Pet Day| Pad Patter 4.11

We have one cat named Bootsie. We rescued her 3 years ago when she was about 4 years old. We knew we wanted an older cat, not a kitten, and she was meant to be ours. She's an extreme alpha female, but she's very playful, too. She loves to "hide" around the house and wait for us to call for her. I scrapped this page a bit ago to show how cleverly she hides...

 

I've had 4 dogs throughout my 65 years of life. The first one was from 1965 to 1979. She was just shy of 14 when she died and was a mutt. Her mama lived at a gravel pit and had a litter by an unknown male. My mom taught with the lady whose husband was the manager of the the gravel pit and she offered us the "runt" of the litter. Dad said she had to stay outside in the garage at night but within minutes of him getting home from work the day we got her, her bowls, her bed and Patches was in the house. She ruled the house.

It was in 2000 when I found the Havanese breed and fell in love. I was able to get a male puppy in June of that year. Pepper was such an easy guy that I soon wanted another one (motto is "you just can't Hava one"). So in March of 2002 I got Paige who had the same mother as Pepper, just different fathers. They each looked like their dad.



After I put them down in 2015, I was hesitant to get another dog. But in late 2016 I told the breeder I'd like one of her puppies from her next litter. That ended up being July 2017 when I got Peyton. She's almost 4 and has been a comfort through the last couple of years, both the pandemic and some other things I had going on. But with my age, she will be my last dog. It was harder having a puppy to train and I don't want to do it again!



Havanese are known for living long lives so I could have her until I'm well into my 70's. Pepper was almost 16 and Paige almost 14 when they crossed the bridge.

 

My husband and I got our first dog together after we'd been married a few years. Her name was Samantha and she was an apricot Poodle. Then we had Baily and Macy who were both lab mixes, then we rescued another Sam, a Labrador Retriever from the pound and after we lost him, we said "no more pets".

Enter Daisy - my dd called one day and asked if we wanted her. They had just had her for a few months and found out they couldn't "handle" a dog. She was spending most of her days in her crate and of course we couldn't say no. LOL

So, never say never. She's a sweetheart - a black and white Labradoodle - called a Parti Doodle - part white and part black. She's 50 pounds, so not a small dog. We love her so much. She loves living in the country, but she's a "runner" so dh got a 300 foot rope and she can "roam" for 300 feet which is a lot of room to roam.

We take walks every day and she's finally not "roaming"' so badly. She scared me to death, one night right, after we moved out here, because she was gone for a long time. I told dh that she was never going to be loose again.

Here's a picture I took of her the other day.

 

Here are my loves, Remi (mini aussie 3.5 mths) and Taz (mini labradoodle 7.5 yrs).
They became besties right away and I can't believe how she has gotten him to play and wrestle so much. Remi is still sick but seems to be improving so we have high hopes that she will come out this ok (she's been hospitalized and on meds since we got her at 8.5 wks but as of this week is off meds and seems to be improving). She is still wearing t-shirts to help protect the open wound she has from all the IV treatments but that is slowly healing. Taz is so good with her, he has taught her how to touch with open mouth instead of biting which is working great except when she gets really excited and forgets LOL. He has his quiet time alone each day to have his old man sleeps (wish I could join him) as Remi gets us up at 6 each morning and sometimes once throughout the night for a pee break (but this is improved over 2-3 times up until this last week). It's been a lot of years since I had two dogs but I'm so happy we have two now.

 

I know some people think that's mean to put a dog on a rope, but it's better than having the coyotes think she's their playmate. YIKES!!! I was SO scared that night she ran off for an hour in the dark!

I always laugh and say "never say never". I'm sure you do too. They add so much love to our lives.

 

I always kept Pepper and Paige on a tie-out especially at the end of their lives. Pepper was prone to wandering and not paying attention to where he was. In the middle of their lives, I would let them run but only if I was in the yard with them. As for Peyton... well, I had a new patio put in before I got her and it is fenced all around it. So she can run on it as much as she wants. She loves to lay out there and get a suntan. She doesn't mind it being all pavers as well. I have an area where she can potty but I trained her to go on pee pads in the garage and she is great about it. Never had to worry about cleaning an area when it snowed. I have a nice little x-pen setup in the garage that I can close off and leave the garage door open in nice weather so she can be on the patio or in the garage out of the sun. During nicer weather I will prop the door from the garage to the patio open with a brick, fasten the x-pen (so she doesn't run when garage door opens) and put her there when I go away. She can be outside or inside whatever she chooses.

My cousin has tried to talk me into getting an invisible fence like she did last summer and I am totally against them... especially for smaller dogs. I am in town but not that far from open land that has not been built up yet. No telling what kind of critters are wandering there that could wander into the neighborhood (not to mention the larger dogs that people let run loose). We have over the years had raccoons and opossums and geese (also near the river). Last summer I actually had a hawk in my tree in the backyard. Thankfully Peyton was in the house at the time because it wasn't a small hawk!

 

Currently no pets and don't plan on getting any, either. It's sad because I love them, but with our past family activity level with one in figure skating and another in scouting no one was ever home to take care of one. Now I just don't want the extra responsibility a pet brings.

I've had sundry pets growing up; turtles, a cat, a mouse named Snowball that I loved to the ends of the earth, a Portuguese Water Dog named Pepper (we just thought he was a mutt! lol!) who wouldn't get OUT of the water, and finally a Sheltie that wouldn't get NEAR the water!

Here is Toby, or Toby Mutt Meat Dog (I have no idea why I called him that!). He was my Sheltie and I miss him so much. Here is a page I made about him...

 

Wow, then you understand. I've seen some huge hawks here! I swore they were Eagles, but they were Hawks. Still, they can carry away a good sized dog. I hear the coyotes howling almost every night and can just picture Daisy seeing a pack of them and thinking "it's play time"!!

 

I'm the first to admit that I'm not really a pet person...but I have 7 kids so that means we have pets! Haha. 2 cats, 3 bunnies and 15 chickens. The cats and rabbits really belong to my one daughter who is an animal lover and would have ALL the animals if we let her. The chickens are really my hubbies...they are is hobby sort of and he LOVES his chicks. It's kind of funny.

 

We had a bunch of animals growing up - cats, dogs, a goat, fish, the usual suspects. plus we raised calves - but those weren't really pets since we knew we only had them about 6 months.

Since we've been married, we had Stitch, a border collie mix, who passed away after 11 years. We had a cat, Chloe, who disappeared on a stormy night. She was pretty old and cranky - we adopted her at 9, and she ran away 3 years later.
We fostered bunnies for a month - not for us! Now we have Athena, our cat who just turned 1. And we added Zeus - a Newfoundland mix who is 1.5. They get along, especially when Munchkin isn't around. He's a big cuddlebug that wants to be a lap dog, but is too big! She's a cat - sometimes cuddly, often persnickety. The dog has moved her off her pedestal - which is great for her!