Wednesday April 15.. Bubbles comes home

I bought a crate for Bubbles for in the car, I see people driving with loose dogs in the car and I think they are crazy. Um......I drove home with Bubbles on my lap.... I decided I couldn't crate her. She's at least 4 years or older, and may have spent her whole life caged. I have survived trauma and just couldn't make her go through more. The car was going to be hard enough when the last and probably first time she has any memory of being in one she was thrown out the window. I did try to put her on the passenger seat and as soon as I tried to move her in that direction she started crying. So on my lap she went. I was so going to get arrested if I got pulled over!!! Forget cell phone distraction! She sat in my lap and shook for 5 minutes. I have to say I do watch Cesar Milan "The Dog Whisperer" and I didn't pet her during this time (I'm a good girl, yes I am), just waited for her to calm down on her own. She did and layed down. I'm thinking this isn't so bad. Get home, uneventful. Put her on a leash, kind of cute. She dosen't go anywhere. I stand and she stands, I walk she stands. She starts to walk I follow, she stops as soon as I take a step and flips around to make sure I am not going to kick her, and stand again. This went on for a half an hour. Time to change tactics. I go way in front of her holding her leash and call her "Bubbles, come here Bubbles." and she comes towards me, ( she dosen't understand but already wants to be near me and petted). Reward and again and again and again etc. Until we have walked 100 ft. Whew! time to rest. No potty yet.
Next time we go out I have my daughter hold the leash and follow her. I stand about 12 ft away and start calling, she comes, but as soon as my daughter takes a step she freaks out and flips around, checking for a kick or something equally nice. We keep working, and finally I get her to continuously walk for about 100ft before reward (this takes about 20 minutes). PROGRESS!!!!!!! :)

New baby...Bubbles

WARNING!!!!!
I am going to get a little serious here over my next several blogs.

I adopted a dog named that we named Bubbles. I have decided to post her story and hopefully her transformation here. I use facebook, but you can only type so many letters and then they cut you off. Short attention span and all that. Maybe people with poor reading comprehension made the website, anyway back to Bubbles.
I found her as a listing on my local craigslist Friday. The story behind her was that some people were driving in a local Twp, and they started throwing dogs out the window of their car (possibly six dogs, but at least five). One dog was struck and later died. Bubbles was also hit but was fine, more of a bump than a hit. When I saw her picture on the web (I am bummed I didn't save it) I thought she didn't look to bad. I spent all weekend thinking about it and couldn't sleep at all. I decided that come Monday I was going to go see her. I hadn't yet decided that she was the one for us, there happened to be two possible candidates. I arrived at the pound and sitting in this room are the most miserable creatures I have ever seen. They are huddled in the corner of the visitiation room, there are three people already in the room with them, and they are as far away from these people as possible. I still had to ask at the front desk to visit the bichon's because I cannot believe these are the same dogs sitting in front of me as the dogs I saw on the internet.
My son is standing near the half wall they are behind. He has both fingers in his nose (He doesn't know how to plug his nose??????? Oh he's eight.) and wants to know what the horrible smell is. I walk into the little viewing area and then the smell hits me. The dogs are covered in there own filth!!! What caged life does to a dog!! You can't pet them, the only place you could touch them is on the very top of there head where there is on little spot you can put your finger tip. Or the bridge of their noses which are totally bald (I wonder if the hair will ever grow back, cage rubbing?) We spent about and hour and a half trying to coax these dogs to do something. They would sniff your hand after a few seconds of having it in their faces. I decided to adopt the one and here I am today. We have had her now for 4 days, and it has been work (I'm not kidding anyone) There are great joyful moments, and really frustrating moments.
I will post about the last four days over the next four days. That way if you're from facebook you might remeber what I am writing about :) Next post today: Getting Bubbles home Wednesday.

Pet adoption agencies and their questions

Saturday I decided to go to our local Petsmart to see the dogs up for adoption. Now this is foolhardy on my part because one: I will not pay the adoption fees they ask ($200, some places are charging $400, what happened to free dogs? They all come with "rehoming fees". Even dog owners are doing this now. This fee implies that I have taken care of this dog and now don't want it, so I want a return on my investment. It's probably good these fees exist or I would have a herd of dogs.) Let me digress on how I ended up there.
I am continuously looking at dogs, my qualifications for a good dog are as follows: housebroken, no jumping, will stay outside with you without needing a leash, and will play fetch, almost free $50 is an acceptable fee. As you see, I will never own a dog, which is probably for the best since my son and I are both allergic. So Wednesday I find myself over at my friends house and we are discussing an adoption application for pugs. These are some of the questions on the online application
*How long have you been at this address? If less than two years,
please provide your previous address:
*Please describe your neighbor hood:
*If your yard is NOT fenced, please explain how you plan on containing your Pug:
Do you have a pool or spa? YES / NO If yes, what style?
Is it fenced? YES / NO Type of fence?
Will you reinforce or enclose areas if we request? YES / NO
Is your home safe from poisons or other dangers? YES / NO / NOT SURE
Is your home air conditioned? YES / NO
What is the activity level of your house hold?
*Please list ALL pets you have owned / raised in the past five(5) years with outcome. (i.e. death,
gave away, etc)
*9. If your Pug does something wrong, what method of correction will you use?
*13. Have you ever lost a pet or have a pet run away? If yes, please explain what happened and
what you did to find it:
*1. What brand of dog food do you plan on feeding your Pug?
*4. Weight gain tends to effect Pugs easily which shortens their life. How will you control
excessive weight gain in your Pug?
*5. Training a Pug can be challenging as they can be very stubborn. How do you plain on
training your Pug and what methods would you consider?
*6. Your Pug chewed a valuable personal item. What method of correction would you use and
how
*Please send up to five (5) years of vet records.
This application is 8 pages long. My friend thinks this is to dissuade people that may abuse the dogs from adopting them, but I disagree as the adoption group have had dogs now for over a year. Who wants to go through the trouble when you can go online to a breeder or even to a pet store filled with puppy mill dogs. This encourages that kind of shopping.
Ok off my soapbox.
We thought it would be funny to actually fill this out (for queston #5- sign him up with a personal trainer like Jillian Michaels) I also decided on a name for my pug-punt (like a football). Mean as it is if I really want to abuse a dog or get a pit bull (another story) for fighting I will pay the fee, and lie on the application.
So back to Petsmart. I am walking around with my two kids, one who wants a dog so badly and the other who would rather have another cat (my cats are outdoor cats which is considered abuse, although ask my cats how they would prefer to live. In a second they would choose outside. Ha to you cat adoption people!) Back to Petsmart again (I am very emotional about all this) and I round the corner and sitting in a chair holding a dog is this lady who is so old she looks like she will die before she even gets out to her car in the parking lot (this is totally not an exaggeration) and I think to myself, there is no age limit on adopting a dog. My gosh, they are so worried about the dog, but they haven't thought about the fact that the owner might get home with the dog, owner collapses from old age, dog eats the person (takes care of the question about what you will feed the dog, now dosen't it), now the dog is a raving mad dog, and has to be put down, this is just cruel. I think they should have restrictions on owner age!
Suddenly I notice this guy (not the guy who looks like..um...I don't think I can do this nicely....a dwarf with messed up arms... and is obviously helping the old lady....I am not making this up! But this other guy who is helping her to fill out the application )(she is mostly blind too). He asks her....(are you ready)...."Have your children ever taken care of pets?" This is a 120 year old woman!!!! For Gods sakes!!!! What kind of question is that, not "Do you plan on dying before you get to your car in the parking lot" which would be much more realistic!
So this woman looks at this "idiot man applicaton writer downer for the old that can't see" and she asks "are you kidding?" (which shows her age because of the wisdom in that short sentence.) I think she was thinking the same thought about the "dying before the car" question. So now that the "stupido man writing down answers for dumb quesstions to adopt dogs to dying people that may also be deaf" asks the same question " Have your children ever taken care of pets?" She replies "Of course" (she should have added "aren't you going to ask me if I am going to die before I get to my car, that seems more important than the question about my children, that are now 70 years old!") I walked away at this point before my mouth opened up and words that I have no control over left me. But as I was walking away, I heard him ask "What responsibilities will your children have in taking care of your dog" At that point I had to run!!!

A dream I once had

Ever question what a dream means when you have one. I never bought a dream dictionary or anything but I do have some of the strangest dreams. The one that haunts me to this day is the dream I had that my husband, my two children and I were living at my mother's house. It was a dark and horrible morning, more like 5:00 a.m. My husband is downstairs getting an egg ready and I look out the front window and a giant squid is attacking my parent's neighbor's house. And just like in every horror movie it is absolute mayhem outside, people, screaming cars exploding, rain and thunder. I yell to my husband, who is a taekwondo master and can obviously defend us from this monster. I scream "Hurry and put on your superman suit, the giant squid is coming!" My husband looks at me and says very calmly "I must finish my egg first." What!!!! His egg is more important than getting on his superman suit and saving the world. What does this mean? His breakfast comes first? The squid is so slow that he can cook an egg, get dressed and still save the world? Why do I dream these strange dreams? What does it say about my psyche that I want to see my husband in a superman suit?
Sometimes I am a wonder even to myself.

Discoveries made while lying in bed

Last night I was in bed trying to keep my husband awake (so he could rub our itchy child) and I put my fingertips on his back and they started vibrating. Humming actually. It was the weirdest sensation. I thought "Wow, that is an electrical current! But coming out of my husband's shoulder?" So I told him about the strange humming emitting from his shoulder blade. He couldn't feel anything, and just thought it was the massive glass of wine I had drunk. I kept playing with the current, using the space on the top of my hand (the unnamed space between your first knuckle and second). Then I had a brilliant idea to convince him that there really was an electric current coming from his back. I thought if he had one, I must too. So I had him check my back. Lo-and-behold, I was humming too. I also could not feel this strange vibration. We checked our children and they were not humming with electricity. We started to think about the possiblity that we were picking up these vibrations from our Sunbeam electric blanket, maybe it was putting out EMF's, so we switched it off and the vibrations went away. So today I google "are electric blankets safe" and this pops up.

"ELECTRIC BLANKET EMF’S (60 Hz Electromagnetic Frequency Waves)

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, some scientists and others began to be concerned over the safety of electromagnetic fields (EMF’s). Various studies in that timeframe had raised concerns over the possibility that the EMF’s generated by power companies’ overhead transmission lines and some appliances could cause cancer especially in children. The United States government became involved and studied over 500 peer reviewed papers written on this potential problem. The National Research Council spent around 65 million dollars and finally stated that there was no conclusive evidence that residential EMF’s play any role in the development of cancer, in reproductive issues or in learning/behavioral issues. Nevertheless Sunbeam, which was then the only major United States manufacturer of electric blankets, altered the design of its products to reduce EMF’s. Redesigned blankets produced after 1992 had much weaker electrical fields than their predecessors. The argument over EMF’s has never gone away completely although very few scientists and medical experts continue to believe that they can cause problems."

http://www.electricblanketinstitute.com/Safety.html

If your back is humming because of EMF's I have to wonder, can that be good? Sunbeam needs to look at their design again because I don't think being able to run electric current through your body is a really good thing. Maybe I can use the blanket as a back up generator.

I know how I'm going to die Do you?

I have confronted hunters with loaded guns! I have walked on super thin ice! Was I shot? NO! Did I fall in the 28 ft deep pond? NO! Why did I do these things? Am I an imbecile? NO! I know that nothing but stairs can kill me. How do I know this? It has been foretold by my 8 year old son. I will die a horrible death by falling down the stairs. So if I avoid stairs I will live forever. I am thinking about skydiving. Parachute or no parachute?

The slogan of an unsuccessful company.

Yesterday I went to whole foods (or whole paycheck depending on who you're talking to) and bought three things for around $11.00. I bought organic chocolate chips, organic coconut, and organic marshmallows (organic marshmallows is like trade in diamonds). Did you see what I paid around $11.00! I hope whole foods sees this, because I might shop there now. Although your lentils are pricey, $1.99 a pound. My friend told me not to buy those (she wanted 5 pounds). Imagine if you lowered your price on those you could have made another $5.00 at least.
So absolutely shocked at the prices I found I had to call my friend about 5 times to make sure I was still on the planet.(By the sixth time, I think I had really annoyed her,which is my goal in life), (Sparkles in case you ever read this) but the last time was a must phone call. I look over at the passenger seat of my car, that's where the most important bags go and I read on the bag "Everything you expect from a store and less" Is this good advertising I ask myself? I had to read it three times, then make that important call. I needed to check that I read it right. Everything I want from a store and less, what are they trying to say? Not everything I want for less. Whole foods is less than a store. Are they missing a wall? Or the beverage section. I mean, how would the average consumer see this? A store that is less. I thought about calling the store and asking what they mean by this demeaning statement (or taking the online survey if they have one). But then I thought if it is keeping the prices lower because people won't go, (I mean come on, it is less than a store), than that is divine providence, and I can't mess with that. Praise God!