Paparazzi - Go Away!!
I don’t know why, but Samia hates having her picture taken. If she knows I have a camera in hand, she suddenly turns away from me or gets a serious face. Luckily, she wanted a belly rub and I had my camera phone! Gotcha, girlie!
This weekend, the SPCA of Wake County is celebrating its 43rd birthday. In honor of this special time, we would like to say Thank You.
Thank You for My Little Brother!
Pilot is a wonderful addition to our family and we’d be lost without him!
Pilot - Our Happy Boy
It’s a new Saturday and another list of Pet Blogger Hop blogs. I hope to get around to more this week as there are so many awesome blogs out there and I will do my best to get a “real” post up later today. The dogs are sleeping right now while I clean. I’m sure that will change when I get the vacuum cleaner out. Amazingly, they aren’t afraid of it. I almost wish they were. They just look at me when I come near them like “Seriously? You want me to move? Go vacuum somewhere else.” Gotta love ’em!
While I know mine isn’t the most entertaining blog on the market, I thought the hop would be fun, even if it just encourages me to find other dog blogs. Here goes…
Shh, I'm about to infiltrate a gang of dalmatians. Don't blow my cover.
Pilot is the first dog I’ve had that tolerates being dressed up. In fact he loves it. Playing dress up, whether he is a bumblebee at Halloween, a reindeer at Christmas, pretending to be a dalmatian in my pajamas, or even just wearing a pair of pants on his head, is a fun game to him. This game involve lots of attention and laughter on my part and my Rottiepointador (rottweiler, pointer & labrador mix) just eats it up. Okay, I admit, it’s fun for me, too.
BOL!
I am a LEGO addict. I’ve collected them for as long as I can remember and have a big tub of various blocks, some of which I’ve had for nearly 30 years. So, when I discovered a LEGO photo app for the iPhone, I had to have it (hey, it was free).
This article was shared on Facebook by my favorite dog-blog Life With Dogs. The talk show host referred to is apparently having his 10 year-old dog euthanized because he has a new baby and the dog gets grumpy and snappy and is therefore not suitable to have around the baby. The “intellectual” argument is that it is better to adopt a shelter dog for just a few months and have it euthanized, than to have it remain in a shelter and be euthanized anyway.
I suppose, on one hand, I can see his argument. Isn’t it better to experience love, even for just a short time, and be surrounded by that love at death than to die in terror and misery? The biggest problem I see is that this philosophy promotes the idea of dogs (and shelter pets in general) as disposable. Rather than find a good, loving, forever home when your 8 year-old decides that having a dog is no longer fun or cool, have it euthanized.
Allow me to acknowledge up front that there are other cultures that are not as attached to dogs as pets as Americans and who may therefore find the entire discussion ridiculous. Perhaps, also, I would feel differently if I weren’t a single, childless woman. With this bias in mind, I’d like to propose another view of his theory to defend my outrage at the concept of euthanasia as a convenience.
What are shelter pets? They are dogs, cats, and other animals who have been abandoned, neglected, abused or orphaned by the death of owners. Millions of these pets are housed in shelters and rescue groups across the globe. Because of irresponsible breeding (and by this, I mean puppy mills and backyard breeders – this is in no way meant to be an attack on legitimate breeders who ensure their animals are given good homes with people who understand the breed) there are more animals than shelters can house. There are not enough people with the resources and/or the desire to provide loving environments for these animals and many shelters must euthanize animals because of over-crowding.
The foster care system is also over-crowded with children who have been abandoned, neglected, abused and orphaned. There are not enough people with the resources and/or desire to foster or adopt all of these children. The news is filled with stories of children passed from one foster home to another and just like with dogs, the older the children get, the harder it becomes to place them. Everyone wants an infant. Everyone wants a puppy. Should we euthanize children to relieve the over-crowding of the child welfare system? If we take the talk show host’s idea to heart, each of us should adopt a child. Adopt any child of any age, feed them, love them, care for them, and when we are tired of them, or when our lifestyle changes and they no longer “fit”, kill them. After all, isn’t it better for that child to have known love for a month or two, than to never know love?
I’m not advocating the murder of children. Let’s make that clear. I’m not even suggesting it is a viable option. Why not stop the cycle of death for convenience altogether? Why not put our resources into providing better environments for animals in shelters, more aggressive marketing to find them homes, fund spay/neuter programs, and fund assistance programs for families experiencing a sudden loss of income and seniors to enable them to keep their animals instead of surrendering them?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: dogs make everything better. They are like moms who can kiss any boo-boo and make the pain go away. As a child, I loved the book by Judith Viorst entitled Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. It’s about a little boy who experiences a day where everything goes wrong. He wakes up with gum in his hair; he goes shopping with his family for shoes and gets stuck with plain white ones, instead of ones with red or blue stripes; and his lunch bag is missing dessert. Today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day for me. I won’t go into detail, but it began with a severe headache last night, waking up every two hours, then forgetting to close the bathroom door and put the dog gate up blockading the kitchen before I left for work and went downhill from there. Ordinarily, these last two would be no big deal. In fact, these are recent additions to my routine. Samia and Pilot have developed a counter-surfing fetish. While we’ve had this problem occasionally in the past, it has now become an almost daily occurrence. The advice I received from friends and family seem rather cruel to me, so instead of breaking the habit, I’ve just been trying to eliminate access to temptation. But, I digress.
To summarize, my work day was miserable and I dreaded what destruction I would find when I came home. Would they have eaten the cookies on the counter? Would they have torn apart my pajamas that I left in the bathroom? Would someone have gotten sick on the carpet, leaving me to pick up…you get the picture. Imagine my surprise when I came in the door and both dogs came to greet me. No one hid, no tails were tucked up under bellies, and there was no destruction. Cookies are on the counter. Clothes are intact. There are no “presents” on the floor. I don’t know how they knew I’d had a bad day, but they must have. I was greeted with kisses and toys and wagging tails. I hooked my home printer up to my work laptop and the drivers were there (I couldn’t get them to communicate the last time I tried), so I can work from home tonight, in the company of my dogs, instead of driving back to the office. I am sure this is their handiwork.
Dogs make everything better.
Tails from the Dog-side 