To all my friends that sent me best wishes for 2007, it did NOTHING AT ALL.
So for 2008, could you please send either money, alcohol or gas vouchers. Thanks.

This weekend was the first time I’ve been back to the rescue shelter in about three weeks. I’ve missed it and I was so happy to be back!

I took the girls with me for the first time yesterday and they were awestruck. Amber loves the catteries and Amie is smitten with a dog named Garibaldi.

My heart has been stolen by a 7 month old male Rottie pup named Jupiter. He’s already 90 lbs and stands about as tall as Chuck. He is such an awesome dog, I hope he finds a family soon. Every time the girls and I walked past his run (we did walk him for a long time earlier in the day) he gave us the “Chuck” look, which is the combination head tilt, forehead wrinkle, soulful eye stare that makes my heart melt.

If I didn’t have Chuck that dog would be in my house right now. He is the spitting image of Chuck right down to the personality. Lucky for Chuck, but unlucky for Jupiter, I wouldn’t trade Chuck for anything in the world.

We walked lots of dogs in the last two days. We walked the length of the shelter driveway, which is 1/4 mile each way, and we walked the trails multiple times. Those are each at least 1/2 mile long, depending on which way you go. My legs are starting to feel sore and I can tell that my shoulders and arms are going to be stiff tomorrow. Most of the dogs don’t have any leash manners and of course I walk all the ones who weigh at or more than 100 lbs. By the time 3:30 rolled around today I was glad to sit with Amber in the cat house while she played with the kitties.

It’s only 8:30 and I’m exhausted. I could go to sleep right now and not wake up until tomorrow morning. Unfortunately I have to work tomorrow. It could be worse, though. I could be unemployed so for now I’ll count my blessings and not complain.

I hope you all had a great holiday season and have a happy new year!

Jezebel hasn’t had a bath in a pretty long time and she really kind of needed one. Last night I took her in the shower (I had to get in with her to keep her from jumping out of the tub!) and scrubbed her down. She got the premium Bath and Body Works shower gel treatment. She hated every second of it but now she smells like a magnolia blossom instead of a stinky dog.

I am so mean.

Yeah, I’m a little late…but better late than never, right?

It’s been a whirlwind week with Tuesday flashing by like a giant blur. The girls, the dogs and I kind of moved in with Rich on Friday night and stayed until Tuesday. It was a very warm and fuzzy few days though I was a little stressed. I hadn’t done a single bit of shopping and I got it all knocked out on Friday night. Lucky for me the stores weren’t as busy as I was afraid they’d be.

Sunday was my birthday and Rich did his best to make it a super special day. He invited everyone from both families over to his apartment for lunch and cake. The families got along well, the baby niece and nephew hogged most of the spotlight, and the dogs were kind of OK. They were a little tense with so many people being in such a tight space and Chuck got snarly for a second towards the end of the afternoon, but otherwise everything went smoothly.

Christmas day started early by my standards. I was awakened at 8:30 , we opened presents, ate breakfast, then packed up to head to my brother’s house. The drive was almost an hour and a half, with a pit stop along the way at his mom’s house so she could give the girls their gifts. Once we got to my brother’s house we opened presents, ate dinner, then packed up to bring the girls home so their dad could pick them up. When the girls left Rich and I headed over to his mom’s house to spend the rest of the evening.

It was back to work on Wednesday.

Rich left today to go visit Rick in Ohio. Tomorrow I have to go to the DMV to renew my tags (damn me and my procrastination) then the girls and I are going to the shelter to walk some dogs. I’m excited for them to meet the new group and they’re excited too. We’ll spend most of the day there, then come home to play with our own pups. We’re going back on Sunday. One of my new friends there just pulled a skinny pit bull from a rural shelter and she’s anxious for me to meet him. There’s lots to be excited about this weekend!

2008 is going to be my year. I’ve decided. 2007 wasn’t too bad but there’s nothing ahead of us now but smooth sailing.

At this time last year I didn’t see myself being where I am now. Even though I didn’t plan it this way I’m glad this is how life has turned out.

Is it weird that multiple times today I found The Chipmunks version of “You Had A Bad Day” running through my head?

I did have a bad day. It wasn’t terrible but it was far from good. I was twitchy and agitated and I couldn’t concentrate on my work to save my life.

The day started off with me finding out that we ran out of heating oil at some point during the night. It was about 60 degrees in the house, which is brrrr cold when you don’t want to climb out of (the nice warm) bed in the first place. I spent the better part of my day discussing with my roommate the fact that yes, we have to get the tank refilled and no, we can’t just live with heaters and a woodstove until spring. (She’s having cashflow problems. But it’s Christmas…aren’t most of us having at least some small cashflow issue?)

The oil debacle was sort of solved by mid afternoon. Since we rent this house and will be vacating in March we didn’t want to sign an annual contract with an oil company. Der. Unfortunately this limited our choices for fuel delivery. It turns out that not all companies make COD deliveries. Who knew? Since we both have to work tomorrow and neither of us can get time off to stay home we can’t have our oil delivered until Monday. I guess it’s lucky for the girls, the dogs and me that we already had plans to spend Saturday-Monday with Rich. He has heat. Neener.

Believe it or not…the house isn’t that cold. I have the heaters I bought during The Great Heat Outage of 2006 when the furnace broke at our old residence. One is plugged in downstairs and it has managed to heat most of the first floor by itself. That’s pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

The badness of the day didn’t stop there. Oh no. There’s a lady in my office who is…shall we say…on the larger side. She very closely resembles the boss lady monster in Monsters, Inc. She’s not at all healthy, the eating choices that she makes don’t agree with her. She constantly has stomach issues and today was a really bad issue day for her. Lucky for me I sit right next to her and was assaulted by the noxious fumes generated by said issue. I very seriously considered running to the store, buying some of those little air freshener trees, and hanging them around my desk (a la the movie “Seven”).

And, to top it all off, I ran out of mint chocolate M&M’s days ago and I can’t find any more. I ventured out to two different stores this evening and neither store had them. And, get this, Rich went to NYC today. He visited the M&M store. Yes. Store. Three floors devoted to M&M’s and he says there wasn’t a single, solitary, mint M&M to be found. It would be a good thing if he’s fibbing to me about that and actually has a ginormous bag of them to give me for my birthday (as opposed to Christmas since it’s two days sooner HINT HINT). I had a stash of regular plain M&M’s in my desk drawer but they just didn’t do it for me.

Damn you, Rich, for introducing me to the goodness that is apparently LIMITED in its production. Grr.

So, that’s pretty much it. Oh, I checked the bunny and she appears to be doing OK. She stomped her good foot at me when I lifted up her hidey hole to check on her. That’s pretty normal for her, she’s got a little bit of an attitude.

Tomorrow should be a better day. It’s Secret Santa day at my office. How can a day be bad when you know you’re getting a present?

Note: This is a rewritten entry. I didn’t like the first one.

Remember the rabbit I adopted from Petco? We named her Thumper.

Thumper lives in a cage in the girls’ bedroom. She has aspen bedding, is fed premium pellets (that don’t contain corn!), she gets romain lettuce and carrots with the tops still on them and sometimes, if she’s good, she gets arugula. She has a hidey hole and a litter box (which she knows how to use despite the fact that her cage didn’t have one when I got her).

We let Thumper out of her cage almost every night. She has a playpen in the girls’ room that she can hop around in. There are toys and things to chew on, but mostly Amie sits in the playpen and the bunny sits in her lap.

Last night I was folding laundry in my bedroom. The dogs were with me. Thumper was in her playpen and Amber was in the bedroom with her. I forgot Thumper as out and when I went into the girls’ room to put it away Jezzy followed me in like she always does (velcro dog). Jezzy saw the bunny as soon as she got in the room. She ran to the pen to bark with her butt up in the air. The pen isn’t very sturdy and one of the panels fell over. Thumper took off out of the opening and disappeared under the bed.

Jezzy was shooed out of the room pretty quick and Amie and I chased after the bunny to put her back in her cage. After about 15 minutes I captured her, lifted her up, and put her away for the night. I didn’t notice anything wrong.

Fast forward to this evening. I was in the car after work, on my way to meet Rich for some Christmas shopping, when Amber called.

Amber: Mommy, there’s something wrong with Thumper. She’s dragging her leg and it looks really gross.

me: What do you mean she’s dragging her leg? How did she get hurt?

Amber: I don’t know, I picked her up to put her in her pen and it was just dangly so I put her back down and she dragged it back into her house.

me: OK, leave her alone, I look at her when I get home.

I hung up with her and called Rich.

me: The girls broke the rabbit.

Rich: Want me to meet you at home?

So, no shopping got done.

When I got home and checked on Thumper I saw that her leg was indeed dangly. Upon further inspection I felt that her femur is snapped in half. I think her ankle is jacked up too. Rich showed up not long after I did and he agreed that the bunny was broken. He had nothing else to contribute because he has no idea how to handle an animal emergency. He’s not feeling well so he went home shortly after he arrived..

My first thought, which I bounced off of Rich and got an “I don’t know” answer, was to take her to the animal shelter to be put to sleep. I don’t have $1500 to $2000 to have the leg reset and I don’t have $800 to $1000 for amputation. I thought the kindest thing to do would be to end her suffering. But…first I consulted Google.

According to Google broken legs are pretty common in bunnies. Most sources advise getting the bunny to an exotic vet (which I don’t have the means to do) but a couple of them gave me some home treatment info. Here’s what I learned:

1. Bunnies are prey animals and prey animals are stoic. A bunny will never cry out in pain, lest a predator find her and eat her.
2. A bunny with a broken leg is most assuredly in excruciating pain, much like you would be if you snapped your femur in half and jacked up your ankle.
3. Pain can be managed in a bunny with high doses of asprin.
4. It’s possible, though not easy, to stablize a bunny’s leg.
5. Stablinzing a broken bunny leg along with keeping the bunny quiet for 8 weeks should result in fused bones. Her leg might look wierd but it will be functional enough for her to live a normal life.

After three attempts to wrap Thumper’s leg so that it would no longer flop around Amie and I finally succeeded in positioning it in such a way that she can still lay down and look relatively normal (unlike the first time when her leg was straight out). That no stick wrap stuff that sticks only to itself (found in the first aid section of the grocery store) is really, really good for emergency leg setting.

Now we just watch and wait. If all goes well she’ll be fine in 8 weeks. We could use some healing vibes over this way.

Some time ago a mother punished her five
year old daughter for wasting a roll of expensive gold wrapping paper.
Money was tight and she became even more upset when the child used the
gold paper to decorate a box to put under the Christmas tree.

Nevertheless, the little girl brought the gift box to her
mother the next morning and then said, ‘This is for you, Momma.’

The mother was embarrassed by her earlier over reaction, but
her anger flared again when she opened the box and found it was empty.
She spoke to her daughter in a harsh manner.

‘Don’t you know, young lady, when you give someone a present
there’s supposed to be something inside the package?’

She had tears in her eyes and said, ‘Oh, Momma, it’s not
empty! I blew kisses into it until it was full.’

The mother was crushed. She fell on her knees and put her arms
around her little girl, and she begged her forgiveness for her
thoughtless anger.

An accident took the life of the child only a short time
later, and it is told that the mother kept that gold box by her bed for
all the years of her life.

Whenever she was discouraged or faced difficult problems she
would open the box and take out an imaginary kiss and remember the love
of the child who had put it there.

In a very real sense, each of us, as human beings, have been
given a Golden box filled with unconditional love and kisses from our
children, family, friends and GOD. There is no more precious possession
anyone could hold.

It never fails. I read an article that has been brought to my attention by a member of my Pit Bull email list. This particular article was a positive one about a “Pit Bull Party” in Florida. I didn’t read over the whole thing because I intended to read it tomorrow. I was on my way to bed. And then I did it. I did what I knew I shouldn’t do. I read the comments from readers at the end of the article.

It’s hard to explain exactly how upset I get when I read hateful words written by people who have no idea what they’re talking about. Ignorant comments about how all Pit Bulls should die and people who own them are idiots.

I’ve never been as passionate about anything as I am about my dogs. My dogs are like my kids. I can’t imagine my life without them. My passion doesn’t end with my dogs though. You know how gambling addicts need to hit the casino? My need to work with homeless dogs is stronger than that. My loyalty to the homeless dogs, especially the bullys, is unwavering. When I’m 90 years old I’ll probably still own a Pit Bull, unless the government succeeds in banning them, which I hope to God never happens.

Earlier today there was a thread in the Pit Bull emails about what was really destroying our breed. Is it the dog fighters or the irresponsible pet owners? The consensus is that it’s the pet owners.

Dog fighters are cruel, dispicable people. But…you never hear stories about fighting dogs mauling anyone in the audience at a pit fight. You never hear about how a dog “snapped” during training. You know why? Because as horrible as dog fighters are…they successfully manage their dogs so that the dogs never have a chance to fail that way. The dogs know their place. A fighting dog would NEVER bite a handler. If it did it would be destroyed.

The average dog owner is not responsible enough, attentive enough, or educated enough to own a Pit Bull. The amount of research that needs to be done before a Pit Bull enters the family is huge. Most people don’t do that research though. Maybe they mean well and think that if the dog is “raised right” it won’t be aggressive with other dogs. Maybe they have no clue what they’re getting and don’t even know that Pit Bulls should never be left unsupervised with another animal. Maybe they take in a “free to a good home” puppy that is the product of a litter created by a roaming intact male of questionable temerament. Whatever the circumstances…these people are the ones that are ruining these dogs. They’re the ones that are creating situations that lead to disaster.

My Jezebel is the most loving dog I’ve ever owned. There isn’t anything she wouldn’t do to make me happy. She loves me, the girls, and now Rich with all her doggy might. She will love us with everything she has until the day she dies. Her trust is unwavering and her loyalty is strong as steel. I can’t imagine how anyone could look at her and see anything other than what she is. But you know what? My own sister doesn’t like her. My sister “doesn’t trust those dogs” even though she knows Jezzy has never done anything wrong. If I can’t make my sister understand how wonderful Pit Bulls are and what solid companions they’re meant to be, how can I convince anyone else?

A lot of times I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle. Sometimes I feel like I want to take the easy road and focus on the homeless hound dogs that are easy to place. Sometimes, just for a fleeting second, I feel like it would be easier if I didn’t own a Pit Bull because then I could rent an apartment and never have to worry about being denied because of my dog.

She makes my life difficult but I wouldn’t give her up for anything. She is what a Pit Bull should be.

If only everyone could see that…

I just had a three day weekend…and I’m not ready for it to end. It was supposed to be a four day weekend, I planned two days off to use up some accrued personal time before I lose it on January 1, but I knew my workload was going to be huge on Thursday so I went in.

Things are not secure on the job front. Not just for me but for everyone. People are getting “laid off” all over the place. I’ve been shocked at the people who are getting the axe. And according to my supervisor we all have bad news on the way from the VP. We’re supposed to be having one on one meetings with him so he can lay it out for us. I might have missed mine since I wasn’t there on Friday. Then again, we were supposed to get those little chats last Monday but they didn’t happen. I hate when things dangle over my head like that. And I hate that I work for a company that does it. At least at my last “company” I could tell the boss to go fuck himself and still know I had a job the next day. I don’t have any little perks like that any more.

Friday was awesome. I couldn’t sleep late because I had to get the girls up for school so I dressed warm and headed down to the shelter. I cleaned kennels, washed dishes, and pretty much did the same things I was avoiding doing at my own house. Somehow it’s more satisfying to do it for homeless dogs than for my family (who will mess the house up again an hour after it’s cleaned). I didn’t get to play with any dogs though. I probably could have but it turns out that someone at the kennel quit and didn’t finish out her notice so I was doing her work. I did manage to meet a 7 month old male rottie named Jupiter who is already the size of Chuck…and he still hasn’t grown into his feet yet! He seems to have a Chuck-like personality. He was all wiggles and happy to see people. I hope he goes fast.

After working at the kennel I went home and took a nap. For four hours. It was awesome. When Rich got off work he came to get us and we went to see The Chipmunks. We loved it!

I didn’t get to go to the shelter yesterday or today, which bummed me out a little but there were other things that needed to be done. Plus the girls didn’t go to their father’s like they were supposed to. He cancelled this weekend’s visit because the weather was supposed to be nasty. It wasn’t so we managed to have a great time spending a lazy weekend with Rich. He took us to see the Festival of Lights on Saturday night. The weather was cold and drizzly but the lights were still pretty.

I don’t want to start the week already. I want to start this weekend and do the whole thing again.

Next weekend will be good too. My birthday is Sunday and Rich is planning a get-together with my family and his. The parents will meet each other and probably trade embarrassing stories about us but I’m sure it’ll go well.

Go see it.