And then I start to cry… It’s been a rough week, and it’s been a fun week, and the fact that it’s been fun makes me feel guilty and then I start to cry. I feel so bad that I wasn’t here when you first started ailing, and that I didn’t do more when I found you that first night. But I was so worried about getting to the meeting on time (and I was late anyway), that I left you there under the porch and then I feel even worse, and the crying continues. I hate that I ever thought I wished you were gone. I want you back to pee on my sweater and ruin another chair. And it’s hard to type through the tears. I think about what the vet said (or rather what I heard her say as I was crying and holding you) and imagine I hear her reproach as we tell her we can’t bear the thought of another drawn-out death fight. Mali’s death was too much for us. I wonder if I’ll ever run out of tears. I suppose I should be grateful that I’m less of a slob because of you (actually, not really, I just learned where my clothes were safe from your litter box antics). But I’m not. I just remember your face as the vet carried you away and I want to take it all back. I haven’t told anyone you’re dead (well, beyond Brendan, who babysat while you died and the people in the meeting I missed probably guess what happened). I feel so bad, i don’t want to share it. It hurts as much as Mali did, and that was like a knife to the heart for months and months. [caption id=“attachment_767” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Auto[/caption] See more pictures of Auto

Today I read an excellent article on the state of the pet rescue industry—Who Killed These Dogs? on Dog Star Daily. This article hit many of the points that I have felt about the rescue environment these days. In 2000 when I adopted my family’s first dog, we walked into the local shelter, found a batch of puppies, played with two of them, and then took one home. Shasta was the most amazing dog. [caption id=“attachment_21” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Shasta[/caption] In 2005 when I adopted my family’s second dog, we went online and found a border collie puppy available from a local rescue. We set up an appointment, met the puppy, set up another appointment a day or two later for a home visit (for them to see our house and approve it), and a couple days later we got McKinley. Kinley is another great dog. In 2011 I started looking for another dog. I knew I wanted a larger breed dog, but all the online rescues seemed to have were chihuahua and pug breeds, plus some pit bull mixes. I have a kid, so the dog had to be either young or confirmed child friendly. But the fact that I had a kid under the age of 12 got my applications automatically rejected by several of the rescues I contacted. I found a gorgeous looking Pyr-cross that was listed at a Seattle rescue. But we couldn’t actually meet her, because well, she was listed in Seattle, but she was being fostered in Southern Oregon, and no, I couldn’t drive 10+ hours one-way just to meet a dog (not to take her home, that would require a second trip, after another home visit). [caption id=“attachment_698” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] McKinley, considering herding someone[/caption] I am a writer so I don’t have a lot of money, but nearly all of the rescues I could find were rescuing the “un-savable”. These are the dogs that need $$$$ in vet bills right after you walk out the door with them. Yes, it’s sad, and yes, the rescues are honest about it. But frankly, I can’t afford health care for myself, so rescuing a dog that needs a mortgage payment in vet bills right after we walk out the door (never mind the often huge “adoption” fees…) was not going to happen either. I felt extremely fortunate when in 2012 I walked into a pet store to buy food for our existing pets and happened upon a rescue event with some Aussie/Husky puppies. They had a girl puppy, she was reasonably friendly, bright eyed and seemed healthy and happy. I put down a deposit on her and called my husband and son to come down and see if they liked her. They did, so we bought/adopted her. Was she from a puppy mill? I don’t think so, but I don’t know. Did I buy her from a rescue? Well, they told me that’s what they did, but I wasn’t put on a mailing list nor have the solicited donations from me every week since I brought Storm home, so I suspect that it was really the pet store just calling it a rescue. Do I feel bad that I didn’t instead save one of the million pit bull/chihuahua crosses with heart defects that will kill them in three weeks if they don’t get a daily dose of $50 per pill medicine and an annoying habit of biting anyone that comes near them? No. Okay maybe sometimes, for the cute ones. [caption id=“attachment_595” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] My youngest dog, Stormageddon[/caption] In Washington state, where I live, there are very few (if any) publicly run shelters. But there are at least 10 dog rescue organizations in my rural area. And most of them get their dogs, not from local people having puppies and not knowing what to do with them, but by calling shelters in California and adopting, en masse, every dog that is going to be put down in the next week/month. Then they blanket the internet and the local media with pleas for foster and “forever” families to come forward and take on these animals. These pleas are accompanied by a cute photo of the “death row dogs” and minimal information about them other than “the shelter people really loved her” or “she growls a little at other dogs and really only likes women, but I’m sure there’s a perfect home for her somewhere.” Stop making me feel guilty because I want a dog that will work with my family, rather than the random sick drop-kick dogs you are trying to hawk.

[caption id=“attachment_673” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Don’t put that on me, dude[/caption] I’ve started doing the Firepole Marketing Great Online Marketing Scavenger Hunt. And it’s been a lot of fun. The first week I was very focused on it, but the second week I realized that I needed to do some other, actual, work. The great thing about this is that I’m getting practice at doing things to help my site(s) get better and better. For example, the above photo I took of my dogs, McKinley and Stormageddon. They were offended that most captioned photos on the interwebz are of cats. So they wanted to pose for a picture too. But posing for a picture while wearing a fire hat, not so thrilling. I took one of Auto too:

In order to open our gate, I have to crouch down to dog level, reach my arm through the slats in the gate to pull up the latch and then push the gate open. Normally, this is a pleasant opportunity for my dogs to greet me. McKinley will push his head through the slat and Storm would jump around trying to find the best way to get to me. [caption id=“attachment_593” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Stormageddon and McKinley guard the gate[/caption] But today McKinley didn’t come to the gate right away, and this gave Storm the chance to get right up to the slats where my face and arm are reaching in. Normally, I would just let her lick me, open the gate, and move on. Today, when she licked my arm, I looked down and saw sludge. My friend was telling me about how she had to clean up after her cat threw up this morning. Apparently the cat had eaten a spider and the spider egg sac. When it threw them back up the egg sac opened and all the baby spiders were crawling around in the cat barf. That’s pretty gross. Another friend was asking on Facebook for suggestions for what to do when a 4-year-old toddler pukes in the car on a road trip 1 hour away from anywhere. That’s also pretty gross. When I told these stories to my husband, he reminded me of the last time Jaryth got sick. He wandered around downstairs crying “Where’s mommy?” I came out of my office, picked him up, asked what was wrong, and he threw up in my face. That was exceptionally gross. But all of these things were surpassed today when I realized that I had been licked by a puppy with a mouthful of half-eaten slug guts. I thought cleaning her mouth of slug guts was bad. Being licked by that mouth is worse. Thank you Storm, for helping me develop a very strong anti-nausea reflex. [caption id=“attachment_595” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Stormy shows that she has no slugs on the menu right now.[/caption]

Stormageddon is a great dog. She’s smart, and very friendly and happy, and she loves to eat. I should clarify, when I say she likes to eat, I should say that she likes to eat anything that even slightly resembles food. Other dogs in my life have liked to eat, and liked food, but not to Storm’s extent. She eats just about anything.

• Grass and grass clippings are a favorite. Shasta used to roll in grass, turning himself green, but as far as I could tell, beyond the occasional snack, he didn’t eat grass.
• Paper, especially paper that might have had food on it at one point (like a dirty paper towel or a tissue). McKinley used to raid the trash can for tissues, but he just chewed them and spat them out. Storm may be spitting them out, but it’s hard to say, in the blizzard of tissues when she’s found one.
• Of course, people food makes her almost manic, like most dogs. I carried some cherries out to the hammock, and I thought she was going to jump into the bowl she wanted them so badly. I wouldn’t give her any, mostly because I was afraid she’d eat the pits as well as the cherry flesh.
• But the worst thing that she eats regularly is slugs, well, slugs and snails.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, and one thing we have a lot of is slugs (and snails). I tell my friends my puppy eats slugs and they say “ooo, can she come to my garden?” But they don’t understand the true horror of it. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve been trained from a young age not to like snails and slugs are a close second. My mother used to have me step on the snails that she found in her garden. At around age 10, I thought to ask her why she didn’t just step on them herself. “Because I don’t like it when they scream,” she answered. To this day, I can’t step on a snail without cringing. And that is after I even asked a High School science teacher if snails could scream when you stepped on them. He told me that any whistle or squeak sound you might hear would only be the air escaping from their shell as you crushed them. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I wasn’t relieved by that explanation. But screaming aside, that’s not the problem with Storm and her favorite snack. After all, slugs don’t have a shell to whistle or squeak when puppy teeth crush them. No, the problem is that slugs are like peanut butter. They glue themselves to her mouth. She walks around after eating a slug with slug guts dripping from her jaws. Literally! Yesterday morning I thought she had grass hanging out of her mouth. So, before I let her come in I reached in to get it out, and we almost discovered if she’ll eat barf. Who am I kidding, of course she would! Slug guts feel exactly as disgusting as you might imagine they do. Luckily she’s cute. [caption id=“attachment_598” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Luckily for her, she’s cute, even if she does steal my chair[/caption]

[caption id=“attachment_574” align=“alignnone” width=“300” caption=“Storm and McKinley playing with the tug”][/caption]
McKinley is enjoying having someone to play with.

So, this morning we got back from our shopping trip and walk and I brought in the grocery bag (in my reusable wolf bag) and the cat carrier we are using to transport our new puppy in. [caption id=“attachment_456” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“Stormageddon the day after we got her”][/caption] I thought about being lazy and just put the kennel down and thought, “No, I’ll put it away right now, so it’s not cluttering up the kitchen.” I then walked to where McKinley’s leash and backpack go, put them away and then walked to the storage area and put away the carrier. Yay me! [caption id=“attachment_457” align=“aligncenter” width=“300” caption=“McKinley’s leash hung up by the door”][/caption] A few minutes later I realized that I hadn’t put away the groceries. So I went back to the kitchen where I’d left the bag to put them away. No bag. But Jaryth had moved the chair by the door so he could get a cup of water from the sink. So, I guess he moved the bag. Started searching the most likely areas a toddler would put a bag of groceries—in other words I looked around the kitchen floor. No bag. So I looked in the living room and dining room. No bag. “Jaryth, do you know what happened to the grocery bag? You know, the one with the wolf on it?” Blank stare, still no bag. Mark starts helping to look about then. He looks outside where Jaryth had been playing in the rocks, in the barn, in the shed, in the trash cans, in the car. No bag. I am starting to wonder if I imagined buying groceries. As the bag is no where! I give up looking, and decide to take Storm, who has woken up with all the commotion, outside to do her business. Mark comes out and says “I found it! Now you have to find it!” Of course, I’m thinking “I’ve been looking for it for the past 20 minutes, what makes you think I could find it now that you’ve found it?” He asks, “What else were you carrying when you brought in the bag?” For those of you playing along at home, go back and look at the second photo in this post. Note that BEHIND McKinley’s backpack is a bag with a wolf on it. [caption id=“attachment_458” align=“aligncenter” width=“199” caption=“what the leash rack should look like—sans bag”][/caption] Most of the time, I do the stupid things done in this household, much as I’d like to lay the blame on any toddlers or animals in the vicinity.

Every dog I’ve ever owned came from the pound or a rescue organization (okay, Homer might not have, but my parents got him before I was born, soI don’t think he counts). But wow, trying to get another dog now that I’m not likely to burst into tears at the though of Shasta has become, ahem, challenging. Some of the challenges:

• every rescue I’ve found lists their available animals on Petfinder. This isn’t a challenge by itself, but it means that you have to use that system to find a suitable animal. And because most of the rescue organizations at best make guesses regarding breed, age, health, training level, whether they like kids or cats, etc. The data is, ahem, suspect. I can’t tell you how many dogs I’ve looked at after searching for “cat-friendly” dogs, narrowing it down to 7 or 8 animals, and having the description say “this dog cannot, under any circumstances, go to a house with cats”. I finally gave up using that search parameter, as it was useless. Same goes for the “young children” parameter.
• just like when we adopted McKinley, there is a huge “application” you have to fill out to even meet these dogs. It’s annoying to me, as I’m sure I’m instantly put on their mailing list (well, instantly in the form of whenever they get around to reading their mail. They don’t let me see any animals or even answer my mail, I just get added to the mailing list. (I’m betting on this, I have no proof, yet)
• but the rescue places are all staffed by volunteers so they don’t have a lot of time to read or respond to email, even if their site says “you’ll get a reply within 72 hours” I figure this must mean hours on Jupiter or something.
• the aforementioned application includes tons of questions about your home, lifestyle, vet, trainer, groomer, etc. which is fine, but so far 2 out of 3 have required references, one required four references - including how long they’ve known you and in what capacity, and they can’t be relatives. (because, I suppose, we all know that Aunt Mary who has been with me and my dogs all my life might be biased and give me a good review, while my co-worker Sarah, who barely even knows I have a dog wouldn’t be…

I just wish it were a little easier. I mean, when we got Shasta, we just walked into the pound, saw him, decided to play with him and his brother, then decided to adopt, filled out the form, paid the fee and went home with a dog. When we got McKinley from Rescue Pup, I found him (on Petfinder), asked to see him, met him, filled out the application, they came and visited our house, and we adopted him. It took more than a day (because of the home visit) but definitely no more than a week. I’m currently on week 3 of trying to find out more about Hope, Darla, and another dog who’s name I’ve now forgotten. I got an answer immediately about Darla, saying “you sound perfect, please fill out an application” so I did, and then nothing. I didn’t get an answer about asking to see Hope until today and all it said was “please fill out an application” when there was nothing on the Petfinder site about an application or anything. I had to dig around to find what I think is the correct application. And finally dog #3 they haven’t answered yet (that’s the one that said I’d get an answer within 72 hours - Jupiter hours, I’m assuming). I would go and adopt from Rescue Pup again, except that all they have are blue heelers, which they won’t place with kids. Since I remember what Brendan’s pant cuffs were like (they are called “heelers” because they bite the heels of the cattle they are herding, and if they don’t have cattle, they bite the heels of the children they are herding), I don’t blame Rescue Pup, but it is annoying because I understand that about that breed. What’s sad to me is that the difficulty I’m having makes me want to go to a breeder. Do you know of any “mutt” large dog breeders I can visit? Luckily the pet store that we go to only gets drop-kick dogs in their puppy consignments, so I’m not tempted to go there to get a dog. But man, if they had any large dog puppies (great dane, mastiff, great pyrenees, akbash, shepherd, wolf hound, etc.) the only thing that would probably stop me is that their prices are insane. So, hopefully my application for Hope will be considered, and maybe I’ll be able to go visit her later this week or this weekend. But I’m not holding my breath.

Went to the vet with a limp, came home with terminal bone cancer. 9 years isn’t enough!!!