No Longer a Mommyblogger April 10, 2007

Oh man. I think I’m just going to change this to a blog about dogs. It seems to be all I can talk about lately.

The couple I talked about in the last entry? They have a lot of pets. Most were evenly distributed by the two (meaning she took the well-trained ones and left him with the shitty ones…who can blame her?!). Well, the husband (we’ll call him Bob) is working and grieving full-time and feels that he can’t provide his dogs with the attention they need right now. So being the nice friends that we are, we volunteered to let him bring the dogs out to our place until he gets settled in his new house. Big mistake.

One is the fattest black lab I have ever seen. The other is a greyhound, also fat. On top of that, they are the most hyper, uncontrolled animals ever. When I take Lucy out to go to the bathroom, the others are right on top of her and the poor girl doesn’t even get a chance to go potty. That works well for housebreaking a dog. So now Squeaks can’t even go outside to play because these dogs will knock her down or maul her (in a nice way — they’re not violent). And we’re supposed to have Sears out here to do new siding this week and I’m sure they’ll just love having the world’s fattest dogs getting in their way.

Needless to say, I think Bob is going to have to come get his dogs. In fact, I think he will be getting a call tonight. I don’t want 4 freaking dogs. Two was really pushing it, but the fact that one was a farm dog made it better. Not to mention, I don’t want to be responsible for what these dogs may do to visitors, neighbors, etc.

So I’m sure that the next few days will be interesting, to say the lest, until Bob gets these creatures away from my house!

I’m Dreaming of a White Easter? April 6, 2007

The weather has been so great around here lately: 80 degrees, shorts and flip-flops, we’ve even been doing yardwork and landscaping. And then today. Today came a cold front and now it’s freaking snowing! Snowing. In Oklahoma. In April. Like we haven’t had enough damn snow this year!

Because of the weather, I put the new dog out on the screened-in porch. I figured if she had to go to the bathroom, it would be better there than inside. Plus, it saved me from having to stand in the snow, waiting for her to go. But as we were sitting in the living room watching a movie, we heard an awful commotion on the porch. We both bolted to the door to find that the neighbor’s damn dog had somehow gotten onto our screen porch and was attacking the new dog! We broke up the fight and it turns out that Lucy is just fine (just a huge whiner). But the idea that that same dog killed my puppy only 2 weeks ago and is now attacking again is enough to piss me off. I told The Hubby that first thing tomorrow I’m going over there to tell them to keep their dogs off of my land. I know it’s hard out in the country to control them, but this is getting ridiculous and I’m scared for Squeaks to be playing out there with them running around. I’m to the point where I will shoot those dogs if they so much as step foot on our property!

And to totally switch gears here, I do have something to be excited about! Tonight I got to go to the bathroom and shower with a door!! It has been months since we’ve had a door in the bathroom. While there’s really no need for us to have one with just us around, I love the fact that I can close the door if I so choose! And if we have company, we don’t have to worry about them freaking out over the big gaping hole in the wall. Man, remodeling sure sucks sometimes…

Introducing Lucy March 26, 2007

We found a new dog! She is a precious Border Collie pup (about 4 months old) that we got at the shelter. I didn’t want to spend big money on another dog, after what happened to the last one. I first liked her because she will be pretty good sized when she’s full grown, which ups her chances of surviving out here, I hope. But now I’ve totally fallen in love. She’s got the best personality and temperament. She doesn’t bite, even playfully, she loves kids, and she’s already very loyal. The only problem is that she doesn’t realize her size. She has a problem with plowing Squeaks over by accident, but we’re slowly breaking her of that!

I was dying to post some pictures of her on here, but she’s very camera-shy. When I take it out, she hides behind the couch. I think the flash scares her! She’ll have to get used to it, though — I take pictures all the time! When I can catch some of her, I’ll be sure to post them.

The Whole Story March 21, 2007

Okay, here’s the entire scenario involving the neighbor’s dog. Before we moved in at this house, our blue heeler lived with my MIL here because we couldn’t have our pets at the house we were in. The neighbors got a female mutt. We talked to them about puppy control — our dog wasn’t neutered. Because we live in the country, it’s hard to keep the dogs in their respective yards unless you build a specific dog pen. We offered to go have Spur (our dog) fixed. They said not to because they were taking their dog to be spayed in a few days.

Fast forward a few months to find a very pregnant neighbor dog. She gave birth to 9 little Spur-look-alikes. We offered to help them find homes for the pups, but they had already placed them all except for the one they wanted to keep. We had the “we’ll get him fixed” speech again, but they insisted they were fixing her.

Now what we’ve got is the neighbor dog and the illigitimate pup who think they live here. We run them off as often as we can. We feel partially responsible for the pup (Lightning), as our dog knocked the female up, but we tried to keep that from happening in the first place. We’ve even built a fence, but they find ways to get in. However, our dogs never go into their yard.

When I got my puppy at Christmas, I never let him out without a leash. Just in the last month has he been allowed out on his own. We made sure that the dogs (even the stupid neighbor dogs) were going to be nice to him. They all seemed to get along really well, so I wasn’t concerned. Until Lightning killed him yesterday. I didn’t actually see it happen, but the damn dog had my pup’s blood all over his mouth and paws. That and the dog hasn’t shown his face here ever since. I thought my husband might have shot him, but he swears he didn’t. The dog’s guilty, I’m telling you. But because of my lack of hard evidence and because we’re partially responsible for the dog, I don’t think we can do anything about it. I don’t want to do anything rash because our neighbor is an alcoholic and I wouldn’t put it past him to shoot our other dog out of anger, only he would probably miss and shoot Squeaks or something.

I think I’ll have a talk with the wife, just to warn her of his possible agression issues. And then I’ll just get a bigger dog. One that can actually defend himself if this happens again. But I think we will definitely have a talk about keeping the dogs in their respective yards. We’ve tried to keep them out, now it’s up to the owners to remedy it.