Everyone who knows me knows that my animals are my children. They may annoy me sometimes when they do things they aren't supposed to do (like coughing up a hairball on the carpet, jumping on the kitchen sink to get a bug, rolling in the middle of the bed when I'm trying to make it, scratching my bare skin when I've just gotten out of the shower because street cats don't know how to keep their claws in, etc.), but even when they are annoying me, I find joy in them. As I scold Jewel when she's about to jump on the counter after that bug, I can see the expression on her face saying, "But, MOM, there's a bug in the window!" Then she sulks off and cleans her self, giving me the stink eye the whole time. They have such great personalities, even when they are sneaky little witches.
There have been a couple of temporary pets that have stolen my heart, too. Oscar was one of them. I told his story last summer, I believe. My brother Rob brought him to my house after finding him eating garbage on an old logging road. He was sick with infection from the horrible cut on his neck where he had apparently broken off a chain, and he was so stinky. Bathing him was WILD. He was just a puppy, about 5 -6 months old, I know because he was losing his puppy teeth. He stayed in my yard until he was well, and he got so big and rambunctious that I was afraid he would hurt Georgia. We couldn't keep him, so I tried to find a home for him, with no luck. Rob and Dave took him to the Humane Society, and I'm pretty sure that sweet puppy found a forever home. He was such a sweet dog, just too big and out of control for me to handle at that point in my life. I cried like a baby the night before they took him away because I let him down. I took him in, but I couldn't give him what he needed to be the pet I needed him to be.
Before Oscar, there was Taco. Taco was a husky mix with white-blue eyes. She was called Taco because she looked like a larger version of the Taco Bell dog. She had been hanging around the neighborhood of some people we went to church with at the time. They were tired of her, but they fed her because she had just had a litter of puppies and she appeared to be starving. Dave offered for the people to bring her to our house. He thought they would drop her off and she would just fend for herself. This was early in his understanding of me and animals. :) She was also a super sweet and very stinky dog. She stayed in our yard in Gardendale, and she played pretty well with Georgia. She slept on an old comforter on the porch. Her only drawback was that she roamed a lot, it was the Husky in her, I think. There was one very traumatic night when I had put her on a tie-out on the porch so she wouldn't roam and get hit by a car. When I got back from class, the dog and the tie out were gone. Dave was home, but he had not let her go - he thought she had just left. I went looking for her and found her in the backyard. She was so traumatize from being tied up that she wouldn't even move. I had to pick her up and carry her back to her blanket on the porch, and she wasn't a small dog. She had obviously been mistreated. We decided we would keep her in the house with Georgia. I brought her in and bathed her on a Friday night, and we were going to the vet for shots on Saturday. Saturday morning, she took Georgia off into the woods and we couldn't find her for a while. We decided then that unless we were ready to fence the yard (and we couldn't afford it), then we couldn't keep her. Georgia would stay in the yard on her own, but Taco took her off and we couldn't risk losing here. We took Taco to the Humane Society, and that was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I cried like a baby over her, too.
That experience is why I made sure that Rob went with Dave to take Oscar to the Humane Society. It's a hard thing to do, and if you are going to pick up strays, you need to be able to do it. The rule at my house now is, if you pick one up, it goes to the Humane Society immediately. If it comes to the house, it will be treated as one of our pets - shots, spay/neuter, flea meds, kennel trained, house trained - all of it. I'm too soft to get attached to them and then have to take them away again without knowing if they will find a family.
I wrote all this as background to help explain what I learned about myself. As an avid animal lover, it's always been hard for me to imagine not liking an animal, especially someone's pet. In the past week, I've learned that I don't love them all. We’ve been dog sitting my in-laws’ Dachshund for a week. He started and ended the week by chasing and attacking Gypsy. I’m not happy with him. He is mean, he bites, he screeches and whines, he doesn’t listen, he’s stubborn, and he constantly has to be ON me. I could deal with all of that stuff, except the cat chasing. Last night, I though he was going to kill her. Luckily, she got away from him and she wasn’t hurt. Everyone in my house was traumatized by the time we got him under control, including him. On top of that, he is not kennel trained. When he’s in the kennel, he screeches at the top of his lungs and sounds like he’s going to stroke out. As you can imagine, there hasn’t been much sleeping going on lately. We tried letting him sleep with us at night, but he keeps us awake and he chases the cats. It's hard for me to not like him. I want to like him, but we just don't mesh well.
Georgia has been looking quite frazzled and she was really clingy this morning. She doesn’t like it when he misbehaves, and she REALLY doesn’t like it when there is yelling. :) Two of the cats, Gypsy and Squirt, all but moved out for the week. I’ve barely had to fill the cat food bowl because no one has been inside to eat. I feel so bad for all of my animals; it isn’t fair to them, and I’m not sure I can do this again. He goes home today, and I am looking forward to a peaceful night of sleep. I’m hoping my animals quickly return to normal.
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