Mama On The Move

Going on a trip with the dogs along is always entertaining. Especially for Katie, who has her leg in a boot and is trying to keep it propped up to keep the swelling down. Katie has to sit in the middle row of seats and the dogs don't like to stay in the rear by themselves no matter how hard we try to make them. Here are some of the positions they found themselves in on our latest trip to Georgia!

I just took all three dogs out at once for their last walk of the night.  It's usually not difficult to control them all.  They are usually very well behaved. Tonight on our way back to the house, we saw a black cat sitting on the side of the street carefully observing us.  Of course, all three dogs lost their minds wanting to get closer to it.  We live on a very narrow street so I crossed as far to the left as I could, trying to keep the dogs as far away from the cat as I could.   They stretched as far as their leashes would allow, until they were only a foot from the cat's face, all of them barking hysterically.   The cat never blinked. I dragged the dogs the rest of the way down the street and the cat decided it would saunter along behind us juuuuuuuust out of reach.   I think I heard him giggle. Leo and Gus were so enraged at not being able to reach the cat, they decided to just attack each other.  I'm sure this was high enterta...

Kerry and I picked up the dogs from the kennel today.  They had been bathed and smelled really nice, but hair was coming off Ringo in handfuls.  I asked Kerry if he would take Ringo outside as soon as we were home and brush him to get all the loose hair off. Kerry texted Emily, "Can you locate Ringo's brush, please?  He's shedding like crazy!" EXCEPT.....the phone autocorrected the word "shedding".  It was a similar word that meant Ringo was actually pooping a lot. Please tell me you get it. Emily texted back, "Woah.  Not sure the brush will help with that.  Try giving him some toast."

Sweet little old neighbor man likes to take his dog off the leash while out walking. Too confining for poopsie, I guess. Comes face to face with me and Katie and our three dogs all safely on leashes. His dog determines to murder Ringo. Much fight. Many screaming. I fell flat on my back trying to haul the puppies backwards. Katie managed to drag Ringo backwards and wrap his leash around a tree. Sweet little old neighbor man is wanting to help me off the ground while I am still trying to keep his dog from eating my puppies who are valiantly trying to defend the family honor. Finally convinced him at the top of my lungs to just get his dog out of my yard and I would be able to get myself up. And I did too. I now have one skinned elbow, a skinned foot, and rope (leash) burns to my right arm and right leg.

 Ringo is sad when Emily is away at college.  He likes to sleep in her room with her when she is home.  When she's away, he goes up to her room every day to see if she is there, then he comes back downstairs and sleeps on the sofa. When she comes home from college, he cries and rubs all over her as if she's been gone a year.  He even did it when she'd only been gone two days ! Emily came home today and Ringo was wailing joyfully that she was home.  Once he calmed down, Emily tried to take a selfie with him to commemorate their reunion. Ringo was having none of it. No selfie for you! On a side note, isn't Emily gorgeous?!?!

We had an electrician and the owner of the house we live in come over today to fix a couple of things. The puppies greeted them with great enthusiasm - jumping up on them, barking like crazy.  I'm having a hard time trying to teach them to behave!  Ringo sniffed them and followed them about the house.  The electrician thought Ringo didn't like him because the hair on his back was standing up.  I told him it's always like that and Ringo liked him just fine. After they left, I asked Katie to walk the puppies.  I was surprised Ringo didn't come surging forward to go out as well.  Usually if anyone walks the puppies, he thinks he needs to go too. I started looking around for him and couldn't find him.  I called upstairs to Ben to see if Ringo was up there with him.  I thought he said yes and I continued fixing dinner. When dinner was ready, Ben came downstairs and said, "Where did you find Ringo?" "I thought you said he was upstairs with you...

Tonight, the girls were walking the dogs down the street of our new neighborhood. A neighbor was walking her two dogs who are about the same size as Ringo.  The puppies started barking at the unfamiliar dogs and those dogs took it as a personal affront. They charged at the girls, snatching their owner off her feet and dragging her through the gravel.   Ringo stepped up to protect his family. Emily said it all happened so fast.  The other woman was incapacitated on the ground and couldn't pull her dogs away but she hung on to their leashes so at least Emily was able to yank Ringo back and out of the fight.  He was bitten in the face.   Katie took all three of our dogs back to the house while Emily helped the woman up and made sure she was all right. Ringo is our defender!

We were so excited to get home from our Thanksgiving trip and get Ringo out of jail. We had boarded him at a new kennel as all the other kennels we've used had filled up.  We warned the kennel man that Ringo had recently lost his brother and this would be the first time he had been in a kennel by himself, ever.  Ringo has a whooping cough style of bark that can really get under your skin.  I've taken him to groomers before who called to tell me that Ringo "is really letting us know he wants to go home."  I was afraid the kennel man would just turn him loose after the first day of listening to him sound his distress over being left there. When we went to pick him up, the kennel man told us that Ringo didn't bark.  He also didn't eat for his first two days there.  Then he finally gave Ringo a can of food instead of the dry food we had left for him and then Ringo was his best friend.   The girls went with us to pick him up.  We had barel...

Now that we are back home with the dogs, we have started the slow process of watching Rigger go down by degrees. It's so odd that one day he was mostly fine and walking around and the next day he was unable to walk and so terribly sick.  We knew this time was coming, I just thought it would be different somehow. He doesn't want to eat much.  Foods that he loved before have no interest for him now.  And there were very few foods that he didn't love.  He spit out an onion once.  And once at the vet when he was younger, he refused an organic dog treat.  I think that's about it for his list of "no" foods. Now he will eat only ham and chicken, and even then he refuses those about half the time.  He doesn't want dog food, even the canned kind, which was usually enough to make him knock Ringo over trying to get to it.  We tried to give him Pediasure for the vitamins, he wouldn't even try it.  He doesn't want his doggie treats.  He even re...

All the way back to Illinois, Rigger just lay in the back of the van.  He didn't want to stand up and stick his head out of the window. Occasionally, he would lift his head up and poke it up between the girls to let us know he was okay. Ringo, on the other hand, perched like a mountain goat between the girls.   Nothing like a dog butt in your face to make a trip more entertaining.

I caught Ringo snuggling up with a friend....

The thunder, wind, and hail visited Illinois again this week.   All At  Once. Ringo didn't like it.  I knew he would be bothered so I went in search of him and found him burrowed in the bottom of the linen closet.    He jumped out before I could get a picture of him.  I was only able to get this shot of him emerging.  He knows he's not supposed to be in there and he probably was trying to get out before mean ol' mama got him.  Then while Katie was washing dishes he tried to wedge himself between her legs and the counter.  She opened the doors under the sink to give him more room. I removed some of the cleaners so he could get himself all the way in the cabinet.  He didn't stay there long.  He wanted to be in a small space but he also wanted to be with his people at all times.  So while I was at the computer, he was under the desk at my knees.  He would look up at me and pant like a steam ...

 Ringo and Rigger have taken to sleeping in Katie's room.  We've taken the precaution of laying a blanket on the floor to protect the carpet from drool and fur. Unfortunately, Ringo doesn't believe that blanket is for him.

We were under a high wind advisory last night.   It's not enough that we have blizzards and hail interspersed with lovely warm weather that lasts just long enough to give you hope that Illinois is not a frozen wasteland and that Spring will come one day. Now we have gusts of wind blowing so hard people's roofs are blowing away, lawn furniture is rolling down the street, and trampolines are being folded in half like giant tacos. I half expected to wake up in Oz. The wind was shrieking around the house so hard it sounded like a hundred screaming women on broomsticks flying around outside. The dogs did not like it. While we were watching television, Rigger was trying to wedge himself between the coffee table and the sofa and underneath our legs.  He actually put one foot on the sofa as if he were about to climb into our laps, but that is a no-no.  No dogs on the sofa - especially not a dog who can make the sofa collapse. Kerry went up to bed befo...

Yesterday, it warmed up enough that I was able to go out without a coat, I just needed a light sweater. Last night it snowed hard enough that all the schools are closed today...... We also have been under a high wind advisory since midnight.  It scared Ringo so much during the night that he tried to get on our bed with us four times.  He's not even supposed to be in our room.  This morning, we discovered that after we wouldn't let him sleep with us, he clawed all the folded linens out of the bottom of the linen closet and burrowed in there. (I don't actually have anything made of linen in my linen closet.) The wind is literally shrieking around our house right now.  I believe this is the same sound they must record and use in horror movies when they want to simulate the sound of a group of women screaming in terror. As I sat here at the computer just now, the wind ripped the front storm door open and slammed it against the house.  I jumped s...

We went on a spur-of-the-moment road trip to Florida. Rigger and Ringo knew something was up as soon as they saw the suitcases.  They are so pitiful, standing by the door with their ears and eyebrows raised.  They know suitcases mean we won't be home for a while. After we loaded the suitcases in the car, we decided to walk the dogs.  When I held up the leash, Rigger came running to me high-stepping like a prancing pony.  His excitement was visible in every muscle of his body.  He thought  he was going with us.  Ringo was excited as well, but he contains his enthusiasm better. Usually when we take the dogs out, they head straight for the curb.  That's where all the dogs who are being walked around the neighborhood leave their scent.  Our dogs usually drag us to the curb so they can leave their own scent in response to the other canines.  The edge of our yard is the Facebook of the dog community. This time however, our dogs headed ...

Ringo likes to find a nice sunny spot to rest in.  I snapped some pictures of him lying in a square of sun and then told the girls to each write a Haiku about him as an exercise in poetry. Katie's Haiku: Lying in the sun The shadows dance like the wind. I yawn.  I am tired. ************************* Emily's Haiku: Why are you asleep When you woke me up at four? Die, die, die, die die.

Yesterday will rank up there in the top of the yucky day list.  Not that I actually keep a list, mind you.  I don't like to hang on to the bad stuff.  This is just a hypothetical bad list. Ben and Emily have been working all year towards flying to Hawaii for the summer to work with Child Evangelism Fellowship.  They have worked for CEF every summer and this is (probably) their last chance to do so.  They were able to raise enough money to cover all the fees and a portion of their plane tickets.  CEF is similar to a mission trip in that the participants have to pay to go.  Even though I say they "worked" for CEF, it's not work for pay.  They paid for their plane tickets out of their own savings accounts and then received enough in donations to cover about a third of that cost.   The extra benefit for them, of course, is that they also get to see all of their Hawaii friends and Ben gets to see his girlfriend, Noelle.  So it'...