12 in 2014

My friend Christine (more about her later) participates in an annual blog hop hosted by Dwija from House Unseen which invites bloggers to post their 12 favorite photos from the year. I don't take GOOD pictures, but I take a lot of them. Here are the 12 I chose:

It was Silly Sock or Slipper Day in my Pre-K class at preschool. I don't even want to tell you how long it took to position 16 pairs of four and five year old legs like this, but they thought it was silly fun and mostly held still long enough for me to get the picture.

In March, my daughter's travel volleyball team played in a tournament in an itty bitty town southeast of Kansas City. I found out my mother's family had a history in that town (that involved Jesse James, no less), and I wrote about it here. But the other fascinating thing about Holden, Missouri, was its itty bitty St. Patrick's Day parade that was held a block away from the volleyball venue, and I caught a picture of these festive parade-goers before the ten entries in the parade went by.

My son caught our kitten Ruby apparently going through my daughter's dresser drawers in the night. Truly a cat burglar.

1. This picture creeps out my friend Christine.
2. If you look carefully in the background,
you can see one of the other cats lurking there.

My primary class went on a safari on the last day of school, complete with binoculars. I think they found an alligator....

My daughter's image was included in this mural on the side of a building on Main Street that was unveiled in May. She used to dance (and you can read about that here). Although it is not an exact depiction, she is the one seated on the bench.  

Is there anything much cooler than meeting a blog friend in real life? I got to do this when the above-mentioned Christine, hater of cat burglar photos, had to travel to Kansas City when her daughter's soccer team made regional play-offs. I drove up there to spend the day with her, and we had a fabulous time! Christine has always said we were the same person, and we proved it by wearing the very same shirts. 

We participated in a video chat with some of our other
blog buddies but only had one pair of earbuds.
Same shirt, same earbuds, same person.

I plan all the family vacations, and I like to throw in some interesting stops along the way. This year, we traveled to Galveston, and along the way, we stopped to see the World's Largest Peanut and visited the Texas State Prison Museum. 

Doing my best Orange Is The New Black impression.

Silly, silly me thought it would be FUN to foster puppies for the Joplin Humane Society. I've never owned a dog in my life and knew nothing about house training them or that they don't instinctively know how to walk on a leash or that they chew EVERYTHING. Of course, we fell in love with them, but while they WERE fun, they were a LOT of work. Even though we (meaning my daughter and I) cried buckets when we had to take them back to go to a rescue group that was going to see to their adoptions, we were also kind of glad to see them go. (And yes, we'll probably do it again.)

Audrey and Olivia, our little sweeties.

I moved our son back to college in August for his sophomore year. It went much better than moving him there as a freshman! That was one tough day. And it wasn't that I was foster-puppy-glad to see him go, but he was ready and we were ready, and while that means he's growing up and away from us, it's being done in little steps.

When I was getting my preschool room ready for school to start, I had a wee little accident with one of the crappy plastic-legged chairs that refused to scoot on the carpet with me on it. Hello, Goldilocks!

After the May 22, 2011, EF-5 tornado destroyed the old high school (along with over one-third of the town), the new, state-of-the-art high school was finally opened in time for school to start, with a ribbon cutting ceremony in October, with special guest Vice President Joe Biden in attendance and delivering a speech. I joked that I was going to get my picture taken with him, and by golly, I really did it! 

We have watched the Mizzou volleyball team play every year at Thanksgiving for the past few years. My daughter has especially enjoyed getting to meet Mizzou's libero, Sarah Meister. We got one last picture of them together at Sarah's last career game with Mizzou.

Goodbye, 2014! You've been pretty nice, all in all. Hello, 2015! Be kind with me!

(Not Very) Wordless Wednesday 12.24.14

After a marathon day of shopping, wrapping and cooking, I went to bed last night knowing I needed one more gift and a smattering of items from the grocery store. On Christmas Eve, a day when NO ONE in their right mind wants to be anywhere near a mall or a grocery store, I was going to need to hit the mall and a grocery store.

Believing the early bird gets the worm (or avoids the crowds), I left the house at 7:30 and headed across town to the mall. The road I took is one of my most used routes. It runs behind my house, beyond the woods behind us, over a low water bridge, and then cuts diagonally across town. I use it to go to the mall, Target, Aldi, well, pretty much any major retail establishment in town, as they mostly line one street. 

As I was taking the road through a large park about a half mile from my house, I saw a big dog slowly trotting down the pavement in front of me. No people around. The dog was walking in my lane, heading the same direction as I was (perhaps HE had an errand at the mall, too?), and didn't move out of my way as I came up behind him.

I stopped the car.

The dog (did I say he was big? Make that huge.) turned and looked rather hopefully at me through my windshield. He wasn't wearing a collar. About a gallon of drool was hanging from his lower jaw.

"No, no, no, no, no," I said to myself. "I don't have tiiiiime for this!"

And I pulled over into the grass, opened my car door, and stepped out onto the pavement.

The dog promptly jumped into my front seat, went through to the back, and sat down.

Crap.

Now I've got an 85 pound dog drooling in the backseat whose head was bigger than mine, and I had no choice but to drive him to the Humane Society and hope they were open.

They weren't.

And it was snowing. And cold.

I went ahead and pulled around to the back of the building, where they take animal drop-offs, and as luck would have it, a worker pulled into the parking lot at the same time He told me he would go in and tell someone we were there.  In the meantime, Big Bubba came up to sit by me in the front seat, and we had a nice (but wet) conversation. 

He's a big ol' sweetie.

The man came back with a leash, and the three of us went inside. 

A woman came in the room ("Oh, he's a BIG pit mix!") and got my information about where I found him. They checked him for a microchip (he didn't have one - community service announcement: GET YOUR PETS CHIPPED!).

And I left him with those kind people at the Joplin Humane Society, where they work Christmas Eve and every other holiday to take care of lost and unwanted animals.

I posted a picture of him on my Facebook page, went on to run my errands, returned home to strip myself of drool-covered jeans and coat (I am truly not exaggerating), and found out an hour or so later that a friend knew someone whose dog had jumped the fence and disappeared, AND IT WAS HIM! 

It was a Christmas Miracle that I think both Santa Claus and Baby Jesus would approve of.

Totally un-lost ginormous pitbull mix related, please take a moment and listen to the following recording. It's so full of sweetness, you won't need another Christmas cookie or piece of candy for a week.

Note: this is just a picture, taken from the balcony of the sanctuary, with all the primary and pre-k kids watching the toddler class perform their Christmas program. I had to have a picture in order to upload the song to YouTube. 

This recording was done in my classroom when my pre-k kids were practicing for their Christmas program. They started and ended all on their own, because I didn't want MY voice on the recording. Precious, precious voices.

I May Or May Not Be A Dog Napper

I sort of kidnapped a puppy this weekend.

Saturday evening, Emma and I were in the front yard, taking pictures of her in her Pig in a Blanket costume, when a black lab-ish puppy wandered down the street and over to us. She was leggy, about four or five months old, and wearing a pink Martha Stewart collar (no joke) with no tags. She was friendly, but a little apprehensive, and also seemed to have kennel cough.

My little pig in a blanket wanted to keep it until we found the owner.

Two sets of puppy dog eyes working on me.

My neighbor from up the street came by about that time, being walked by her two basset hounds. We asked her if she recognized the pup (as we learned during our summer puppy fostering adventure that dog owners in the neighborhood all know each other), but she didn't. The pup decided to follow her up the street, her dogs were going ape shit over the whole thing, so Emma gave ME puppy dog eyes and followed the parade up the street, returning a short time later with the puppy on a leash. She carried the pup (as she refused to walk on her own) into our fenced backyard before leaving for her party. 

I gave the pup a bowl of water and some EXPENSIVE cat food (which she turned her nose up at), then went up the street to talk to my neighbor, who was then visiting with ANOTHER dog owning neighbor. No one had ever seen the dog before. I put the pup's picture on Facebook, on my wall and also on the humane society's wall. No one came forward saying they knew where the dog belonged.

I kind of forgot about the puppy in our backyard until morning, but when we checked on her, she was still a little skittish, still coughing, but had eaten the cat food and drank some water. My daughter tossed a tennis ball for her, and she not only ran after it, she brought it back for more. Over and over. Obviously, someone had taught her how to fetch; she was somebody's baby! I went to the store and bought some puppy food.

Fetch in the backyard.

When the humane society opened at 1:00 on Sunday, Emma and I loaded her in the car. She trembled and wheezed all the way there. We took her inside to see if she had been microchipped, and miracle of miracles, she not only had been, she had also been adopted from that very humane society, as they make a small, green tattoo on females near their incision from their spaying (I neither know, nor WANT to know, what they tattoo on males). They looked her up on their computer, called the phone number, left a message with my phone number, and told us we could either leave her there or take her home with us. We opted to take her home and wait for the owner to (hopefully) call. 

As we were getting in the car in the parking lot, my cell phone rang.

"I got a message from the humane society that you found my puppy?"

Hallelujah!

I told the woman we were just leaving the humane society and would be home in five minutes.

"Where did you find her?" she asked. I told her the name of our street.

"I live right by there," she said. "Which house do you live in?"

I described our house. Two story Tudor. White--

"With green trim? Red Cross truck in the driveway?"

Ummm. Yess....

"I live across the street from you, in the corner house."

Oops.

We kidnapped the neighbor's dog.

In all fairness, (a) they keep to themselves pretty much; (b) have only had the dog since mid-September; (c) we didn't even KNOW they have had a dog since mid-September; (d) the pup wandered over to our house from the entirely opposite end of the street from where she lived; and (e) SHE WASN'T WEARING ANY TAGS AND THEIR YARD ISN'T FENCED.

The owner was waiting outside her house when we pulled in the driveway. The puppy (Lilly, we now know) greeted her non-chalantly and wandered across the street to her own yard. The neighbor said Lilly liked to chase the cat and probably went down the alley and got lost. They noticed she was missing about fifteen minutes after we had kidnapped her locked her inside our backyard. 

Emma and I walked into the house and told my husband the story.

"So, you went from being heroes to being kidnappers thisfast?"

"WE DID NOT KIDNAP HER! WE WERE TRYING TO KEEP HER SAFE UNTIL WE COULD FIND HER FAMILY!"

Emma, sitting on a kitchen stool, said, "We totally kidnapped her."

Sigh.

No good deed goes unpunished.

Teaching An Old Dog A New Trick

Last month, on a total whim, my daughter and I decided to foster puppies from the humane society.  My reasoning was this:

1. The crawler on the tv screen during the morning news said the humane society had a great need for fosters for cats and dogs.

2. Our three cats would not tolerate it very well if we brought in foster kittens, besides the fact that the fosters might bring a kitty illness in that ours could catch, even if we kept them in separate parts of the house.

3. It would be really hard to give up kittens that we had fostered, because we are cat people, but puppies? We could give up puppies. They're cute, but we don't want a dog, so we wouldn't have a problem when it was time to return puppies for adoption.

We got our puppies, two of them, shepherd/great pyrenees mixes from a litter of six, on August 2. We named them Audrey and Olivia, because we thought the names they got from the humane society were stupid.

You could have put the sum total of knowledge we had about taking care of a puppy (let alone TWO of them) on the head of a pin and still had room to etch War and Peace on the pinhead.

We tried our best to housebreak them. We gave them a reward every time they pottied outside. They rewarded us by pooping and peeing all over our family room floor.

They got sick. REALLY sick. They both had coccidiosis (a single-cell parasite that attacked their intestinal tract). They both had kennel cough. Olivia was sick enough that I thought she wouldn't make it. Twice.

They chewed any and everything.

They occasionally had accidents in their crate, requiring baths and cleaning of the crate first thing in the morning. In the early days of the coccidiosis, one of them pooped in the crate in the night. Squishy poop. They got it on themselves, of course. Then, taking it to another level, Audrey apparently dipped her tail in it and painted poop all over the inside of the crate. 

And I asked for this.

But after four weeks of puppies, four weeks of alternating between enjoying them and wishing they were GONE, of cleaning up poop and pee off the floor, walking them at all hours, napping with them in our laps, playing with them, cursing them for chewing our flip flops, and worrying about their health, we fell in love.

Then it was time to return them to the humane society for transport to the rescue group that was going to find homes for them. A rescue group 500 miles away, where we would never see them again.

The manager of the humane society told us the name of the group where they were going, as we stood there crying, turning our babies over to them. She told us she cries every time she sends her own fosters off for adoption.

My daughter and I said one last goodbye to the puppies, gave them one last hug and kiss, then walked out the door and stood on the sidewalk in front, hugging each other and sobbing. On the drive home, we talked about how we could never do this again. It was too much mess. Too much heartbreak. Too much everything.

But the next day, I contacted the rescue group and asked if we could be kept informed about how the puppies were doing. I joined their Facebook page. And yesterday, their pictures turned up on the Facebook page, along with those of their siblings.

And now I get it. I get what fostering is all about. 

Look at these six puppies. Four of them stayed in a kennel at the humane society, because there weren't enough foster families to take them in. Ours were loved and nurtured and maybe spoiled a little. Can you tell which were our puppies and which lived at the shelter?

#1 is Audrey, #6 is Olivia. Look how perky they are, how bright their eyes! 

We did a good thing. It wasn't always easy, but we did it. 

Will we foster again? Yes. (Shhhh! Don't tell my husband or the three cats.)

Are we sorry we didn't keep them? Nope. We are not dog people. Not entirely sure we are PUPPY people, but we are foster people.

Are we going to cry again next time? You betcha.

Help an overcrowded shelter in your area and be a foster parent to a dog or cat (or puppy or kitten or two or seven). 

Want to read the rest of our adventures in fostering? Read Puppy Tails, Part 1, Puppy Tails, Part 2, and Puppy Tails, The Final Chapter.

This post is an entry for this week's Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop with the prompt:

Talk about one thing you learned last month.

Puppy Tails: The Final Chapter

My foster puppies have gone, off to the rescue group to find their forever homes. And I miss their little furry faces so much! NOT ENOUGH TO HAVE KEPT THEM, but enough to have me in tears, going from nearly 24/7 with them to seeing them off, never knowing where they're going or how they are faring. 

To try to keep myself from crying myself into a monstrous headache, my Ten Things of Thankful is going to list ten reasons I am thankful they are gone.

1. No more getting up first thing in the morning to take them outside to potty. This was their favorite time of the day to go out, and I had to stand there for-FREAKING-ever when I needed to be inside, getting ready, while they rolled around and played and fought over sticks.

2. No more scratches on my arms or nipped fingers while trying to snap on the leashes, especially in the morning when they needed to GO.

3. Puppy stank. You can bathe them, but they will always smell like puppies. CLEAN puppies, but puppies, nonetheless.

4. It took much finesse to keep them from plowing through old piles of poo in the yard (the girl who SWORE she'd clean up after them outside did it once, the second day we had them, and never again, leaving it entirely up to me). 

5. We'll no longer be taking walks around the block and avoiding the house down the street with the ginormous acorns on the sidewalk that the puppies couldn't resist picking up and crunching, meaning we either had to hold their heads up with the leashes or pick them up and carry them past the acorn mine field.

6. No more puppy pee and poo on the floor! We could come inside from doing both, and one or the other, or BOTH, puppies would squat and unload on the floor. No warning. We've gone through a dozen rolls of paper towels and gallons of floor cleaner.

7. No more sick puppies! The poor things had more than their fair share of puppy squirts, plus kennel cough, and there was a time when I thought we were going to lose Olivia - twice. I don't want to brag, but I am REALLY good at curing puppy squirts, in case you ever need to know. The secret is to feed them canned pumpkin. I don't know why it works, but it does, and they love to eat it. 

8. I can take my flip flops off and not have a puppy immediately carry them off and chew them. Both puppers just love a good flip flop; they're easy to carry, easy to chew.

9. Speaking of chewing, no more gnawing on my coffee table legs, fireplace hearth, toes, shoelaces, or any other of a number of items that do not improve with the addition of tooth marks.

10. No more incessant barking when they are inside their crate and want out! They were tireless barkers, especially Olivia.

See? So many reasons to be thankful they are gone. No more puppies running through the house, chasing each other, rolling and playing, fighting over the same toy or stick. No more puppy faces looking up at me expectantly, waiting for a treat for going potty outside. No more "puppy speak," where they talked to each other. No more warm puppy curled up in my lap asleep while I write. No more wagging tails and cheerful yips to tell me hello when I return to the room. No more watching them play tug of war with the Bone of Contention. 

If I'm so glad to see them go, why is there a lump in my throat and tears stinging my eyes?

Goodbye and good luck, my little pupper girls! I hope we gave you a good foundation to be loving pets for two new families. I know you'll miss each other when you are adopted, but you'll be okay. You're tough, both of you, having started life as puppies that some asshole dumped, living at the humane society, so timid that you and your siblings, all six of you, hid under your bed much of the time. Ahhh, my sweet pups, I'm going to miss you so....

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Puppy Tails, Part I

I am a cat person. Let there be no doubt in your mind. I live in a cat family. We have three of them, as a matter of fact: Fletcher, Pete and Ruby (have I ever mentioned her before?).

Maybe two weeks ago, I saw a news crawler going across the screen while I was watching The Today Show saying the Joplin Human Society was looking for people to foster puppies and kittens. Intrigued, I mentioned it to my daughter, and we then checked their website for more information. There had even been a recent feature on the local news about it. We thought it sounded like fun.

Knowing I am a cat person in a cat family, I knew we couldn't foster kittens. First and foremost, our cats would be so upset. Pete and Fletcher would probably pack up their bags and move, and Ruby would be all kinds of hurt. Besides, I also knew I wouldn't be able to give them up, and then we would go from a cat family to a crazy cat family with ten cats living in the house. But a puppy? I could do a puppy! I don't care much for dogs, but puppies are cute! Inspired by my friend Kristi, who fosters puppies to become service dogs, my daughter and I decided to give it a try.

I have never owned a dog before.

We began casually mentioning our plan to my husband and son, knowing they might not be on board so much. We visited the humane society a week ago and met with the woman in charge of fostering, who walked us through the animal area and pointed out all the dogs and puppies who were available for fostering. There was a litter of 6 that caught our eye. Half of them were black, half were blonde. They had been found on the other side of town and brought in just a day or so before and were very, very shy. We agreed to take two, one of each color, and they would be ready for pick up on Saturday. 

Olivia, left, and Audrey

We broke our plan to my husband and son at lunch time Saturday (at which time my husband proclaimed that I was Lucy and our daughter was my Ethel), and then we were off to pick them up. We were handed two little girls, whom we named Olivia and Audrey (after a friend of my daughter's and her sister), one black, one blonde, who were sweet and shy and desperately in need of a bath. A visit to Walmart for food, leashes and collars (pink, of course), a couple of toys, and some puppy shampoo, and we were home and had them in the tub, turning them into much more pleasant smelling puppies (they still smell like dogs, which is my main drawback for having one, but at least they smelled like CLEAN dogs). 

Here's what we learned about having our foster puppies within the first day:

1. There is nothing innate about walking on a leash.
2. They can and will chew everything.
3. They quickly figured out they would get a little treat for going potty outside, to the point where we're pretty sure Audrey fake-peed a time or two.
4. Audrey is like a goat and will eat any and everything she finds on the ground, including, but not limited to, ants, sticks, rocks, Hershey Kiss wrappers, cat fur, rug fringe, and flip flops.
5. They adapted very quickly from living in a kennel at the humane society to being inside a house and love to nap on my daughter as she lies on the couch and watches Netflix.
6. My husband and son, who didn't want anything to do with them, can often be found with a sleeping puppy in their laps.

7. They have no fear of cats.
8. Our cats have a serious fear of them, yet are drawn to them like magnets, especially Ruby. I believe they are trying to figure out what the hell they are, as they are clearly not cats but resemble nothing else in their world.

9. They are more trouble than my children were as infants, including having to get up with them more often in the night to take them outside to go potty (you clean out a crate with stinky puppy poo in it two times, you set the alarm and get up and take them out at 3 a.m.) than I ever had to get up and nurse a baby.
10. They are very, very cute but still do not make me want to own a dog.

It is the beginning of the Puppy Adventure. To be continued....