Barnmaven

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!

 

Passages

Over the years I've fallen in love with so many blogs.  Every so often I'll see someone I really look forward to reading stop posting with any regularity, and I wonder if they're OK, if this is the beginning of the long decline to the end of blogging altogether or just the silence while they weather a crisis or a dry spell.  When I first started blogging I was so enthralled with the form and the media I couldn't imagine ever wanting to stop.  I'd see someone I really like put their blog on haitus or take it offline entirely and I'd be so perplexed...why would anyone want to go silent like that? 

I also remember being a woman without children and I'd watch people who were parents say and do certain things and I'd be absolutely flummoxed why parents were so crazy.  I, after all, would never say or do such things.  I'd never buy my kid a happy meal just to make him stop crying for one goddam second.  I'd never fill my kids rooms with plastic crappy toys or ignore them just so I could have one minute of sanity in the bathroom or let them wear clothes made in third world countries by indentured servants to the smiley face or...and so on.

I gather this is the standard process for most people.  When something is new or not yet experienced, we bury ourselves under the weight of uninformed opinions and find ourselves surprised when we one day find out just how little we actually know about anything.

The good news (depending, I suppose, on your point of view) is that I'm not planning on falling off the web into that large graveyard of discontinued blogs.  The bad news, if there is such a thing, is that I have no current urge to write much at the moment and no idea how to solve that problem.  Or even know if that's actually a "problem."   My health has been a bit difficult of late, work has been very challenging and stressful, and the things that need doing far outnumber the hours of time available.  In truth, my attitude about blogging and bloggers has changed dramatically over the last year or so, and my reasons for writing, such as they were, are no longer the same.  My goals for blogging have changed significantly, and my self-knowledge of my place in the world of blogging has clarified.  I'm ok with where I am and who I am, and I'm less worried than ever about accidentally offending anyone or even whether or not anyone "important" is reading, because I DO get, frankly, that everyone who takes the time to come here and read my continuing attempts at writing has given me a great gift of time and attention, and I'm grateful for every single one of you. 

Lately I'm in a state of wonderment at the ability life has to be simultaneously amazing and awful.  Or joyous and depressing.  Or stressful and flatlined.  Pick your metaphors, they all fit. 

My friend Debbie, who has taken the reins over organizing my barn, my pastures, my horses and trying to convince me to implement ten thousand fabulous ideas all at the same time, says constantly "Its amazing how you're just so normal!"  I think she has it ass-backwards.  I think we get along really well because on a certain level we have brains that work the same (wrong, not-normal) way and we don't get frustrated by the tangential nature of practically every conversation we've ever had.  Over the course of the summer we've repaired stall doors and expanded so that I now have three working stalls.  When there was only one stall functional and three to four horses being fed with different requirements for supplements and each with the right to be able to eat without someone else chasing them away from breakfast, things were a little crazy out there.    She's also picked my dry pen clean of weeds and rocks.  She's found someone to haul away the manure pile.  She's found someone to put up wall racks for tack and someone to paint.  She's cleared the area behind the barn where all the scrap lumber and fencing materials used to get tossed (don't look at ME, the old owners started it, I just kept the tradition alive) and put down pallets and tarps and quadrupled our ability to store hay.

She also drives my husband a little batty because he is used to being along much of the time and she is by nature a very chatty person.  I can tell he likes her though. 

The kids this summer...what an amazing change in both of them.  My daughter is getting taller and more beautiful by the nanosecond.  She's taken two sessions of swimming lessons, gotten to level three and only needs to perfect two things to get to level four.  She's at that stage of transformation between little girl and startling long-legged tween and she's just stunning.  That's not even subjective mother-pride.  Its just God's honest truth.  What I find fascinating is her ability to verbalize her understanding that she knows she's growing up but she's not in any hurry to do so.  "I just want to be a kid, mom.  I don't want to grow up yet," she'll say, and my heart melts with love and pride and bittersweetness all at the same time.  She will grow up whether I will it or no.  I know that little girls can change dramatically as they age, and I hold onto the firm hope that the person she is, the things about her that make her so awesomely her will stay intact.   She gets more out of my reach every day, and as I let go with a heart that strains under the hope and fear, I simply pray that God lets life be gentle with her for as long as possible.  In les than two weeks she will be a fifth grader. 

My son is learning to negotiate.  His anxiety and ODD issues make certain things difficult.  He hates taking showers because he doesn't want to get any water in his eyes, but baths take too long and his anxiety informs him that soaking in your own dirty water is just YUCK.  So showers were always a struggle, until he came home from his dad's one weekend and announced that he and his dad worked out a deal:  Daddy bought him swim goggles and now he doesn't get upset in the shower.  I'm not sure who thought up the idea, but hot damn if it hasn't made getting the little dude clean a much less stressful event.  Hallelujah and pass the cornbread!  He's gotten tons more compliant about taking his meds, and he's learned to negotiate that as well.  We've also had to learn to listen when he starts to refuse things - sometimes we have a hard time remembering that his anxiety makes certain things far harder for him to tolerate than we can understand.  

SG has been a stay-at-home stepdad all summer and has had both kids pretty much every day of the week since their dad and I are both working, and I really believe his even-tempered nature has had a positive impact on both of them.   Their dad and I both tend to moodiness, and I sense that our unpredictability has been stressful for them.   They have evened out much, both of them, they fight with one another a lot less, and its clear that they both adore their stepdad.  School starts soon, so my husband will be joining the ranks of the employed unless I either get a highly unexpected and very large pay raise or I actually buy a lottery ticket and it turns out to be a winnah.  He's been my rock the last month or so while I've struggled physically and mentally.  That's love for you.  I am not afraid to admit that my patience is thin and my attitude bad, and he has endured it with a great deal more grace than I would likely exhibit were I in his shoes.

We lost Mojo kitty this summer.   He disappeared in the spring for a few weeks and when we finally found him he was so skinny and deteriorated we weren't sure he would make it.  He recovered for a while with special food and supplements and monitoring, but then he went suddenly downhill and we had to make the tough choice to say goodbye.  I suspect it was cancer.    He's joined Hercules, Lady and our little old banty hen Cin-Cin under the tree out in the back pasture.  I think I've learned pretty well the last few years that people and animals too often leave our lives far sooner than we are prepared for them to do, and it reminds me to make a point of taking time each day for each animal to have some attention, for me to be more vigilant about picking up the phone, and to treasure every opportunity to play with my children and create memories to sustain me when they have grown up and begun lives of their own.  It will happen sooner than I think.

How's your summer been so far?

 

All the Aftermath

We sit in our lawn chairs along the waterfront or in the parks, children on our laps and holding hands.  We murmur our appreciation as the flowers made of fire burst and throw sparks down into the water against the black night.  We don't notice the dogs, the cats, frightened and running as far and as fast as they can from the cannon shots.  Its not until I see them on my way to work the next day, small and still on the side of the road, that I contemplate that even the things we do which seem so harmless and fun leave a wake.

Yesterday marked a year from the morning when, driving the back roads to work, I found a suicide victim.

Because of a doctor's appointment, my route to work yesterday took me past that dirt road and I could see the top of the hill where last year there was a white car parked with a man's body sprawled behind it.   Every time I drive by that hill I look for a car parked up there my mind grapples with the image of hiking-boot clad feet sprawled on the ground.

When someone dies, life goes on, much the same.  It seems callous, but the world can't stop.  We still get up and drink our coffee in the morning, feed the animals.  I still make the long drive through the hills with the crop dusters going about their business, looking for an open space to pass the onion truck that holds me back.  Yes, life continues on, apparently unperturbed, but if you know where to look, you can find the ripple of loss. 

The visible wake of the living is easy to identify.  We make messes, we create smiles or tears, we make noise, make things, buy things, clean things up and throw things away.  The wake of those that have gone is somewhat inverse, like a sweater turned outside in.  It is measured far more by what is not than by what is.

A year ago I was consumed with trying to learn more about the man who picked a night the cannons booming and the firecrackers popping would disguise the final crack of the shotgun as he took his life.  If I had known then what the year ahead would bring I might have felt a kinship with his brothers as they mourned their loss.

For the rest of my life that still, frozen moment in time when I realized what I was seeing at the top of the hill will be as much a part of the July fireworks as the memories I hold of my brother and I as children, lighting sparklers and showering the driveway with their fire.  Once upon a time we were young and full of life, shouting our joy at the wonder of sight and sound the fireworks created.  We were brave, lighting fuses and waiting until the last minute to dash away to safety.  Once upon a time we left a magnificent debris of color and echoing laughter in our wake.    Once upon a time, a man I never met while he was alive lit bottle rockets with his brothers and covered his ears with his hands when the firecrackers popped and crackled.  Once upon a time, when the sweater was still right-side out.

The day after the fireworks we sweep up the charred bits of paper and the discarded pop cans, we hose the burn marks off the pavement.  We drvie in circles around the neighborhood, calling for our missing dog or cat, hoping they were one of the lucky ones who found a safe place to hide.  All the while we press a palm over our hearts where the ache of grief resides.

 We deal as best we can with all of the aftermath, that which is seen and that which is not.

 

 

 

 

Public service announcements:

**If you or someone you know is suicidal,please call the national suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)**

**On the fourth of July please keep your dogs and cats indoors**

 

 

 

We owe them

The first time I had to have a dog euthanized (no, I don't pretty it up, that's what it is) my daughter was just starting to walk and the pit mix we'd had since we moved in together started being food aggressive.  Because she was already completely animal-aggressive, we made the tough decision to have her humanely euthanized.  We loved our dog, and we knew if she went to the shelter, her breed would ensure she would very likely not be adoptable, and we didn't feel comfortable placing the responsibility for keeping her and others safe on anyone else's shoulders.

The vet asked me if I wanted to stay in the room with her.

Did I want to?  Absolutely not.  I wanted to be as far away from that place as humanly possible.  No, I did not want to watch my dog die. 

But I owed it to her to be there.

I was the person who took responsibility for her when I signed the adoption paperwork at the shelter.  I was the person who had made the decision to end her life.  Yes, the reasons for doing it were the right reasons, the safety of people always comes first, but it was still my decision and I needed to own that.  And being faced with the choice of being there for my dog or abandoning her to the care of strangers for the final moments of her life cemented in me a belief that I still hold to firmly.  Our household pets rely on us for affection, attention, leadership and companionship.  In the final moments of their lives, when those moments have been scheduled by us, we owe them nothing less than our full presence. 

I've been present for dogs who didn't belong to me because their owners couldn't or wouldn't give them that final gift, and I mourned their passing as much as I mourn the passing of my own.

I believe to my bones that Hercules had a good death.  He was so very sick.  His heart was grossly enlarged, and the drugs that the vet gave me to try to ease his discomfort were doing nothing at all to help him.  All he could do was stand and try to breathe.  He couldn't lie down, it put too much pressure on his lungs and chest and he would panic and start to choke.  He stood there yesterday, looking at me with eyes that were frightened and confused, eyes that begged me to make things better.   Because there was absolutely nothing I could do to ease his condition, I did the only thing I could - I chose to end his suffering.

Before the children left to go to their dads they each got to hug him and tell him they loved him, and when my ex came to pick them up he spent some time with him as well.  And when the time came, when he died, he was in his own home, on his favorite blanket, with his head in my arms.  I stroked his soft ears and kissed his crusty old nose and petted his head and told him over and over again what a good boy he was, how much he was loved, and that I was sorry he was so sick.  I told him that we would see each other again someday, that he had been the best dog, the smartest dog, the sweetest dog that ever lived.  He never flinched, never felt the drugs that finally let him have peace. 

It was earlier this fall that I did the math in my head and realized that the Hercapotamus was almost twelve.  He had already lived the top range of life expectancy for his breed.  I knew then that I would be lucky to have him very much longer.  Just weeks ago he was still himself, bouncy and exuberant.  When he started to walk into the house after being outside rather than run, I sort of knew what was coming.  But I waited for him to tell me it was time to go.  And so he did.

Dogs teach us what it means to love fully and without reservation.  Because their time with us is so brief, they allow us to experience the full circle of life, from childhood to death, and from that cycle we learn how to cope with enormous loss.  The love they give is a treasure, something precious and meaningful.  Each dog is unique and special in his or her own way.  No one will ever love you the way your dog loves you.  Your children will grow up, and while they will love you, they won't always need you.  Your partner or your spouse, they are fully actualized adults and while they love you, while they want to be with you, they don't need you.   Your dog, on the other hand, needs you for as long as he lives.  You are the center of his universe.  When he needs comfort it is your hand she seeks, when he is thirsty or hungry or cold, it is you to whom he comes with his need.

Take responsibility for his comfort, his safety.  And when it is his time to leave this world, you owe it to him to usher him on his way with all of the love and presence of mind you can muster.  Don't let his last touch be that of a stranger.  Make sure yours is the last voice he hears as he crosses over, because you are the most important person in the world to him.

 

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. 

Missing her

Its been over a year now since I lost Lady. 

Occasionally she comes in my dreams, at odd random times, as if to let me know she loves me and is watching over us. 

If you're in the mood for sappy, try this on for size.

 

Now that I've totally depressed you, have a nice weekend. 

 

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.

Puppies, headaches and mania, oh my!

Thanks to S, whose next contract job doesn't start until April(ish) I was able to volunteer to foster puppies for the rescue.  Wait, maybe I'm phrasing that wrong.

Because I'm a forgetful person and a total pushover for babies, I managed to get suckered into fostering puppies for the rescue, aided and abetted by my darling S, who apparently is a sucker of gre at magnitude.

Meet Bella:

and her litter mate Lexie:

As I write this, they are under my chair, chewing on my Uggs.

They are 7 1/2 week-old bundles of cuteness, charm, needle-sharp teeth and an endless reserve of piddle.  The boys have their noses seriously out of joint and the cats are hatching murder plots.  If they don't quit chewing on the power cord to my laptop, though, the cat's won't need to murder them.  I will.

Puppy antics aside, I'm enjoying a few days of relative calm.  I'm pretty sure C was cycling this weekend, the end result of that being a complete inability to cope with anything.  He spent much of Saturday night an Sunday either crying over things that weren't going right or screaming at the top of his lungs because things weren't going right.   He was on sensory overload and just couldn't cope.  Monday I had to get him from school because he was so upset about going to his class Valentine's Day party that he laid on the floor in the hallway sobbing for an hour.

We all survived it, mostly.  Last night after everyone else was sleeping C and I cuddled together on the couch and watched The Tooth Fairy.  He was tired and so was I, but neither of us was ready to give up each others company.  Those are the moments that get me through the trying times. 

A had a terrible headache last night.  Its the second one she's had in as many weeks.  Friday before last I ended up taking her to the ER.  She'd had a headache since the night before, and when we went to see our pediatrician, she also said her neck was hurting.  He was concerned about meningitis and sent us straight to Emergency.  Apparently when they suspect bacterial meningitis in children, they don't mess around.  AT ALL.  We were ushered straight into a room.  The pediatric doctor on rotation examined her, then had blood drawn to check white-cell counts.  It was A's first blood draw and she likes needles about as much as I do, so it ended being quite the rodeo, with four nurses and me holding her down so the nurse could get her samples taken.  Fortunately her white cell count was in normal range, so they sent us home with some Naproxen and instructions to rest.  The Naproxen worked its magic and she was much better within a few hours.  Last night the headache started again and she was unable to sleep, so I gave her another one.  She got sleep, but I tossed and turned.  Of course.

 

Anyone in the market for a puppy?

 

A little too quiet

Smallest to largest.  L to R:  Hercules, Roscoe, Kia, T-Bone. 

 

This is not a very good picture, but I love what it represents.  The hustle and bustle in my house since September, the peaceful co-existence of four large, goofy dogs.  The way they all just seemed to fit together, their individual roles in the makeup of the pack.  The way that three of the cats didn't come out from under the bed from September until just this weekend.

Kia got a home last weekend.

I have to remind myself when dogs like Kia come stay with me that I can't keep them all.  T-Bone came along after Lady died and he just wrapped his big furry paws around my heart.  The idea of keeping him crept into my brain and just wouldn't let me go. 

Kia was kind of the same way.  She is a special, sweet dog.  Her former owner had brought her to a local veterinary office, asking to have her euthanized.   He said there was something wrong with her legs and she couldn't walk.  When the vet tech expressed incredulity and pressed him a little more, he burst into tears and confessed that he was having to move away because of financial circumstances and he wouldn't be able to take her with him.  He'd had her since she was a puppy and she was his best friend and he just didn't know what else to do.

The vet convinced him to surrender her to the rescue and assured him that even older dogs do find loving homes.  (Its true!  They do!)

She was with me long enough that she became part of the house, part of the routine.  She'd been to a couple of adoption days at the shelter but always came home.  Saturday morning was just another part of the routine.  Drive her down, drop her off, go back at four to pick her up.  Big black dogs are always the last to go, no one wants to adopt big black dogs for some reason.  No thought in my head that Kia wouldn't come back at the end of the day.  Not until the shelter volunteer called me and asked if I had time to answer a few questions from a potential adoptive family. 

Some fosters you can't wait to place and it seems forever until they finally find someone willing to give them a chance.  Others you like well enough but when they're gone you're just happy for them.  And there is a small, special group.  The ones that when they finally do go, you cry.  Not for them, but for you.

Its a little quieter here this week. No ball being dropped behind me on the chair as I sit here typing this, being chased and brought back and dropped again, covered in slobber.  No circling of the dining room table, trying to get the cats to PLAY! just a little bit.  No rubber bone being dropped on my feet while I sit on the toilet. 

No Kia.  (I always felt like I was calling her a phone when I'd tell her "No, Kia.  No!  Kia!")

She's got two girls whose beds she can sleep on all night long, but there is a spot on C's bed that is now empty of his nighttime companion.  And there's a spot in my heart that is shaped like a big, black, happy dog. 

I know she will have a good life with her new family.

But I will miss her.