Barnmaven

A (sort of) love story, in pictures

Juliet loves Roscoe.   He isn't her Romeo, but he is her third-favorite pillow after Amazon Girl's lap and mine.

He's not the love of her life nor she his, but they do share a sweet, special kind of relationship.  

The Nap Dance usually follows the same format.

1.  Roscoe finds a cozy place to take his afternoon siesta, usually the couch, or like today, the easy chair that used to belong to SG's Grandma Lois.  Juliet, searching for her own cozy place, spies the object of her affection.

2.  She approaches carefully, checking to make sure he isn't averse to her affections:

3.  Once it appears he accepts her affections, she gives him a nice back massage as a thank-you:

4.  Massage complete, now its time for siesta!

What is this "fighting like cats and dogs" of which you speak?

Spilt milk

The laptop I bought on closeout for the kids resides on my breakfast bar. 

When its not being used to play Minecraft or  watching Justin Bieber and (shudder) Ke$ha music videos,  it becomes a resting place for one cute gray polydactyl kitten. Did you meet Hemingway yet?  No?  Here.  Readers, meet Hemingway. 

Hemingway showed up in our garage about two months ago during a several week cold snap when the outside temperatures were hitting single digits.  I opened the garage door to grab something out of the box freezer early one morning and a small furry gray shape went darting away from me and under the car.  It was small enough to be either a very small cat or a very large rat, and it was dark enough for me not to be able to discern which. (Yes.  I screamed.  No.  I am not ashamed.) 

I woke up SG who came out to help locate and identify our newest houseguest.  It took a little while but eventually we heard a very very tiny "meow" from behind the luggage.  Hard as we tried we could not catch him and couldn't get him to come to us, so we started leaving the garage door slightly open and putting out food and water for him.  We worried about his survival because he was so small, but every day the food we put out was being eaten, so we knew he was alive.  I finally got someone to loan me a live trap and we put the food dish inside it.

Three nights later we managed to catch Coco, who was extremely unhappy with us over it.  I reloaded the trap and forgot about it for a couple of days until SG went to get something out of the garage one morning and came back in the house with the trap full of a frantically meowing kitten. 

Now I've dealt with feral cats before and they are notoriously opposed to being handled, so I fully expected to open that trap and have a spitting, hissing, clawing, ANGRY kitten come barrelling out of it.  Instead, a little gray and white furball ran right into my arms, purring and rubbing against me as if he'd been waiting for me his whole life.  I suspect he was very cold and very lonely and happy to have someone warm to cuddle with.  He crawled up my shirt and it was then we saw his six-toed front paws and both SG and I knew he would stay with us.  The name choice was obvious -- Ernest Hemingway is one of history's more famous Polydactyl cat fanciers, having been given one by a ship's captain.  Polydactylism is a dominant trait, so that first cat became the founder of a large polydactyl cat colony.  Hemingway's estate in Key West is currently home to around fifty descendents of that first cat.  Polydactyls are thus commonly referred to as "Hemingway Cats."

(Hemi is the second polydactyl kitty to enter my life, and rather coincidentally, the first extra-toed kitty I had was also a gray and white boy I named "Crash Davis" after Kevin Costner's character in Bull Durham.)

Hemingway's origins are somewhat of a mystery to us.  We are not aware of any feral cat litters in the neighborhood and none of the neighbors reported a missing kitten.  He couldn't have been more than seven or eight weeks old based on his size, and his friendly nature isn't indicative of a feral litter.  Regardless, he's part of the family now.

Yesterday I had to stay home from work to get an emergency crown on one of my back molars.  Turns out 20-year old fillings have a habit of undermining the structure of your teeth, as I unhappily discovered at dinner on Saturday. 

Hemingway was snoozing on the lid of the laptop on the counter as he is wont to do nearly every day when the kids aren't using it.  If they leave the lid open he will walk and nap on the keyboard, which has mixed results -- either the laptop freezes up, which sends the kids into a frenzy when they try to use it later, or it sends out undecipherable emails to equally undecipherable addresses and opens odd websites. 

I managed to snag an appointment to get my tooth fixed, but when I went to leave the house I could not find my keys.  I spent a good ten minutes tearing the house apart looking for them.  As I was frantically searching the kitchen counters. I lifted up a sheaf of papers on the breakfast bar, startling Hemingway out of a sound sleep. He levitated straight up, then landed with scrabbling feet on the counter, knocking over a glass of milk that Race Car Man had left unfinished.  Now I not only couldn't find my keys, but a pool of milk was widening under the mouse, the laptop, my envelope with all of our tax paperwork and my Blackberry.  Heavens to Betsy! 

I clutched my Blackberry to my heaving chest, scooped up the laptop, gave it a cursory wipe, then threw a wad of paper towels down on the rest of the puddle and continued on my search for car keys.  I finally did find them on the workbench in the garage right next to the driver's side door of the car; I must have left them there when I got home from dropping the kids off at their bus stop.  I have no idea why I would have done that, except that I have been completely discombobulated ever since my tooth fell apart.  I was already late for the dentist.  After four hours in the chair getting my new crown installed, I completely forgot about the milk mess.

Last night when Race Car Man went to play on the laptop he gave me a round tonguelashing over the sticky mouse and milk-speckled lid which I had failed to finish cleaning.  Sensory issues and sticky things are an endlessly bad matchup and typically grounds for screaming exceeding the sound barrier, so I count myself lucky he was only Complaining Loudly. 

I wanted to tell him, "There's no use complaining over spilled milk," but I don't think he would have appreciated it.  At least the laptop still worked.

Cats are for soaking up tears

The nights when the kids are at their dads are simultaneously awesome and terrible.  The house is so quiet.  Too quiet.  I shuffle around in my slippers, turning off lights, locking doors, talking to the animals as if they could understand and respond.  Crazy cat lady.

Back when I was newly separated I had gotten in the bad habit of letting the dogs sleep on the bed.  Three big dogs, nicely filling up the empty side of the bed and making me feel somewhat less alone.  Except there's a problem with dogs and beds.  Pretty soon they think they have a right to be there, and if for any reason you don't want them up there, they sit on the floor and whine incessantly.  Or they growl at you when you want to move them.  Or they take up so much space there's not much room for you any more.   Not a problem - so long as you don't ever get remarried.  It turns out that teaching your dogs to stay off the bed takes just about as long as it takes to teach your kid to sleep in his own bed:  three nights, and the occasional slide into bad habits.

Cats are a different story.  Cats do not take up an excess amount of space.  Cats, unlike small dogs, do not burrow under the covers and do their best to put their nose in your private parts.  Cats, if you are not allergic, are wonderful heat sources.

Juliet has slept with me most nights the last couple of years.  If she's not sleeping with me she's in my daughter's bed, but most often she's with me.  She will leap up next to me, knead the covers a bit, then plop herself down with her back pressed up against my stomach.  I pet her a little, and she purrs quietly, making soft snuffly noises.   At some point in the night I will roll over, and she will use this opportunity to crawl under the covers and rearrange herself in the curl of my belly or behind my knees.  We have a predictable and comfortable arrangement, she and I. 

There are times of late that my bed seems huge and empty, there are times when the fact that I am lonely hits me like a freight train.  There are times when I realize that my closest and dearest sleeping companion is a cat.  Then I start to feel a little bit sorry for myself and the tears flow.  Once Fortunately Juliet doesn't mind getting a little bit soggy. 

Comfort, thy name is Cat.

 

 

Miles, time and diesel: Someone made a difference for me.

 

Well, HAY THERE!

(Haha, I crack myself up sometimes).

That's Bumi in the picture.  She's one of the guest horses I've had since March.  She's a real sweetheart and a very lovely horse to ride.  She very cooperatively walked around with her breakfast stuck on her face long enough for me to whip out my phone and capture a photo.

I know I've written about it before, but I am struck constantly by how much I owe where I'm at horse-wise to the loving support of other people.  My horse journey has been influenced so much by my parents and my husband, all of whom have willingly given up whole days to make sure my children were fed and cared for so I could go enjoy time on my horse.  My deepest gratitude is for my friend Michelle, who has unselfishly driven hundreds of extra miles over the last three years to pick up my horse and me for trail rides and clinics.  She's kept horses at her place for me, she's shared her doctoring skills and her advice, and most importantly she has shared her friendship. 

The love of horses, or "the sickness" as some call it, is somewhat indescribable.  When you have it, one of the things you simply need in order to feel truly happy, to be truly yourself,  is a horse in your life.   Its also a real luxury, because horses are expensive to feed and maintain, and if you don't live somewhere you can easily ride at home or have the money to find a good boarding facility nearby or don't have a truck and trailer, you can't really ride your horse much, and that sucks.  My relationship with my horses is as deep and as meaningful as it is with thanks to Michelle's willingness to sacrifice her time and diesel to make sure I got lots of rides in.  I owe most of the miles I put on my horse the last few years directly to her.

This year I was lucky enough to find a truck and trailer I could afford.  They're far from new, the trailer especially, but they have made it far more possible for me to just go and ride when I want to.  Michelle doesn't have to go 30 miles out of her way to collect me when there's a clinic or a trail ride the opposite direction from her place.  I can get my own hay when I need it and not pay extra to have it delivered.   It makes a huge difference for me, and this summer I've gotten to ride even more.

I have a couple of friends who don't yet have a way to haul their horses and pick up their hay.  I sincerely hope this doesn't come off as sounding preachy, but I have it in my mind that I have a responsibility to be a "Michelle" for others, to make it possible for them to enjoy their horses.   They are big shoes to fill, and I'm pretty sure I'm not as generous or gracious as Michelle, but I commit to making the effort.  Its worth it to see more horse people getting to do what they love, and having more friends to go on our trail rides with us. 

My friend Debbie gives riding lessons to kids for prices most trainers wouldn't dream of giving, because her mission is to get as many little girls to fall in love with horses as she can.  She does this not just to create the next generation of riders and keep the sport of riding alive, but because research shows us that by age 10, if a child doesn't have a passionate interest in something, they won't have something to keep them focused and on track during their teenage years.  A sport or hobby can mean the difference between graduating and maybe going to college vs. getting involved in drugs or getting pregnant.   Make riding lessons affordable and therefore putting horses within reach of more families is just her way of paying it forward.  The great feeling of watching little girls beaming with pleasure the first time they are able to canter or go over a jump, that's just the frosting.

I was cleaning stalls a couple of weeks ago and I heard feed sacks rattling.  I figured SG was just out throwing scratch to the chickens and he would eventually come and find me, but after a while I didn't hear anyone.  When I went to put the poop fork away, I found someone had left three bags of horse feed outside my feedroom door.  I had just been thinking that day about what supplies we needed and fretting about a lack of both time and finances.  Someone paid it forward, and it made my day. Hell, probably my month.

There are times we pay it forward and the people we help don't appreciate it or they take advantage of our kindness.  But we don't do this to get something in return from others; the return comes from within, from our own sense of being OK with who we are and what we do.  Intent is important.  I can't set expectations for how others will react or what they will potentially do in return for me, that only muddies the waters of my giving.  I struggle with this sometimes, but I know what's right for me and so I have to continue to strive for healthy thinking.

Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by this world.  Its easy to feel the weight of all the tension and fear from our crumbling economy, our bitter political rivalries, the horror of war and violence.   Focusing my attention on the things I can do rather than the problems I can't solve helps me feel somehow less frightened of the enormous challenges we all deal with.  Doing something positive helps take away the sting when one of my kids is having a tough day or I come home from work feeling defeated.  Maybe we can't change the whole world, but we can sure change something small for someone else today. 

How do you pay it forward?  What ways have other people paid it forward that made a difference for you?  Share your stories!

 

Animal Planet, Barnmaven-style

 

Our bleeding hearts

My parents would gently admonish me.  Friends would roll their eyes.  Boyfriends (and later, husbands) would think at first that it was sweet, cute, but eventually they, too, would just sigh and shake their heads.

It could be a dead cat on the side of the highway.  A goose with a broken wing, or one that had lost her mate (they mate for life, you know).  A dog stranded in the middle of the road near the concrete divider.  A racehorse who shattered her leg in the final hundred yards of the race and had to be euthanized on the spot.  Anything.

My heart would crack wide open, the tears would come.  I would imagine their pain, their fear, their suffering, and suffer right along with them. 

The older I get, the more I learn that not everyone loves them the way that I do, that tragedy and loss are a part of life, that we can't fix everyone's suffering.  At least, I pretend to learn these valuable lessons, but secretly, deep inside, I go on grieving those souls.  Animals cannot speak to us in words, but our pets,they give us the best that they have, they love us unconditionally.  Animals in the wild live purely and without guile; they don't know how to be anything but exactly what they are.  They are beautiful beyond words, beyond breath.

My daughter, she has this bleeding heart too.

Picking her up at the aftercare place the other day, I find her tear-streaked and sad-eyed.

"What happened, baby?"

"The other kids were laughing at me.  They were horrible."

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart.  What were they saying to you?"

"Well, there was this CAT, mom and it only had three legs.  And it was kind of hopping along, and it was just so sad that I cried."

My heart cracks in two right along with her.  "Oh, baby."

"The other kids all laughed at me and they were teasing me.  They were saying horrible things like about a dog that got hit by a car and another dog that broke its leg.  One kid was telling me about shooting squirrels.  Shooting them!"

I hate their cruelty.  Not just to my daughter, but that they could be so callous about the pain of a living creature.

 

Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts.

For they have their own thoughts.               

             ~Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

 

Yes, she has her own thoughts, her own heart.  

 

A bleeding heart, just like her mama. 

Its just what I do

S asked me the other day why it is that I like having so many animals.

I had a really hard time answering that question.

They certainly complicate life, and fostering (especially fostering highly energetic puppies) makes even the standard daily routine a lot more difficult.  Its not as if I don't have enough on my plate to begin with.

 

I've always loved animals.  We had a dog growing up, a german shephard mix my folks adopted from the Humane Society.   Queenie was a big furry baby sitter to me.  When the big kids were playing too rough, she would pen me in the corner of the yard and not let me out, despite my rather vigorous protests.  If my mom's hands were full with groceries, she would herd me from the car to the porch to the slider door.  She tolerated my attempts to treat her like a horse without ever once losing her temper.  She was my father's dog, loving him the best of all, but she was my other mother.  She was always there, for 15 years, and I can still feel the tug on my heart when I think of how much I miss her. 

When we moved from the city to the country, my parents set the bar for me when it comes to farm life.  We went from being a one-dog city family to a one dog, three cat, five duck, one (and at times two) horse, ten chicken and occasionally a donkey and a steer or two country family.

Rescue and having a large contingent of animals was never something I planned to do, but for whatever reason they just kept showing up.  With one exception, all of the animals who found their way into my life were either strays, adopted from a shelter, or adopted through a rescue.  Its not that I need to have them all - its that I can, and that the need on their part is so great. Each and every one of them is an individual, with unique personality and traits.  Hercules wiggles, Roscoe can be counted on to tolerate the loving abuse of children with equanimity, Juliet rules the house like the little princess she is. 

 

T-Bone, his job is just to follow me and make sure I don't get lost.

I see no reason why people should be irresponsible with the lives of animals.  With dominion comes great responsibility, and it is my fixed opinion that a great number of people have been terribly lacking in their duty to properly care for our planet and the animals who inhabit it.  The best leaders are the people who understand that leadership is not power at all, but a terrible burden.  In the same way, being at the top of the food chain doesn't mean that we ought to be sitting on our front porch having target practice with the neighborhood squirrels or killing animals simply for a trophy set of horns.  We are stewards, and we ought to be mindful of that.  I'm not against hunting and I'm not against eating meat.  What I'm against is the irresponsible decimation of animals for no other reason than sport.  Killing for the sake of killing.

We have, over thousands of years, formed a partnership with dogs and with cats.  We have bred them to be loyal, loving members of our household.  All recognized breeds have a purpose for which they were created, and there are a number of breeds whose only job was to be human companions.

I've seen dogs treated horribly by people, abused, neglected, starved.   They come in to rescue with no reason whatsoever to retain any loyalty to the human race and still they trust us to care for them.  Back in New Jersey we'd get dogs surrendered by the puppy mills in Pennsylvania (there are Amish farmers in PA who use those great big barns as breeding facilities) who had never in their life been out of a crate.  They'd never been OUTSIDE.  Or seen a vet.  Or played with a toy.  Elderly dogs, sick, taken to shelters by owners who couldn't be bothered to care for them in the last days of their life.  Abandoned dogs, starving, barely alive.

I've never been able to see an animal or a child suffer abuse without feeling all the way into the center of my being that I should do something about it.  Now, my therapist has told me that is an emotion I should be on the watch for, as it apparently connotates something unhealthy.  Frankly, I beg to differ.

My mom said in passing a while back, "You know, you really need more acreage for all these animals."  Then she looked at me and laughed and said, "I take it back.  If you had more room you'd just have more animals."  She's right.  I'd run a horse rescue in a heartbeat if I had the acreage and resources.

While browsing one of my favorite horse blogs, I clicked on a link that led me to this story.  I'll warn you that if you click through, you'll see some graphic photos of a horse that was terribly abused and near death.  The person who responded to the craigs list ad for her realized how poor her condition was and convinced the owner to let him take her away for a decent burial.  She couldn't even stand up, and had to be loaded onto his trailer by being carried on a plywood board.

Miracle's story has a happy ending, she has made a remarkable recovery and just last week made the trip to her new adoptive home.  Sadly, for many animals who are abused or neglected, there IS no happy ending.  The people who volunteer for the rescues, who donate food and supplies, who foster, who give us air time and feature our adoptable animals on the news or who write articles about us in the paper, they are the ones standing in the gap. 

I stand with them.  I can't explain to you why - nor should I have to.  Its just something I do.

Rolling along

Years ago I dated an older man, whose favorite response to "How are you?" was, "Rolling like thunder down the road of life." 

Five or six days ago, I think what I was doing was more of a crabwalk, and I've not quite hit "thundering", but at least I'm picking up speed.  Rolling like...a Red Flyer wagon wheel, or maybe a big, rather odd-shaped rock that tumbles down a slope.

And so, amidst what seemed at first to be a very terrible week, there was a bright spot or two.  The birthday of my daughter, the support of friends, the warm fur of my horses when I warm my cold hands under their manes on a cold morning.  The sweet brown eyes of my dogs as they gaze at me in love.  The warm weight of a cat who has taken my sitting down as an invitation to have a snooze on my lap. 

If I am grateful for anything today it is that when life seems hardest to bear, when I begin to wallow in those thoughts of "I hate having to do all of this by myself" that I realize I am not by myself.  In those times when I feel I just can't take one. more. step. -- He's there.  It seems odd that struggles might be the best way to grow my faith, but its true.  I'm not one of those people who believes that every difficulty we face in life is somehow placed there by God to teach us something.  Oh sure, there are things we need to learn and perhaps there are times when that's the case, but I rather think that we have struggles and pain and misery and suffering because of the things we as human beings do to one another.  But that no matter what the pain, now matter how many tears we may cry over it, that God sees our pain and hurts right along with us.  That He loves me, and you, so very much that the simple fact that we have suffering breaks His heart.  And when I think of what Christ endured, I feel somewhat ashamed of my suffering because it doesn't begin to equate with what agony it must have been for Him. 

So there's gratitude.

Gratitude for other reminders;  that my Mom is, always has been, and always will be the kind of mother who loves her children and feels that her job of providing band-aids for skinned knees doesn't end when we graduate from high school.  In the absence of daycare and the necessity of still getting to the office for meetings and to accomplish my job during what is our busy season, my mom didn't wait to be asked for help, she cleared her schedule and pitched in by picking C up from school and getting A off the bus.  She came to my house and folded laundry and did crafts with the kids and fed them lunches and snacks and dinners. 

Gratitude for new things learned; that even though in my self-pity parties I often feel that I am the only person who is handling everything and being consumed with worry and anxiety over my child's struggles, that they have a father who worries about them every bit as much.  Who will take C to his Doctor's appointment today because it was the only appointment we could get and I would like to make it to work again. 

Gratitude that I have an employer who is flexible and who values families.  A boss who says "Go do what you need to do." 

I found a solution that I think will work; a mom who gave up half her family's income to be with her kids until they are in school full time, who has a sibling with issues just like my children, who in all ways appears calm, patient and who loves kids.  Who, for what I can afford to pay, will pick my children up from school three days a week and alleviate the need for my struggling son to be in an aftercare environment that is chaotic and noisy and completely overstimulating and overwhelming for him.  The first day he didn't have to go there he was so much better.  Mom and I both thought he seemed relieved that he didn't have to go to group aftercare anymore. 

We started an additional medication last Friday for the ADHD and we increased the dosage on his medication for Bipolar.  The aggressive behavior tapered off significantly this week and he has gotten some good reports from school.  He's still very active - overly so, and perhaps the second medication isn't quite the right one - but we are on the right track.

So we're rolling right along.  Waiting for the next bump in the road, but I know we'll get over it when it inevitably appears.

 

Cheap

I'm hating this economy more and more with every passing month.  Its disheartening to see everyone struggling to make ends meet, to see companies lose business and lay people off.  I have friends who have been applying for every job in sight and NO ONE is calling them back - not because they're not qualified, but likely because they are competing with thousands of other applicants for the same damn job. 

Even for families who are working, so many people I know are struggling to make ends meet.  Its hard with fuel prices still up a good 50 cents a gallon more than they were at this time last year.  Lots of folks have found ways to avoid spending money on gas by carpooling or taking public transportation, but even so, the higher fuel prices affect the prices of our consumer goods, so its difficult to ever really escape the hurt. 

With a house- and barn-ful of animals to house and feed plus two growing children, I have a lot of opportunities to tighten my belt.  In my priority list, the kids come first.  The animals get what they need, and sometimes things have to wait because we need school clothes or have a medical bill to pay.  However, there are lots of ways I've found to make sure my pets get taken care of responsibly while spending a lot less money than I used to.

Vaccines

Did you know that you don't have to have a veterinarian vaccinate your animals?  I think its more common in rural communities, but a lot of people just assume they have to go to the vet.  If its a matter of not getting your pet vaccinated at all because of the cost factor, try doing it yourself.

For the dogs, I still have to have a vet administer their rabies vaccine (they don't sell those over the counter), but a great thing to do is to keep your eyes and ears open for free or low cost vaccination clinics.  Some vets are fairly cheap for their prices, you can call around and see who is the lowest cost for your office visit.  I had to get one of the dogs updated on rabies a couple of weeks ago, and I found a local, reputable vet, who doesn't charge you an office call if you're just coming in for rabies.  I only paid $15 for the vaccine.  For everything else the dogs, horses and cats need, I vaccinate myself.  They're not that hard to give, all of the vaccine packages list the instructions for administration, and its a simple thing to Google websites that will give you step-by-step instructions with pictures. 

In addition to giving your own vaccines, you can save money by not over-vaccinating.  For any animals, the vaccine coverage you give should be equivalent to their exposure.  Rabies is usually a requirement for dog and cat licensing, and if your animals are outdoors and exposed to potential rabies-bearing animals, they should always have that.  Otherwise, vaccinate according to what they need.  If you never leave home and your pets are strictly indoor, they don't need the same vaccine panel as an outdoor animal or one who is frequently boarded or exposed to other animals at places like shows, dog parks, trail rides, etcetera.  Just keep in mind that if you don't vaccinate at all and the unexpected happens - your dog or cat gets outside or you have to travel unexpectedly - they won't be protected. 

Food

The best way I've found to save money on food is to buy in bulk.  I rarely do this with perishable human food, since things spoil before we can eat them and frankly, frozen milk sucks ass.  But dog and cat food has a longer shelf life and buying the big quantities saves me dollars.   For the horses, this is pretty much the only way to get their food - grain comes in 50 lb bags.  Hay is usually sold by the ton and prices vary from year to year and by feed composition.  I stick with a lower-priced supplement that contains all of the basic necessities, and I never buy hay by the bale unless its only to tide me over between deliveries.   It usually costs a few dollars more per bale than by the ton, and that adds up over time.  I save a few hundred dollars a year buying directly from the hay grower.

Bulk is the answer for dog and cat food as well.  Costco is my friend.  The bigger bag I get, the less expensive per pound the food works out to be.  I keep my dog and cat food in plastic storage bins to help make sure I don't get a pest problem.  Mice LOVE finding bags of food in your garage; its the surest way to invite them to stay for the winter. 

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this before, but when selecting a dog or cat food, I'm very careful to  read the ingredients list.  Most animals will survive on cheap food, but ideally, the balance to find is the lowest priced food that that has a meat product listed as the first ingredient in the food.  I avoid corn fillers like the plague, or at the very least make sure they're far down the ingredient listing.  The ingredients are always listed in order of the most to the least, so the primary ingredient is the first thing listed.   Dogs and cats are carnivores.  Animals in the wild might supplement their diet with grass, berries and nuts, but they are designed to eat meat as their primary food.   Corn products are more difficult for their bodies to process and in simple terms, place a higher burden on the organs designed to filter the toxins.  I think a lot of the kidney failures we see in younger cats is due to an excess of corn and other grains in the diet.    Raw is best - but lets be realistic.  Most people could never afford to feed their dog or cat a full raw diet.  I can't - its horribly expensive. 

Grooming

I don't have to worry much about grooming, with a house full of short-coated doggies and kitties.  Basics only for us - toenails, ears and teeth (occasionally), all of which I do myself.  Even with long-coated breeds, though, its cheaper to buy a pair of good shears and keep them sharpened than it is to pay for a lifetime of groomer visits.  You can save money if you did even half of your animal's grooming on your own.  The only thing that I won't do at home is anal glands.  My old boxer had surgery on a badly infected anal gland two years ago and now requires them to be emptied at regular intervals.  I Googled some information on how to do it myself, and I know that I really could...but EWWWW.  NOT.  DOING. THAT.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the easiest way to save money on animal care is simply not to have animals in the first place.  There's a saying I heard a lot on the show circuit when I was young:  "The cheapest thing you ever do is buy the horse."    Truth, that.  My horses cost me at a minimum $2000 a year for just hay and shoeing.  Add in supplements, grain, vaccines, tack and grooming supplies, plus the cost of irrigation and pasture care or boarding, you're looking at a serious chunk of dough.  Horses live to be 30 or 40 - so you're signing on for the long term.  Dogs and cats are no exception; in rescue we typically advise prospective owners that their new Fido will ad $1200 a year, more or less (big dogs cost more for everything than little dogs).  The chickens are probably the most cost-effective of all of the critters at home.  Sure, they're not fun to cuddle with, but for a minimal investment I no longer have to buy eggs.  They're extremely easy to keep, too.

I'm not as good at stretching a dollar as some of my friends and relatives.  My sister Vicki can make a penny squeak, she's so good at finding bargains.  I do what I can, and continually look for ways I can do better.   I carpool to work more days than I don't, I buy store brands when they're quality-equivalent, I turn off lights and occasionally I try to cut coupons. I will admit, though, that coupon shopping is a living hell for me with my ADHD brain.  I can barely remember to bring my reusable bags to the store, never mind an envelope full of coupons, mostly expired, because I lack the mad sorting skills to put them into anything resembling useful order.

What are the things you and your family doing to survive the recession?  Have you learned anything new about ways to save money?  Are you surviving job loss?  Tell me about it!   Share your money-saving tips in my comments section.  Lets all help each other to survive - and thrive.

Sunday Scatology

**Don't say you haven't been warned.  If you're put off by discussions of poop, don't read another word.**

We sort of skipped church today.  Little Man coughed all the way there, so I just sat in on my confirmation class, then we headed home before he could cough all over the rest of the congregation and their children.

It has been a beautiful day, sunny, started off slightly chill but has warmed up throughout the day.  Perfect day to catch up on yard work. 

Every parent, at the arrival of their first child, is thrust (often reluctantly) into the role of scatologist.  Poop is a fact of life for everyone, but it plays a monumental role for parents of babies and not-yet-potty-trained toddlers.  If you've got animals, you deal with it constantly as well.  If you're me?  Your life is pretty much full of shit all the time.  Litter boxes here are cleaned daily, stalls weekly, back yard poop-scooped every couple of days.  Thank God the kids know how to handle their own bodily functions now.  (I was so relieved to see the end of diapers.  Both of my children were late bloomers in the potty-training department.  In fact, I had to tell Little Man that little boys aren't allowed to turn four until they can use the potty, so if he wanted to celebrate his fourth birthday he'd better get with the program.  Changing babies never bothered me, but changing toddlers...blech.  When things start resembling something that might come out of an adult, its time to either get them out of the pull-ups or start making them clean up their own mess.)

You can tell a lot about a person or an animal by what they excrete.  You can tell if they're eating too much or too little, if they're eating the right things.  You can tell if they're adequately hydrated.  With  horses you can even tell if they might have dental issues based on how well and evenly the hay or grass is ground by their molars.  Its rather fascinating when you get right down to it.  At the winery we have lots of coyotes and foxes around, as well as badgers and deer.  You can tell when the rodent population gets scarce, because when we're on our vineyard walks at lunchtime we can see the grapes start showing up in the coyote piles.

With the dogs, I can tell what non-food items they've been into when I scoop the yard.  Today was no exception.  I saw crayons, ribbon, bits of plastic toys (Roscoe destroys about ninety percent of the toys that come in the Happy Meals), some (ahem) feminine products (the boxer goes after feminine hygiene products like a junkie chases the needle), and even what appeared to be some blue painter's tape.   Nothing too out of the ordinary for this household.  (Once I had a lab mix with an underwear fetish.  She would get into the laundry and dig out panties, then chew them up.  One time on a walk in the local park, she actually crapped out a pair of green lace thong panties, right in front of several people.  Yeah.  Totally NOT EMBARRASSING.  I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THOSE BELONGED TO.  >.>  That same dog also survived chowing down a Gillette disposable razor.  When I realized she'd eaten it, I called the vet, who advised feeding her heavily to put lots of other product in the system that might help to surround the edges of the blade.  I still have the xray he took of her intestines.  You can see the razor blade clear and stark as the day.  I shudder to think about what could have happened, but eventually she passed it.  It was a relief to have it out of her, plus I was glad to be able to stop rummaging through piles of feces in search of it.)

Cleaning the yard today wasn't as bad as it has been in the past.  I recently started giving the dogs a diet of half raw and half dry food.  The amount they're pooping has been cut nearly in half.  The amount of poop a dog (or anyone, for that matter) creates is directly proportional to the amount of waste products in their diet.  Low-end dog food, which are mostly fillers, give you dogs that create a large amount of poo.  We had a neighbor back in NJ who had a big rottweiler.  Occasionally he would poop in my front yard, and from the looks of it, that dog must have been eating 10 square meals a day.  I've seen smaller piles come out of HORSES for heaven's sake. 

The higher quality food you feed, the less the animal produces in waste matter.  For dry dog foods, I look for anything that has actual meat products as the first ingredient.  The ingredients are listed in order of largest percentage to smallest percentage contained in the food.  Even some of the so-called "premium" dog foods have corn meal or corn fillers as the FIRST ingredient on the ingredients list. Corn is not a natural food for a carnivorous animal to eat, and some vets and researchers attribute the high incidence of renal failure in otherwise healthy dogs and cats to an excess of grains in the diet.  The really high-grade food is also high-dollar, though, and out of my budget.  I look for dog food in the middle price range that lists its primary ingredient as meat or meat by-products.  Recently at the Fred Meyer grocery store (they're a Kroger chain) I was happily surprised to also find a reasonably priced raw food.  By feeding my guys half raw I can afford to incorporate it in their diet for about $8 a week.  The biggest benefit, of course, is that I know I'm helping them to stay healthy longer by feeding them what their system is designed to eat.  I'm not going to complain about the OTHER side benefit either -- smaller poop.  It makes it easier to spot the underwear.