Fish Stix

 In late October, Luke and Vannah returned to the barn with a neighbor's dog, mistaken for a stray.  

I contacted the owner and he proceeded to tell me that this is the 'dumbest dog he's ever met' and she's been hiding on our side of the road to avoid incarceration with a larger male dog who fought with her in the small chain link kennel. Gee, I wonder why she was hiding from her jailor and her rapist.  Short Stop was very pregnant.

I offered to keep her a couple nights until the storms had passed.  

For a dog that was dumb as a stump, she took to indoor living like a champ.  For a dog who was supposedly a maniac on a leash, we walked her outside on lead ropes without problems.  For a dog who would run at the first chance, as soon as I took off the shock collar she'd been found wearing, she never left my side. 

Her owner finally came to claim her after a few days.  The entire time of his 2 hour visit, she hid in a box cowering.  He stayed while I fed the horses and I let him talk. Upon hearing that she was 'immune' to the highest setting on the shock collar and how she didn't learn her 'lesson' when he'd sprayed her in the face with pepper spray, I decided this dog was not having her puppies across the road.  

The 'dumbest dog' in the world had been smart enough to find her way out of Hell.  Nov 1, she was on her way to a new life.

I learned that her name was Fish.  Boring, derogatory, stinky, yet she answered to it.  I rechristened her Fish Stix.

I never realized how much a pregnant dog could eat.  Her little frame consumed more food per day than Dax and Micah combined.

Since I've never had a pregnant dog in my care, I believed at any moment she was going to pop.  For two weeks, I checked on her every 3 hours. I don't think I've ever seen such a grateful dog.

True to the natural order of things, she decided to go into labor on the coldest night yet.  While I was busy shutting down irrigation systems and performing winterizing tasks thanks to an unpredicted 27'F; my friend Lisa swooped in to play midwife.

By 9 PM, Fish Stix had birthed 4 little guppies.

Lisa helped Fish Stix with the last puppy around 3 AM.  8 in all.

If I thought a pregnant dog ate a bunch, I was shocked to discover a lactating Fish Stix ate like a Saint Bernard. 

She was the most attentive mom.

For 3 months, Fish Stix was the barn mascot, taking care of her babies, lounging on the couch, following us around the barn.

Around 4 weeks of age, I started supplementing the pups with solid food because Fish Stix couldn't eat enough to grow all her little barracudas.

8 healthy babies.

It was indeed a Merry Christmas at the barn.

Meet Fergus:

 I adopted Fergus because his siblings picked on him.

The rest of the litter was adopted out through the rescue run by a neighbor down the road.  She exclusively specializes in puppies or small dogs.  Through her organization, all the remaining puppies made a 2 day overland trip to their new adoptive homes above the Mason-Dixon line..

Talk about gut wrenching to drop all my babies off to get on the transport.  

A bunch of Alabama kids in Jersey and New York now.  

The question remained: what to do with Fish?

I couldn't keep her, Fish and Pippins didn't jive, at all.

A Georgia couple swooped in.

Fish Stix has spent 3 months in their foster care, she's now a civilized girl who loves to play with her big brother and snuggled with her foster dad and watch TV.

She's now ready for her forever home. Fostering family rehabs service dogs, so their plate is full.  I don't know where to place her, my inner circle of folks at least have 2 dogs apiece; I have 9... shelters are overfilled.  

Does anyone want a stout little Velcro dog to brighten up their lives?

Can anyone help place this 3 year old, Heartworm negative, spayed little girl? She's up to date on all her vaccinations too. 

I could really use some help on this one... 

Raw Weirdness

 I held my breath all through 2021; if only 2022 could just get here. The irony is that it appears 2022 also has a bee in her bonnet.

Regardless, I've emerged from the roughest year of my life with a new resolve.  

5 surgeries this year, one of them major... I'm tired of being a warrior.  The next person who tells me I'm strong, I'm a fighter.. I'm clobbering them with a cast iron frying pan (OK, maybe I still have some venom left in me).

My ordeal with my dominant hand was very visible; but it was nothing compared to the effects of the twisted ovary.

  What we didn't know immediately was that the blood clots from it had traveled to my brain, my digestive tract, my liver and my legs.  It's been a year of playing Whack-A-Mole.  Six months of running to town before work to get shots of Toradol in my arse so I could work in spite of migraine headaches. I only took one day off sick this year.  That was the day I had a stroke.  F-ing good reason, wouldn't you say? It was February and I texted Luke to come to the house I was vomiting too much to get ready for work.  He showed up, I staggered through the house to him; tried to tell him how to feed the dogs, but I was talking gibberish; I pointed to the bowls and motioned to him what to feed. Then I limped back to bed and started a 2 month ritual of puking every day.  If asked that day, I probably would've told you the President of the United States was Daffy Duck.  

The irony to all this is that I've had a brain tumor sitting on my pituitary gland for probably years, messing ever so annoyingly with my hormone regulation, but nothing major... until a blood clot cut its blood flow and caused it to perform an epic Swan Song.  I have endured a lot of pain in my life, but the pressure of a mass ballooning in your brain, ungodly.  

Then one day in autumn, I slept a full night, then again the next day, the last CT Scan showed a mass that had stopped growing, weeks out from having the surgery to remove it. Now, I have a dead space in my head.  The specialists from Emory don't know what will happen next.  It could be engulfed by macrophages or just sit there and calcify. I don't give a flip what it does anymore.  

I practice gratitude every day, but in 2021, I was grateful daily for the small things, like not killing anyone.  Now, I'm back to being grateful for healthier things, like the way the dogs surround me when I study, or how the sun drops behind the trees and for a brief minute at dusk the sky bursts into a daiquiri and bathes the barn in pink light.  

I see things clearly now.  Animals, to survive, can't show weakness or pain.  No matter how bad things got last year, I plugged on at work and school, put in all the overtime, like nothing was dreadfully wrong.  

I recognize that look in another living creature's eyes and I can't turn away.

Unlike the Serbian electrician who lives with 750 rescued dogs, I can't save them all. 

 What I can do is run lean, go without sometimes, be humbled and grateful for all the food hoisted upon me from neighbors and friends, shop for discounts such as my groceries from Misfit Market... 

All worth it to support my hungry pack of canines.

I'm selling my TV to pay for my horse Fletcher's recent vet bill.  As Marie Kondo would say, if it doesn't spark joy in my life, get rid of it.  

What I do need are my dogs, all 9 of them.  It's my calling.

My salvation.  I would've checked myself out last year if I hadn't had a houseful of dogs depending on me.  Even the strongest warrior can be brought to his knees.

I'm back in fighting form now.  I want distance from 2021, but I don't want to ever forget a moment, it makes every minute now sweeter.

I'll always have an acerbic side that will walk to ends of the Earth to slaughter anyone who dares hurt a hair on one of my dogs or horses, but I now embrace my other side that allowed me last year to sit in the dark among the horses at night, weep and feel their breath on my head as they wondered what the Hell I was doing laying on the ground for them to trip over.

I don't care how ridiculous it would look to someone who sees me skid into the house on my knees at night so I hug and kiss all my dogs after work.  

Equally unflappable am I about my new bed arrangement.  I built multi layer beds so that all 10 of us can sleep together.  

There's a ground level bed for the old dudes.

A midlevel for Peter who is swaddles in his own fat and doesn't like to sleep under Scandinavian down comforters like the rest of us.

I'm loving the top bunk.  I bought it used and then proceeded to customize and seriously reinforce it.  

Me, a deep twin mattress and four pointers = over 400 lbs.  

I alter which bed I sleep in, sometimes I slink from one to another in the same night.  Pippins sometimes sleeps on the perch next to my head, sometimes we hog the top bunk for ourselves.

Life is good, with 9 dogs, unbelievably good.

Work hard, love harder, do your own thing.  

Jones taken by Carattini & Colon

They laugh at me because I'm different; I laugh at them because they're all the same.  Kurt Cobain