Exploring The Hypocrisy In Living With Dogs & Cat & Other Things You Think About When It's Stifling Hot Outside

 My husband would say my animals are the center of my life... (He's probably right to a large extent). In the past I strived to maintain a menagerie of reptiles, rodents, birds, fish,canines, felines and an equine to name most. But as I got older the upkeep became all consuming & I eventually cut back to dogs and Cat. 

I've always prided myself on being a level closer to my animals than most. Closer to the predators than the prey for sure. Never really clicked on the level I dreamed of with even my favorite Honey horse. Perhaps she knew she had a wolf on her back... 

 But seeing the wild ones, I get that. I feel that. The thrill when you connect with the eye of a mustang. Their beautiful wildness, a presence of its own.

But dogs...we know each other. I understand the pack mentality. I've got myself out of quite a few situations with strange dogs where I probably should have been bit. I walked into a yard once with a big male German Shepherd. His eyes said all was fine, come on it. He pranced and danced around me leading me up to the front door of the home. To my delight I spied GSD puppies pouring out of the garage, their little stumpy legs pumping hard to be the first one to greet me.Then came the jolt of something's not right...The bitch came around the garage door snarling and baring an impressive set of teeth. I froze... Then I felt the male dog behind me. He looked at me as if to say he had it all under control. He got between me and the angry mom and took my hand in his mouth and led me back out to the gate. I slipped though unharmed and thanked him. Truly an experience I will never forget. 

I wouldn't say I have the exact same connection with the spirit of Cat.  For the most part, cats aren't pack animals. The African Lion is the only big cat that lives as a functioning group. Felis domesticus hang out together, but they hunt independently.  I've ever only had one Cat at a time and it's always felt right. Cat is the icing on the pack-of-dogs cake. And Cat is always treated differently, much to the the dogs disdain.

Cat is allowed on furniture, dogs are not. Cat gets to relieve  himself in the house, dogs do not. Cat gets to come into the bathroom with me, dogs do not. (That one leaves hubby scratching his head). Cat is loved even when he is biting and clawing, dogs are not. Cat gets to approve when he is brushed and groomed, dogs do not. You see where I'm going with this. The only perk the dogs have that Cat does not, is outside privileges. I can contain the dogs, I can't contain Cat. I have a lot of guilt over that, but Cat seems to be pretty well used to it by now. He enjoys the large window sills when we can open up the house. The patio provides hours of entertainment apparently.

I've always wondered why it is the way it is. But then it seems to just be a part of the natural order and the difference between dogs and Cat. Dogs really have to mind their manners and listen to the Alphas, whereas Cat abides.

Then & Now

A trip down pet memory lane. At least from adulthood on. For some reason I can't find my photo albums from my younger years. I am sure its just my 56 year old brain malfunctioning...or at least I hope.

The Chino Years:

Puff. My first cat. Terrible picture of her. Beautiful long-haired white with gray. She lived to be 16 if I remember correctly. I got her when I was 19 years old living in Whittier, CA. She moved to Chino, CA with me and then on up to Oak Hills, CA.

Blue and I out in Apple Valley. I found Blue in Santa Ana, CA at the Orange County Animal Shelter. I really didn't have any business adopting a puppy, but I was young and dumb. My Ex & I lived in a rented condo. Just a patio for an outside space. No room for an Aussie pup to run. We used to  take her out to desert and let her run to her little heart's content. 

We ended up moving into a 27 ft. travel trailer shortly after getting Blue. No place for an active pup. Some very dear friends offered to take her. They loved Blue. She lived happily ever after in Red Mountain, CA with her own little pack.

The Oak Hills Years: 

Ben, Leah & Casey - My first real pack. Back before I was completely committed to only rescuing:-( All 3 of these dogs were purchased from backyard breeders. Something I would never consider now.

Ben was my first German Shepherd Dog. He was an extraordinary companion. He would let little kids pet and pull on him, yet snarl & growl at unsavory characters. I always felt safe with Ben. 

Leah was a dog I should have never had. Ever since I was a young girl I wanted a wolf hybrid (I know better now). Leah was advertised as part-wolf, part-shepherd. The conditions she was in were horrid. A tiny young pup thrown in with a litter of Doberman-cross pups that were much bigger than her. My Ex and I took her out of fear for her safety. We should have reported that kennel. It was pretty bad as far as living conditions for those dogs. Back to Leah, I don't know if she was part-wolf or not, she didn't get very big size-wise. But she had a personality bigger than the desert sky. She was one of those special canines that just seem to know what you're thinking before you do. She was a gem of a dog. 

Casey was my one and only pure Australian Shepherd. He was an incredibly smart dog as most Aussies are. My Ex taught him everything under the sun. He was definitely a one-family dog. He didn't like strangers and he didn't like going out and about unless it was running behind our house in the open desert. It was such a joy to watch these 3 flying across the hills and washes on our daily walks.

Leah on guard. 

Casey in my onion box before planting. 

Sadly we lost Ben to gastric torsion. It was awful. I hope no one has to ever experience it. After a while I found Buck, named after the canine hero in Call Of The Wild. 

Buck & Leah enjoying a day in the mountains. By this time we were leaving Casey home as he just didn't enjoy car rides and strangers.

Buck in the Rabbit Brush

Buck was a great GSD. Had a wonderful personality, but I credit Buck for making me realize I shouldn't ever support back-yard breeders again. As Buck got older he developed severe issues with his spine and hind legs. Not good breeding at all. 

Cat #2 was Minx. Minx came from the Apple Valley Animal Shelter. I went down one day to see what cats were available. I didn't really have anything particular in mind. I walked into the shelter, spotted Minx sleeping in back of a cage with a bunch of other kittens of various ages. She immediately woke up, stretched and sauntered over to the front of the cage and reached through the bars. When I asked the attendant to see her, she jumped up on the table and then on to my shoulder. That was it. Pack her up and take her home. She lived long enough to make it with me to Wrightwood and eventually to Yucca Valley with Mike & I.

Minx at 12 weeks. 

I loved the length of her coat and swore I would never have another long-haired cat again. (Ha Ha Ha!!!)

The Wrightwood Years:

It came time for another chapter in my life and I left Oak Hills & my little pack and Minx and I moved to Wrightwood, CA. Time to start a new little family up in the mountains! A dream come true!

Here is Minx meeting Mr D for the first time. Mr D belonged to a fellow Wrightwoodian & co-worker Mike.

I love the middle photo where Mr D is looking back for reassurance. Mr D was a kind, gentle soul and loved everyone. Minx was named Minx for a reason;-) 

Feeing the urge to get a dog myself I went back to the Apple Valley Animal Shelter. Sitting up in the front kennels lifting her paw to all the people walking by was a chocolate tricolor collie. I needed a dog that would get along with Minx and Mr D since we saw him often. The collie seemed to fit the bill and she had very little coat. A big consideration with a collie.

Fancy and I celebrating her first day sprung from the pen. 

After her brush and bath. 

The movie star. That was her nickname after a sweet little girl gushed over Fancy while we were out walking her one day. She said she looked like a movie star:-) I thought so too. Note the lush coat. Once she was on a healthy diet her coat grew in like most collies. 

Mr D eventually became part of my pack or rather, Fancy, Minx and I became part of his. 

Mr D loved his mountain home. 

But alas, it was time to move on. We packed up and left the mountains & headed to Yucca Valley with Minx, Mr D and Fancy.

The Yucca Valley Years:

Not too long after we set up house in our new desert home I was pretty sure we needed a 3rd dog. 3 has always been my favorite number when it comes to a pack. 1 is 1 and 2 is a pair, but 3 is a pack:-) So off to the local shelters I went to find a street urchin. I wanted a mutt. Nothing recognizable. And so we found Fiona. She was 1.5 years old and had just weaned 10 pups. The pups had all been adopted out and she was the only one left. She was shy and somewhat high-strung, but very sweet and didn't react to cats. We brought her home.

Minx was old by now and only lasted a year or so in her new home. After Minx was gone, I waited quite a while to find a new cat. My girlfriend here in town kept bugging me to come meet a cat that was quickly making himself not welcome in his (2nd) new home. He had originally been adopted from a local shelter by a friend of a friend and had been placed in a home with another male cat. That didn't work out, so my friends parent's took him in. This time he harassed their female cat so much she ended up living on a dresser in a bedroom and never coming out into the rest of the house. So this cat was looking for another home. Mike and I finally went to look at him. He was a super friendly cat as long as you were a human. He tolerated dogs, which was my only major requirement. So we promised to take him home after returning from a scheduled vacation.

And so begins our life with Chucky The Horrible...

When I brought Chucky home I thought I was taking on a medium-haired cat.

But then this happened...

Chucky tolerated dogs, but he harassed Fiona from the start. I guess he pegged her for the Omega. To this day we have to escort Fiona down the hall to the bedroom so Chucky doesn't have a chance to intimidate her. His name is well-deserved.

Fancy enjoyed a few years with us in Yucca Valley. I don't think she was all that happy in the heat, but her old bones surely didn't miss the bone-chilling winters of Wrightwood. One morning we woke up and Fancy couldn't move. She had a raging fever and was extremely lethargic. It had gotten to the point where we were assisting her walking in and out of the house as it was. We rushed her to the vet and it was decided that it wasn't fair to Fancy to put her through the testing and such to see what was wrong. Being that she couldn't function without assistance we made the decision to put her down. We held onto our beautiful movie star while we let her go.

It was the week after the 4th of July 2010 & as I was reading the paper I noticed the "dog of week" was a 10 year old chow/cattle dog mix that had been severely injured and turned in over the holiday weekend. It mentioned she was on the mend & would be available soon. I thought she was a doll, but wasn't really looking for a 3rd dog at this point. A few months later I notice her in the paper again. It was September and she had been in the shelter for 3 months now. I was intrigued. I went down and looked at her and thought she would work. I took Mike down & we made the decision to adopt her. The shelter staff had named her Mercy and we thought it fit. She came home with us and became the fearless leader of the Mushpot Gang. 

You can see the scars through her coat where she was sliced across her shoulders from elbow to elbow. No one knows how it happened. 

Eventually Mr D got old. It got to the point where he couldn't walk without stumbling & he was battling a reoccurring cancer. We made the difficult decision to let him go. A real rough one as Mr D was special. Not that they all aren't, but Mr D was top shelf.

It took a long time between Mr D & the next addition. I finally started looking at German Shepherd Rescue sites. I found a description of middle-aged male that was tagged as extra large. Said he was a little overweight and needed to get out and walk more. Fit me to a tee. Mike and I drove to Orange County and picked up the big guy. He came home with a "treatable" ear infection and more allergy problems than we guessed at the time.

Dunkel was huge and not leash-trained at all. Looking back adopting a 110 lb. dog that wanted to pull you down the street was not a great idea, but I had been given the impression he walked on a leash.  But we worked on it and he got better. 

His allergies and ear infection did not... 

 And finally here is what a GSD looks like after having a TECA (Total Ear Canal Ablation). Nice ways of saying removing both ear canals. He was a trooper throughout the ordeal. The hospital staff loved him. Animals are amazing as far as adapting to painful situations. Although deaf, he is better than new. Allergies came under control and every person he meets is surprised to learn he's deaf as he responds to visual signals better than most dogs response to sounds. He can also ignore visual signals as easily as he ignored verbal cues;-)

Mercy on the other hand was getting older and slower. Early on we discovered she really wasn't happy indoors. She didn't like walking on the floors and she paced nervously. She rarely relaxed. As she got older we tried bringing her in more and more but she just wouldn't settle in. It was honestly kinder to leave her outside. Something I had to get used to as I prefer my dogs sleep in the house. It was getting harder and harder for her to walk. One day we heard her screaming in pain and ran outside and found her "stuck" in a sitting position not able to get up. Her hind-end was failing her big time. We brought her in the house and penned her up in the kitchen and fed her beef heart for dinner that night. The next morning we took her in and let her go from the pain. 

After we lost Mercy I decided 2 dogs would be enough. It was about a year or so before I got the bug and wanted dog #3. After taking a few trips to local shelters I hadn't found just the right dog. I'd been following a shelter down in San Jacinto, about an hour or so from Yucca Valley. There was a red merle cattle dog I was interested in and a little mix of some sort that would be back up. We found both dogs in their pens. We took the cattle dog out and played with her a bit. She was in really sad shape. Broke my heart. She was covered in fatty tumors and could barely get around. We thought we'd look at the little dog as well. He was listed as a Norwegian Elkhound mix. I highly doubt that, but he was a silly little old man. He did his signature move and tucked his head and came in for a pet and I was done. This was the dog. Mike agreed. So homeward bound we were with this little guy.

After a few go rounds with names, Mike wanted to name him Tanner after the character in the Bad News Bears & I wanted to name him Squid. And so he became Tanner Squid. We now had a complete pack.

And that is where were are today, 3 dogs, 1 cat and 2 humans:-) Hopefully it stays that way for some time to come!