Cordelia's Mom, Still

ANIMAL HOUSE, PART III: Doggy Do

Posted on December 8, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

CLEAR ENOUGH?

Somewhere in the middle of all the little pets (read the two preceding posts here and here), my husband arrived home one day to say that he had just come from the SPCA and they had some really nice dogs.

Say what? This is the guy who kept telling the kids, “You’re not getting a dog, stop asking for a dog.” When I questioned his sudden turn-about, he explained that the girls were bigger and he wanted a dog to protect them. I love dogs, and I was not about to argue with that logic.

If nothing else, the ensuing experience was worth the look on my two younger daughters’ faces the day we took them for a car ride and “just happened” to end up at the SPCA. The youngest was a little bewildered when we parked, until the middle child exclaimed, “We’re getting a dog!”

We adopted Majick, the black lab. She was the right size, and she walked beautiful on leash. She seemed to be perfect for a family with children. It seemed odd that anyone would give up such a beautiful, purebred lab, but who was I to question it?

But we didn’t know that Majick was docile because she was sick. Our vet said it was distemper and prescribed antibiotics. Majick got better, but then her true personality came out, and it was not a good one. She had obviously been abused at some point in her short life and had become somewhat aggressive because of it. My youngest was terrified of her.

The end came on the day that I was sitting in my chair reading the paper, and Majick came up and butted me with her head. I told her to get down. She did. But she sat there, thinking, with a strange light in her eyes. A few minutes later, she butted me again, more forcefully. I told her to get down. She did. The light in her eyes became a flame – and she lunged. I caught her in mid-flight towards my throat and dragged her out the side door into the yard, where she stayed until the next morning – at which point, I took her back to the SPCA. I lied and said she was too rambunctious for my young children – I didn’t want them to put her down because I thought maybe, just maybe, with the right owner she could be retrained. But that owner wasn’t going to be me.

That experience terrified me. We decided – no more dogs.

So, why did I suddenly take my middle daughter to the SPCA a few months later “just to take a look”? We happened to arrive at the exact time that a new litter of puppies was being brought in. People were swarming – those puppies would be adopted within minutes. I frantically called my husband, who was working, and begged him to let me adopt one. The SPCA claimed the puppies were shepherd/collie mixes – certainly big enough to grow into a watchdog, right? Hubby caved, and we adopted our Morgan.

We soon discovered that Morgan was a border collie/toy shepherd mix. The vet said she would grow up to look like a dingo (he was sooo right).

I worried about Morgan as a puppy – she was feisty and an ankle-nipper. Given a command, she would think about it, and if it made sense to her, only then would she comply. Memories of Majick haunted me. There were times I thought I would have to return Morgan to the SPCA.

Until the day, she tried the same stunt that ended Majick’s residence with us. Morgan jumped up on me, and I told her to get down. She did. But she sat there eyeing me with a certain gleam in her eyes. Then she butted me again, more forcefully. I told her, more forcefully, to sit. She sat … and she stayed. I petted her with tears in my eyes and told her what a good puppy she was – I knew she would be a good dog after all.

However, hubby was unhappy with Morgan even though he loved her. He wanted a big dog. A few months later, he came home from work and said he had called our vet and had the name of a reputable German Shepherd Dog breeder not too far from us. I cried – I was NOT giving up my Morgan. He assured me we were simply getting a SECOND dog.

And so, we purchased our Riggsie. I don’t remember Riggsie ever causing any problems as a puppy, probably because Morgan took over part of his training. If he did something bad, she would nip his heels or his butt. She loved to jump on top of him – until the day she jumped on him in the yard, and he simply stood up, and there she was on his back, feet hanging down on either side of him as he pranced around the perimeter. At six months, he had already grown to three times Morgan’s size.

Riggsie did his job. He became a really big, intimidating looking dog. If he stood on his hind legs, he was taller than me. The joke in our house was that when my girls began dating, those young gentlemen would have to make friends with Riggsie first. Some boyfriends did, some didn’t.

Eventually all pets grow old and leave us. It is very hard to lose a pet, no matter how small or big. For a short period of time, we had an empty house – the children all grown and gone, and only fish to keep me company.

And now we have Puppy Cody – the star of this blog. You can read her adoption story here, if you have not already done so.

***

Would I do it all differently if I could go back in time? Probably not. I loved each and every one of the critters who have lived in my home.

How about you – will there be any four-legged living presents under your tree this year?

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com

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Images by Cordelia’s Mom

Posted in Humor, Pets, That's Life | Tagged border collie, Cody, Cordelia's Mom, dogs, German Shepherd, Puppy Cody, SPCA | 28 Comments

ANIMAL HOUSE, PART II: The Pitter-Patter of Very Tiny Paws

Posted on December 7, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

Yesterday, I discussed the beginnings of our pet ownership, with fish and ant farms.

Although Cordelia’s desire for pets ended with the ill-fated art farm experience, her sisters were different. First the middle one asked for gerbils for her birthday, so we got two females and put them together into a 5-gallon fish tank (and where do you think we got that tank?). All went well for the first year or so, until the now adult female gerbils began to fight – blood everywhere! They had to be separated immediately! We now had two 5-gallon tanks, side by side, each with one gerbil residing in it. Those little ladies lived another couple of years, eventually dying of old age.

Meanwhile, the youngest daughter was upset that she did not have her very own pet, so on her birthday we went out to find gerbils for her. It was September, the beginning of the school year, and all the gerbils had been purchased by returning science teachers. We wound up with a hamster. Which, of course, required purchasing a hamster cage and hamster toys. My daughter named her hamster Tribble because it looked like the Tribbles from the old Star Trek series (remember, The Trouble With Tribbles?).

Tribble was a nasty little thing. It was bad enough that hamsters are nocturnal, and we would hear that little wheel squeak-squeaking all night long, but that critter had an evil personality and absolutely no qualms about biting the hand that fed it (me).

One night, I got up about 3 am to use the facilities and while sitting on the throne, I happened to notice movement out of the corner of my eye. My first thought was, “My God, that’s the biggest centipede I’ve ever seen!” Nope, not a bug – Tribble had chewed its way out of the cage, crawled across the bookcase to the staircase, and climbed up the stairs to the bathroom, where it had been happily sleeping under the floor cabinet when I came in. Eventually, I managed to catch it, and it latched onto my finger with that long, sharp tooth. I shook it off my finger and accidentally dropped it. It seemed Ok afterwards, but a short time later it was dead from internal hemorrhaging. I was the one who found it. I never told my girls how it died, just that it was gone. I felt bad enough without admitting my guilt to my children.

Maybe it was the guilt that eventually led me to replace the gerbils with two of my own. They’re such adorable little critters, requiring very little care and only a small amount of specialized food. I went to our local pet store and bought two – I was assured they were both male. They didn’t both look male to me, but then what do I know? I wanted boy gerbils, because they generally don’t fight.

And they didn’t fight, but they did play. Sure enough, a month or so later, one of my daughters was walking past the gerbil tank and said, “Hey, Mom, I thought you said these were both boys? So what’s that running around on top of the bedding?”

I looked. [sigh] Baby gerbils.

I took the father out of the tank and put him into his own tank. When the babies became big enough, I separated the boys and girls, and put the boys into the tank with their father, leaving the girls with the mother.

But gerbils are as prolific as rabbits. Before I could separate the parents, the mother was already pregnant with a second litter. When those babies were born and got big enough, I had to again separate the boys and girls, putting the boys into one tank and the girls into another – and they couldn’t go into the tanks with the first litter because they would fight. Now I had 5 tanks of gerbils. I took one to work, where they became the office pets.

Fortunately, I apparently knew more about gerbil sexing that the pet store personnel because there were no more babies after that.

But to get back to the subject of children and their pets:

After the first set of female gerbils had died, the middle daughter remained petless for quite awhile – until she decided she wanted a pet she could hold and cuddle. At that point, she was in her teens and old enough to care responsibly for a pet. Puppies and kittens were still on our no-no list, so we got a guinea pig.

She named the guinea pig Quiggley, and he was the best little pet ever. Each night we would lock him in the bathroom while we cleaned his cage, and he would happily run around in there – but then would realize he was alone and would chew the frame of the door trying to escape. Those tooth marks are still there. But he was a cuddly creature – he would let me hold him while I cut his little toenails, and he loved to be petted. He was also a decent watch-animal – my daughter (who was in her late teens by then) could never sneak into the house without us knowing because Quiggley would start squealing in excitement at seeing his owner.

Quiggley lived a long time. After my daughter went away to college, Quiggley became my pet. When he eventually died, I was the one who took him to the vet and then to the SPCA for burial. I still miss Quiggley.

***

Join me again tomorrow for the final segment of this sage. Bigger pets, bigger headaches. See you then!

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com

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Image by Cordelia’s Mom

Posted in Holidays, Humor, Pets, That's Life | Tagged Cordelia's Mom, gerbils, guinea pigs, hamsters | 25 Comments

ANIMAL HOUSE, PART I: Water and Sand

Posted on December 6, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

DO I SMELL EGGNOG?

Christmas is coming. Did you get those gifts for your kids yet?

When we were first married, we had my mixed hound dog, Sherman, but Sherman got old and cranky and eventually had to be put down. Hubby and I agreed that raising kids was enough – we did not need to add more pets to the household mix. But as the kids grew older, each and every one of them began asking for a puppy for birthdays/ Easter/ Christmas or just because.

Puppies are expensive in the long run, and raising kids was enough grief. We stuck to our guns.

Then some bright mind at the Senior Center came up with the idea of having an Ice Cream Social for their clients and grandkids, at which event the centerpiece of each table was a goldfish bowl with a real, live goldfish. One lucky kid at each table got to take that goldfish home, and of course, my kid won – yay! The fish did not come home in the bowl – apparently that was not part of the prize – so we had to scramble around to find something appropriate into which to transfer that fish from the plastic bag it came in. Needless to say, the fish didn’t live very long.

After that, the pleas for a pet grew louder.

We started with sea monkeys. Believe it or not, we actually got those buggers to grow big enough to be seen with the naked eye (if you weren’t too old, that is –otherwise, the kit did come with a tiny magnifying glass).

After the sea monkeys, hubby approached me with the idea of getting each child another goldfish – in a real tank this time. So off we went to buy a 3-gallon tank and 3 very tiny fish. The fish quickly outgrew that small tank – to be safe, we transferred them to a 10-gallon tank, which then also needed a filtration system and plants. But the fish weren’t quite big enough [yet] to fill that tank so we added a few more. Which, of course, quickly outgrew that tank, too. To make a long story shorter, we eventually wound up with a 29-gallon tank –and by that time, the kids had outgrown the fish, so they became my pets.

At one point, Cordelia – bless her little heart – decided she would like an ant farm for some gift-giving occasion. The kit came with a coupon by which to order the ants, which then arrived by parcel post – with instructions to place them in the fridge prior to transferring them to their new home inasmuch as the cold would make them lethargic and easier to handle. Simple enough – except that I forgot they were in the fridge, and the fridge was set unusually cold at that time.

Poor Cordelia was seriously traumatized when the ants began dying, one by one, and the other ants would then drag their dead comrades up to the top of the tank, creating a little burial pile of dead ant bodies – until finally there was only one ant left. I don’t recall if that one managed to drag itself up to join the others in death or died somewhere in the middle of the farm. But I do know that Cordelia never asked for another pet after that.

Meanwhile, the fish were thriving. I made the mistake of walking past the “feeder tank” at the pet store and came home with a dozen or so more guppies, because I felt sorry for them. Those darn things lived for years, entertaining us and our various dogs – until Puppy Cody arrived, and we were afraid she would run into that large tank, so the fish were re-homed.

***

Join me again tomorrow for Part II of this story. The fish are done, but the pets get bigger.

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I love to hear from my readers. You may comment on this post, comment on my Facebook or Twitter pages, or email me at cordeliasmom2012@yahoo.com or notcordeliasmom@aol.com

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Image by Jamie

Posted in Holidays, Humor, Pets, That's Life | Tagged ant farm, Cordelia's Mom, fish, sea monkeys | 12 Comments

Mr. Paul Curran has been found!

Posted on December 3, 2015 by cordeliasmom2012

Yay for Linda Hill! She had to drive for 3 hours to get to Ottawa for her appointment, and then she still managed to find our missing blogger. I agree with her that if nothing else, this proves that you can indeed make friends by blogging. I can only hope that if anything ever happens to me, I will have so many new friends come forward to help.

Now we can all breathe again and look forward to Paul Curran’s comments and guests posts as soon as he can again gain internet access.

If you read Mr. Mark Bialczak’s post yesterday, or if you came across one of the numerous reblogs of that post, you’ll know we were missing our favourite guest poster and frequent commenter, Paul Curran. Well. I happened to be going to Ottawa today for an appointment and another blogger happened to have Paul’s address so I went and knocked on his front door. And guess what? He was there!

As it turns out he had an infection that caused complications and he was hospitalized for two weeks. Then he got home to find that his modem had blown up, so he’s been without the Internet. He seemed a little flabbergasted to find that all of WordPress was missing him and he asked me to extend his apologies for causing everyone to worry and to let you all know he appreciates that we were thinking of him. It must…

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