I’ve now fed gruel to orphans. I feel so Dickensian.

    No surprise, Webster took to it right away, “”Please, Sir, I want some more.” Darby was also enthusiastic, “More NOW dammit!” Mindy would eat a little, but mostly still needed the bottle, “Hmm, interesting. Okay, bored, where’s the bottle?” We got a couple of days in and it looked like we’d be able to do all meals as gruel, with no formula bottle supplementation, but then Darby wasn’t feeling well, and her appetite dropped off. So, back to the bottle for her. Then she was feeling better, but turned down the gruel. I tried a couple of different recipes, and finally hit upon one she was willing to eat. Now all three are eating enthusiastically, and I get to keep adjusting what I am serving them to move them closer and closer to eating just plain regular dog food.

    They are super adorable, but also a lot more active, which means a different kind of work. At first it was all about getting food in them and cleaning up massive amounts of poo. Now there is still making food for them and cleaning up after them, but there is a lot of keeping them occupied and doing the beginning stages of teaching them some puppy manners, mainly, quiet cuteness will get you more attention than OMG NOISY SCREAMING. This is where it really becomes quite clear (just like with Corbin and Laney), why it is not a great idea to get puppy pairs. One puppy at a time is so very much easier to train quickly, of course for these young ones keeping them with siblings is good. It helps to keep them warm and helps them become better dogs, but when it comes to permanent families, one puppy at a time is best.

    It has been endlessly fascinating to me to watch them change every 6 hours or so. They are advancing and changing so rapidly at this stage. They arrived here total squirmy wormies. Their eyes were open but they weren’t really seeing anything and connecting it to their brains in a meaningful way. It has been amazing to watch them turning into small dogs, step by little fuzzy step. I find myself overwhelmed by the feeling of “I MADE THIS!” which totally cracks me up. “You did not make a puppy, crazy lady. Go sit in a corner and be quiet.”

    Auxiliary Teen and my mother were both scheduled to go home on Sunday. Instead we had a massive snow storm. So, they both went home yesterday. Now it is time to find a groove of managing the puppies without my mother’s help. Last night was a little rough, but today is going better. Of course, as I type that, I realize I forgot to get kibble soaking in prep for the next meal, so I had better go do that now before I forget.

    Okay, kibble prep done. Once the puppies are hungry it is best to need to do as little prep as possible. Because they are rapidly changing, it isn’t quite a matter of regularly scheduled mealtimes. As they mature they can eat more in a single meal, and have more time pass between meals. I am glad to not be feeing them every 4 hours, like I needed to at first.

    Today we took the puppies outside. First they were “Oh crap, what is this?!” Then they became quite fascinated, and then they became cold and pathetic and we had to go back inside and get warm. The harder I play with them, the harder they sleep. Puppies sleeping is good. Let sleeping puppies lie, for sure. Sleeping puppies mean human naps, or human showers, or human meals…  hmm I think I forgot to eat lunch today.

    The house is beyond disastrous. We are doing some cleaning every day, but it never seems like enough. Puppies are messy and energy draining. There has been SO MUCH LAUNDRY. Anyhow, house is just plain embarrassing, and people are arriving in 8 minutes, and I am trying to be arctic fox about it.

    People came and went. We talked some webstuffs and then they visited with the puppies, because who could come to my house and not visit with the puppies? The puppies were excited to see new people, which is great. I am glad they are nice and  social still. They are not vaccinated yet, too young, so I can’t go dragging them to places like Petsmart so they get exposed to more people.  After some playing and interaction, they were ready for a nap and all three came right over to pile on me, or next to me. They know the difference between visitors and food provider, that’s for sure. Food provider is a good source of warmth during naps.

    Trying to shift their sleep and eat schedule a little bit tonight.  Wish me luck.