Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Additions

Look! It's the promised post from 2 of the previous posts! With pictures! And lots of exclamations!

This is a long, picture heavy post, my dear Stalkees, so bear with me while it all loads up. It's been a hectic couple of weeks at Casa de la Stalker with plenty to blog and it's not all about deflecting shit from Lee Ann during her recovery. Who, by the way, looks awesome and has a new weapon in the clearance section of her LYS. Sweetheart, if they try to take the yarn you were ogling, whip off the awesome skull durag and tell them the scar is from the last fight you had over yarn and that you were the winner of that one. Then grin at them. Then email me so I can laugh and laugh. It'll be so awesome.

Anyway, back to me, yay. So like I said, it's been hectic. There was the fence building and so forth and there has been just lots of throwing shit away from my house. We have set so much crap out on the road only to check an hour later and it is mysteriously gone. This has been so entertaining we are searching the house for crap to throw out. We have a big TV console and TV in my yarn room that is going to go and we can't wait for the console to try and leave. We're going to stake out the front windows to watch on that one. Yes, we have been getting rid of crap so why is this post titled additions? Meet Bonnie and Clyde.
Bonnie is the tan and Clyde has the cream coloring. T found these poor guys on the Catahoula Rescue Message Board and asked me what I thought. What do I think about what? Who remembers Penny, the Demon Dog? We are still recovering in our house from Penny. No. No way am I bringing in TWO Catahoulas when one did so much damage. Nope. Huh uh. Then he says this to me:

"They were dumped by their previous owners who had obviously abused them and they were found on the Utah freeway system starving to death. They are in a high kill shelter and if they don't have someone claim them today, they'll be euthanized in 24 hours."

Well, shit.

So, I made the stipulations that these were HIS dogs, he takes care of them, they are never allowed inside my house, they do not mingle with the little ones at all, and I want nothing to do with them except to be allowed in my backyard. Clear enough? I think so. I hold some serious bitterness towards poor Penny. Anywho, the rescue network had a guy picking up dogs in Colorado to come this way, so he agreed (free of charge) to hop on up to Utah and grab these 2. Then he called us halfway to Texas and raved about what wonderful dogs they were. Yeah right, dude. Tell someone who will believe you.
Then they got to the Dallas region and was fostered for 2 days with the lady who watched them after their spaying and neutering, who called us and told us how wonderful they are and how her 2 year old rides Clyde around like a horse. Whatever lady. You are so not gonna convince me that any Catahoula is "wonderful." Then hubby went up to Hillsboro, Texas and got them. When I got home from work that day I knew I had to go meet them and face them and deal with them being in my backyard. Ugh. Hubby had already called me a told me they were shy, skiddish and a bit stand-offish due to previous abuse. Great. I get to deal with mental dogs.

I get home, play with the little ones for a while and T comes in to lead me out back to meet the new dogs, warning me that they may not come to me at first. So I step outside, sit in one of the deck chairs and say "Hi, Bonnie and Clyde. Welcome home." They both came up to me, sniffed me, wagged their tails and laid their heads in my lap. It still brings tears to my eyes. I love these dogs. We've had some work and there's still a lot left to do but they have come so far. They are always happy to see us, they no longer cringe if we move too fast and they are beginning to finally play after almost 3 weeks. When we first got them, if you threw a toy they tucked tail and ran the opposite direction. Neither of these dogs is over 3 years old and they don't know how to play.

They are protective of us and our home. They can both jump our new 6 foot fence, but they just go to the front yard, lay down in the grass, then go BACK into the back yard of their own accord. If we let them go in the front with us, they stay with us and could care less about any cars or people going by unless someone steps in the yard, then they growl unless we say it's ok. These guys are smart and really amazing. They are pranksters. They love to ride and at one point T had popped his trunk for something and they both hopped in the trunk ready to go. They were a booger bear to get back out. The only time we have lost control of them was when our neighbor across the street came home and lowered his tailgate to unload something out of his truck. Before we know what was happening, they were across the street and in the guys truck bed. They REALLY like to go for rides. When I hurt my hip and was laid up on the couch, Clyde kept jumping the fence to lay on the porch below the window behind the couch. It was the weirdest thing. I cannot tell you how happy I am with these 2. I still can't believe we get to keep them. We still don't let them mingle with the little ones. We're gonna keep it that way.

Also new to our home, is these little guys. Mama Wren has hatched 2 more eggs in her laundry room nest. Two yellow beaks and twice the chirping power.

Speaking of additions, I had another new addition come live with me courtesy of Erin. Meet Clucky Rooster*. Clucky came with not only the cutest card ever, but she came bearing gifts of Lorna's Laces. I now own 4 skeins in 2 colorways of this wonderful crack yarn and I still don't knit socks. What is wrong with me??

A close-up of Clucky herself.
And because it's all about the yarny goodness, a close up of the Laces.
T had a hard time figuring out why I was dancing (ok, hobbling and limping) around with a box yelling "My chicken came in, my chicken came in! Woohoo!" until I opened the box and got teary eyed and said "My chicken brought me sock yarn! *sniffle* How cool is that!?" Which is when he realized it had to do with blogger things and gave up. Thank you soooo much, Erin. She's perfect.

I leave you with the sentiment at my house of all the recent activity. I think Alex sums it up beautifully.
*For those that are my age and wondering why the name of the chicken sounds almost familiar, she was named after Punky Brewtser. Hee!

5 comments:

pacalaga said...

Aw, good doggies are the best. You'll probably find that as long as they're not bored, they'll be pretty good dogs. When I was a kid, we had the most obnoxious horrible creature ever. When one of the neighbors let her out while we were gone, we didn't look very hard for her. (We were little.) Fast forward to now, when I have my Greta, the smartest, nicest dog ever. I was looking at old pictures and realized heinous dog was the same kind of dog. Turns out she was just bored and lonely. Greta dog gets extra love because I screwed up with heinous dog. :-)

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on your new additions! They are adorable. I keep trying to convince my husband that our dog needs a friend but he's not buying it.

Anonymous said...

Wow! Congrats on your ever expanding household!!! Dogs, chickens, yarn... yeah!!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like the doggies are a good fit for your family.

Cool chicken, btw.

Christina said...

Wow.