Stating the Blindingly-Obvious

I was gonna title this "cancer sucks", but changed my mind for two reasons:

1. This is may not be the only post in the coming weeks/months that would want that title.
2. It's a statement of the blindingly-obvious (and, thusly, not terribly original)

Vet contacted me, today, about Lady. The initial test-results were not confirmative of insulinoma. He said this wasn't surprising because, while her blood sugar levels were quite low, they weren't in the range typically necessary for a blood-draw to be definitive for insulinoma. Worse, just because the sonogram showed a obvious, consolidated tumor in her liver, that no tumors were visible in her pancreas isn't definitive of primary hepatic cancer. It's notionally possible that she could have pancreatic tumors that are too small to see on sonogram - even if they were the primary source of the cancer in her liver. It's a concern because primary hepatic cancer is rare in dogs. So, while she could be lucky - inasmuch as having life-threatening cancer in the liver can be - and have primary cancer of the liver, the odds are against that.

This left me with a couple options:

• Do the oncology consult (scheduled for the morning of July 15th) without doing more to eliminate the likelihood of insulinoma
• Drop her off at the vet, tomorrow, for some additional testing

Since it would be horrible to subject her to liver surgery if one could know that it was both unnecessary and make her spend her remaining weeks recovering from major abdominal surgery, I'm opting for the additional testing. Unfortunately, those tests can still produce a non-definitive diagnosis: like many tests, they're ok for confirming a positive diagnosis (that she has insulinoma) but not for confirming a negative diagnosis (that she absolutely doesn't have insulinoma). For potential longevity sake, I obviously hope for lack of a positive diagnosis from the tests. 

Unfortunately, the tests aren't without risk. They have to fast her to see if her blood sugar drops enough to get a definitive positive test result. Fasting her to that point puts her at risk for seizures and worse. Primary thing going for her is that she'll notionally be being closely-enough observed during the fasting that (if she does have insulinoma) that she would be caught low enough to test yet not so low that she suffers neurological impairment (that would necessitate an even earlier departure than pancreatic cancer, by itself, would have caused).

Still even if the fasting-blood-tests don't prove confirmative of pancreatic cancer, proceeding with surgery isn't a slam-dunk. They could open her up, do the liver resection, send off the excised tissue for biopsy and still find that it wasn't primary hepatic cancer. Meaning, that I potentially put her through abdominal surgery for nothing and put her in pain for a non-trivial chunk of her remaining time with us.

I imagine, if tomorrow's tests are non-confirmative, one of the things that we'll discuss at the oncology consultation is further pre-surgical testing. And whether they could be conducted as part of a larger, contingent procedure. That might be something like, "do an MRI (or something) and, if that comes back clean, only then move on to the resection."

Problem is, dogs, unlike humans, can't really be given an MRI without general anaesthetic. That means either doing one, long sedation for the MRI and then surgery (if the MRI were clean). The longer anything is under general anaesthetic, the riskier things become. Notionally, could do separate procedures, but that has its own risks: 1) two applications of anaesthetic in a short period of time is risky; 2) liver cancer is aggressive enough that the delay between discreet procedures likely results in the growth of the existing tumor and/or possibly allow time for it to metastasize even if it has yet to do so. And, risks to Lady aside, there's also the financial impact: doing the additional testing also markedly increases the costs of an already expensive procedure.

My primary concern is that I do the most good for the least amount of harm. And, if I can't do her any good, I'd like to at least not do her any further harm than whatever bomb ticking in her abdomen is want to do.

There's just not a lot of good choices, here. 

Daig Noise

Interesting progression in dog ownership.
 

Our first two dogs were, from a barking standpoint, very quiet. Lana earned the nicknames "Lana-moo", "Moo-cow" and just "Moo" because she liked to conversationally-vocalize in a manner that was somewhat bovine (obviously). Puckett was generally too goofy to bark or even growl. Only very rarely would he alert-bark or warn-bark - basically, just when he thought there was a threat I hadn't seen or that I had reacted to but that he thought needed further discouragement. Otherwise, his vocalizations mostly came when he saw other dogs that he wanted to play ...and then his low-pitched voice became an embarrassing mewl.


After Lana passed (euthanasia b/c of a combination of cancer and a degenerative spinal-condition), we got Cira. Cira was generally a very low-key dog. There were things that _did_ excite her to the point of actual exuberance, but it was a _very_ quiet exuberance. Her expressiveness was far more physical than audible. Her most-audible expressions were her expressions of gustatory delight - a very hearty belch after wolfing down breakfast. Her entire bearing before eating in the morning was one of, "OH MY GOD: _BREAKFAST TIME". The daily-BRACK would only come after she would come flying back into the living room and launching herself onto my couch. Usually, the belch would be followed by a bullie-grin ...framed by specks of errant rice stuck to her snout.

After Pucket passed (euthenasia b/c of very aggressive cutaneous lymphoma that spread to his lungs), we got Lady.  Lady... is the first dog that we had tendencies towards barkiness. She can be conversationally vocal in a manner similar to Lana. However, a lot of her vocalization comes as excited barking: get her spun up through playing and playful growling becomes playful barking. She will also bark when we leave the house and don't leave the TV on (at least the conversational audio) for her. If someone knocks on the front door or rings the doorbell, she also barks. Other than that, though — and if you don't count her snoring and brachycephalic snorting — she's fairly quiet.

After Cira passed (euthanasia b/c of severe, suddenly-manifesting end-stage renal-failure), we got Kaiya. Unlike the previous dogs who were all bullie/bullie mixes (Cira being the only "pure" bullie - a staffy), Kaiya is a bullie-mix that isn't all bullie. She's a bullie/lab mix. She's also considerably barkier than any of our other dogs had been. If she hears a noise, she's gonna bark at it. If it's a noise from out-of-sight, even if she's hearing the same noise multiple times in a given timespan, she'll bark each time she hears it. For example, my wife was just out in the front-foyer's closet, organizing it to store some new stuff in it. Each time Donna's activities made bumping-sound, Kaiya would bark. I love our nubby-dog (recently had to have her tail docked due to "happy-tail" related infection) to death, but the frequent alerting is maddening - especially the re-alerting.

Opportunities in Loss

I used my blog to help me work through the process of loss. Being a pet owner - particularly when you tend to get pets via rescues - means that dealing with loss is an inevitability. It sucks. It's like a kick in the guts that keeps on giving long after pet's final breath has been drawn.

That said, I have been quite fortunate. Thus far, I've generally been in the position to open my home to a new pet when one of the incumbents has died. While we opted not to replace the cats I'd had for seventeen years, we've replaced each of the prior dogs that has passed. Most recently, after Cira's passing, we got Kaiya — the black dog in the video, below:

Lady (the white-headed dog) has displayed some iffiness with new dogs - at least while we've had her out walking on-leash. Kaiya was described to us by her rescue organization as being a mostly chill dog, but had some on-leash iffiness of her own. Fortunately, we were able to meet her in a scenario where both dogs were able to be introduced and monitored off-leash (they were leashed, but the leashes were dropped ...available for use if something went sideways). The introduction was promising, so, we returned the following week to make her ours.

As you can see in the video, the two dogs seem to be getting on well. They rough-house, but that's bullie play-style. If you knew Lady's barks, you'd be able to hear that she's play-barking throughout the entire video. As I write this, both dogs are laying curled up with each other on the couch-pillow next to me. It's very warm. It's also very happy-making.

18 Springs

Eighteen springs ago, I selected two kittens from this bundle to be my companions for 17 years. The kitten at the far left came to us as and remaind "Bella" - she was the breeder's pick of the litter. The kitten to the far right became known to us a "Grumbles" - a name that his actions and demeanor demanded (I don't even remember what the breeder had named him as he name changed the first time I fed him, it changed to Grumbles).

I do wonder if either of the siblings outlived my pair or even lasted as long as my pair. I know that Jagger - the one crawling on top of the pile - was the last adopted because he had some early health issues. Never knew the name of the fourth kitten as she was already promised to another before I selected Bella (and came back for Grumbles).

Candy Nightmare

With Easter looming, a local veterinary service sent out a notice to remind people, "don't let your pets have chocolate"

Picture Not Directly Related

We've never intentionally given any of our pets candy - particularly not chocolate - Easter or otherwise. That said ...We'd once had a candy incident with our first pair of bullies.

We'd had to go run a quick errand and had penned the dogs up like we usually did for such absences. We were gone maybe twenty minutes. This time, however, the female decided to break them out of their pen and go after some "low-hanging fruits". We came home to find both dogs sitting happily on the couch, looking at us like, "you forgot to lock us up - we figured it was cool to sit here on the couch."

Then we found the shredded, empty box that had previously been filled with dark-chocolate truffles. A small distance away, we found the remnants of the bag that had about 1.5lbs of a mixed-assortment of jelly beans. Closish to that, we found the remnants of a bag that had been full of dried apricots. All three had been up on the counters. Amusingly, the bag of bison jerky that had been sitting on the ottoman had been left untouched.

Called the vet to get the opinion on whether to bring the dogs down (had to bring both since neither dog had obvious signs of having consumed the goodies and bother were scampering about happily). Vet said that because they were dark chocolate, we needed to bring them down for ipecac, charcoal and sedatives.

Turns out - after a *very* colorful purge - that only one of the dogs had been bad. Even so, both dogs had to suffer the purge-protocol because there wasn't a good way to ensure that both hadn't partaken without the purge.

Both dogs were unscathed by the experience (purging was less than 45 minutes after food-consumption). I always felt bad for the innocent dog, though.

Hitchhikers

Down-side to having bought my wife a new phone, today: she is/was wanting me to reinstall the wallpaper from her old phone to her new phone. That wallpaper was a picture of our 2016-deceased cats, our March-deceased staffie and my white apb/boxer all laying together in a fur-knot. It's a nice picture, but, it apparently only existed on her phone wherever Android stores wallpapers (and not in the generic "Pictures" folder). It took me digging through nearly 1900 pictures to discover this frustrating Android storage-quirk.

So, I went to my laptop to see if I could find a copy. I've dug through a couple years worth of pet pictures stored on my laptop. Have yet to find the exact picture, but found many other nice ones.

Also found the realization that, each time you invite life into your life, you frequently also invite death.

Plate of Shrimp

One of the worst things about losing a pet to illness (esp. in the Internet and social media era)? The frequency with which information about what your pet died of begin to plate of shrimp you.

For example: when it come to an illness like kidney disease, how we feed our dogs means that, when the disease has progressed to the point of causing nausea, we've no meaningful way to entice them to eat. Our dogs' daily diet consists heavily of what kibble-fed dogs would probably consist of "treats" (our dogs get real meat, veggies, etc. - so, those aren't really "treats" to them).

Also turns out that dogs quickly associate the nauseated feeling with whatever foods they last ate before becoming sick to their stomachs. With a diet that doesn't leave many things as treats, there's not a broad spectrum of foods with which to entice them to eat. And, because they quickly associate the nauseated feeling with the "treat" foods, that limited-spectrum of "treat" foods is more-quickly burned through than dogs that get the same, manufactured dog food their entire, pre-illness lives.

One of the other suck things about kidney disease is, because your pets can't tell you "I feel sick": you don't usually see symptoms until they're well down the disease's terminal-trajectory; the early symptoms frequently display in a way that seems like behavioral issues rather than obvious signs of illness.

In the case of our cats - particularly our female cat - this manifested as urinating outside of her litterbox. Earlier in her life, eliminating outside of the litter box was behavioral. Things that had prompted it in the past had been: changes to litter-brand; annual vet-trips; us going away for family holidays (Bella got carsick and hated being taken on trips); us going away for work trips; us going away for vacation.

While we always had pet-care, Bella was generally upset for a few days after we got home. This would frequently prompte her to pee on Donna's things (presumably, she blamed Donna for our infrequent absences).

The litter-brand changes weren't our choice. For whatever reason, litter-makers always seem to see the need to "improve" things. And, to "encourage" people to switch to improved products, they'd discontinue the ones our cats liked. This happened a couple times with their litter and at least twice with their food.

As to the vet-trips: it's not like we could, in good conscience, choose to not get them annual exams and shots. I realize plenty of people do skip all that, but I've always tried my best to keep ahead of our pets' health needs. Thus, we were conscientious about veterinary care, diet and the like.

With the exception of the cats - who lived a year and a couple days beyond what was expected for their breed - that conscientiousness seems to have been in vain. We lost the first dog we adopted to cancer after only a bit over seven years ownership. We lost the second dog we adopted to (a different type of) cancer after a little less than seven years of ownership. We just lost our third adopted-dog to kidney disease after just a bit more than six years of ownership. Really hoping the first three dogs were an aberration. It would be nice to see one of our dogs actually live to a ripe old age.

Random Musings on Death

I've had the opportunity to deal with the deaths of loved ones and pets. I've had the opportunity to see to the disposal of the cremated remains of both. What's interesting is that:

• Though radically different in size, the volume of ashes doesn't seem proportionate between a full-grown adult and a 50lb dog.
• Each (pet) death, though done via euthanasia was as unique as the pet being euthanized.

My wife and I believe that one should be present when a pet is being put down. This is at odds with how each was brought up, but it works for us.

Ideally, we're also able to have someone come to the house to administer the euthanasia drugs. This saves the dying pet from having to spend their last few minutes putting up with a car ride to a place they don't like (or are even scared by). It also means that, in a multi-pet household, the surviving pets don't wonder, "where did 'X' disappear to". 

While we've only been able to do the in-home euthanasia thing, once, my wife's preference for doing body-preparation prior to cremation elminates some of the "where did 'X' disappear to" problem. The surviving pets are free to sniff about the body that's being sewn into its burial-shroud and say their goodbyes.

With the euthanasia of our first dog, her survivor howled as we took her out of the house for her death-appointment. He obviously knew something was quite wrong. Doing "in-home" avoids some of that.

Perhaps more interesting is how each pet - even though the methods were notionally the same - died:

• Upon injection of the white (propofol) Lana, seemed unaffected at first. Then, she blinked twice. Then three times. Then slowly slackened and slid to a prone position as we laid her down. Her eyes closed somewhere between sitting an laying. She lay there knocked out, breathing normally. Then, the vet administered the pink (pentobarbitol), and she ceased to breath soon after. There was only very minor twitching in her extremities as the muscles sought the last bits of oxygen. Overall, it was still fairly peaceful.
• Our second dog, Puckett, was in very late stage of cutaneous lymphoma. When we took him in, he went differently. He was severely underweight from the cancer, so the drugs acted far more quickly. With the administration of the white, he quickly melted out of my arms and pancaked onto his blanket. He was so skinny. I could see his heart beating. And when the pink was administered, I could see his heart stop. It stopped long before even the full dose of pink was infused. His only death-twitch was a flip of his tail - almost like he was saying a happy goodbye for the release.
• It was with our cats we first engaged the services of an in-home euthanasia specialist. We'd received the diagnosis that the female cat's kidneys had completely failed and that the males were in stage IV failure. Our vet knew that our cats hated riding in the car, so suggested we look at in-home services. We found Lap of Love. Their staff was very nice and the vet who came to our house to administer the service was very good about providing a non-rushed service (almost too non-rushed: I had a bit of a "can we get on with this" feeling at one point). The cats went a bit differently than the dogs. Upon administration of the white, they went quickly ragdoll. Unlike the dogs - but what is apparently normal for cats - their eyes didn't close. Being less than 20% the weight of the dogs, the administration of the pink was quickly done. And they expired equally quickly - eyes never closing. They twitched a bit more than either of the prior dogs had, but quickly settled.
• This past week/weekend, we assumed we were going to be able to do similar in-home for our Staffie. The vet knew her kidneys were failing, but thought she probably had a few days left if we were able to keep her adequately hydrated (sent us home with several bags of saline having walked us through administering subcutaneous fluids) and eating. Unfortunately, her kidney failure was complicated by a kidney infection. They'd administerd a fairly powerful antibiotic, and she'd initially seemed to rally, but, after about six hours at home, she crashed. We had to abandon our plans to euthanize her at home. In the pre-dawn hours of Saturday, we concluded with the vet "it's time". We took the short trip into the vet hospital. They'd offered to do the service in the car so she wouldn't have to spend her last minutes in the hospital. Problem was, our staffie had far more distaste for the car than the hospital. So, we brought her back to the same room where we'd put Lana and Pucket down six years prior. As sick dogs are want to do, she rallied a bit. Her energy quickly ebbed, though, and she went back to sitting ...though her tail was still wagging and she was still greeting staff as they came in to help with prep. Unlike the prior two dogs, the white didn't make her eyes close. Even though 20% lighter than either of the prior dogs, she didn't succumb to the effects of the white as quickly. Her melt to the quilt was much slower than Lana's had been ...who, in turn, had melted much faster than Puckett had. Instead of looking sleepy, or confused, her eyes just sort of faded. Lights were on, but nobody was home ...much like the cats. And the melt and the lights-out wasn't until well after the white had been completely administered. After she'd fully settled onto the quilt, the vet administered the pink. As with the white, she didn't succumb to its effects until well after it was completely administered. Her breathing shallowed and eventually ceased. A short time later, you could feel her finally leave, and the vet nodded his head that her pulse had finally ceased. As her corpse lay there, there was a lot more twitching than in any of the prior animals' deaths. I guess that, at 8 years and six months' age, her muscles were still a lot more close to in their prime. So, their oxygen starvation elicited greater responses than that of my 17yo cats, my 11yo Lana or my cancer-ridden Puckett. I can only assume the differences were from being a tough little dog ...and probably why she was able to reach the physical state she had without showing symptoms until just a couple days before everything went to hell. 

When Automated Customer-satisfaction Emails Go Horribly, Laughably Awry...

Last night, we had to take our Staffie into the ER at nearly 4AM. We were there to have her put down (due to her kidneys having finally, totally failed). Undoubtedly, in the coming days and weeks, there will be many more posts as I work through my thoughts on yet another loss of pet(s).

This morning, after getting back from dropping her body off at the cremation service, saw new mail notification on my laptop. It was an auto-generated email from our veterinarian's office. It finished out:

We look forward to seeing you and Cira again soon.

Yeah... Maybe your computers should be configured to "know" what services were rendered and whether it's appropriate to send that email.


Yes, I laughed, but it was through a flood of tears that were not happy tears.


Don't get me wrong, even (especially??) in euthanizations, customer-satisfaction is a great thing to try to capture. Just make sure that the tone and content of emails sent for such purposes is appropriately adjusted.

Deathwatch Begins

Apparently, the month of March really seems to hate my/our having pets.

This week, the upset stomach we'd taken Cira to the vet for ultimately resulted in a terminal diagnosis.

It started late Tuesday morning with stomach upset. She'd bolted her food like she often does and then threw it up shortly thereafter. Scarf/barf. This wasn't something she frequently did, but it wasn't completely out of the blue, either. She had the nickname "hollow-dog" for a reason: she's really food-motivated.

Donna tried again with a small, bland food offering. She ate it. And seemed to do ok with it. But she was still showing som signs of nausea, so we called the vet for guidance. They instructed us to come in for an initial evaluation. We were assuming we were succumbing to the usual "overly-nervous dog parents" thing.

The evening vet did an initial evaluation, and decided that, while a little bit dehydrated, she seemed otherwise fine. She was active, waggy and not showing signs of pain - even with fairly firm abdominal palpation. So, he gave her a subcutaneous fluid injection and some anti-nausea medication. He instructed us to bring her back if she showed further symptoms and they'd order further tests and try to address any further symptoms. He also told us to try some Prilosec, the next day, if the nausea persisted.

The remainder of the evening was fairly uneventful, so I went to the office to work, on Wednesday. Cira was still mostly herself, so Donna tried the process of re-introducing her to food. She started with some plain rice and chicken in the morning, and repeated a few more times throughout the day. She'd also given her a Prilosec in the morning, per the vet's orders.

Thursday, I had a doctor's appointment scheduled, so it was going to be a telework day. An hour or so before sunup, I heard Cira hacking - as though she might be gagging or vomiting. Not wanting to light up the whole room, I came over with my cellphone — flashlight on — to check on her. Since I was shortly due to get up to telework, any way, I opted to bring her downstairs with me so she could nap by my side on my couch.

Donna came down with Lady and fed each dog. I apprised her of why I was downstairs so early with Cira. After the dogs finished their breakfasts, she went upstairs to check for vomit and found some in her bed-area. It was about time for me to leave for my doctor's appointment, so I told her to contact the vet and get an opinion. They advised Donna to bring Cira in and had an appointment available to do so. Donna let me know this while I was at my appointment. My appointment ended early enough that I was able to meet them at the vet only a minute or two after the consult started.

The vet gave her more fluids, some more aggressive medications and a script for medications to administer at home. We were instructed try bland food again with the medications and to call if Cira showed further signs of illness. The plan was that, if Cira did exhibit further issues, they'd do Xrays to verify that there weren't any bowel obstructions.

Donna gave her the meds, but Cira wasn't interested in food. I'd assumed that, because the vet had warned us that the one medicine was very bitter, that Cira wasn't interested in food because of how awful the medication made her mouth taste. Later in the afternoon, she threw up the pills and the food she'd had for breakfast. We tried feeding her again, but she still wouldn't eat. More worryingly, she wasn't even interested in licking peanutbutter off of either of our fingers. Obviously, we called the vet and they told us to bring her back.

This trip, they opted to do an X-ray to ensure that the week's sudden onset of vomiting and persistent nausea hadn't been caused by any kind of bowel blockage. The first indications that something truly dire was going on was that her spleen was noticeably enlarged and she had what appeared to be calcification in both her kidneys. We discussed diagnostic and treatment options. We opted to leave her there for some additional testing, some antibiotics and IV fluids and then returned home.

An hour or so after we got home, the vet unexpectedly called us. We weren't expecting a call till the next morning when the various (sent out) tests should have been back. Usually, early callbacks are rarely good news. This call very much wasn't good news. Cira's kidney-function tests were showing extremely high BUN and creatinine levels - a couple multiples of the numbers typically seen for stage IV renal failure in dogs. The enlarged spleen, while worrying, was no longer the top priority.

And now, we're waiting for ultrasound results to try to determine what all's going on in there. It's unlikely that the results will be anything outside of the immediate to less-immediate spectrum. At this point, it's mostly a case of trying to determine how much time she might have left at an acceptable quality of life. Call's already been put in to the in-home euthanasia service to check provider-availability. So, depending on the sonogram results, this could all be over very shortly or in a few day's time.

The bugger of it all, aside from the shear unexpectedness of it, is the timing. We lost both our cats to renal failure on the twelfth of the previous year's March. Similarly, we'd received a lung-cancer diagnosis for an earlier dog back in March of 2011. So, March is proving to be a hateful month for our pet ownership.

The Quiet House

When I was a kid, we had cats and dogs in our house. The order of things was that the dogs were noisy and the cats were comparatively quiet. The dogs alerted at the slightest provocation - wind, cars, bird shadows... you get the idea. On the other hand, my cats were fairly quiet: the first on only mewed when you were getting his breakfast ready or hissed when the clumsy dog stepped on him too hard; the pair I had as a teenager were a bit chattier - doing the usual mewing for food and could sometimes be coaxed to "talk back" if you mewed at them first (the one would also "click" when stalking bugs or spying birds and squirrels outside).

In my 20s, I'd had a couple rabbits. In general, they are very quiet animals. My second rabbit, Bambam, earned his name, however, as he had a tendency to stamp his back foot when he wanted attention. In his indoor hutch, this created a very noisy rattling. When he was roaming the house, it sounded like a shotgun going off.

After cancer took my second rabbit, towards the end of my 20s, I opted to get a cat. I found a local woman who had a litter of pet-quality Bengals she was selling off. I'd really only intended to buy one - the female named Bella - especially given the (then) astounding price of $550 (for one cat!). But, I realized that I actually wanted two of them. There were only four kittens in the litter, and two of them were spoken for. The only one remaining was the litter's runt - a male who quickly earned the name Grumbles (I can't even remember what name he came with: perhaps it's in his veterinary packet, somewhere?). Because he was the runt, she cut me a deal on him and only asked for $350.

As seems to often be the case, the runt grew to be the biggest of the litter. In his prime, Grumbles was a shade under 16lbs. Bella only clocked in at a shade over 10lbs. Neither cat was fat as both pretty much ate only enough to sate their hunger. I could have opted to simply free-feed them and they wouldn't have gotten overweight. So, those weights were very lean-weights. Being relatively short-haired, their muscle-definition and abdominal tucks were very evident.

At any rate, as Bengals, they lived up to many of the breed's peculiarities. They were very people-focussed: Grumbles followed me around the house in a way that you might normally expect of a dog. They also loved playing in water: this meant water bowls always had to have big mats around them and that I had to be very careful to latch the bathroom door while showering if I didn't want to have to towel off two cats (though,mostly Grumbles) after my shower. They were also very talkative. They didn't need to be prompted to converse. Wake up in the morning and you'd be greeted with meowing. Come home from work, be greeted with meowing. Leave the room not allow them to come with you and there'd be chastisement when you came back. And, if you just wanted to converse, you could go back and forth with them for a half hour or more - they never seemed to tire of conversing.

What's more, when the two of them did their twice-per-day exercise sessions (fighting), it would be a half hour of mad scrambling about the house, chasing each other. The thundering noise of these chases were punctuated by hissing, spitting and yowling by Bella (and the occasional "THUNK" as she'd run headlong into an obstacle that she'd misjudged in her flight-path). Grumbles, on the other hand, fought in eerie silence with an devilish look on his face that was a combination of anger and joy (and a whole lot of "fuck you").

In 2003, a few months before we married, Donna wanted a dog. So, after much searching, we got one (Lana: a Boxer/American Bulldog mix). The following summer, I discovered that I wanted a dog, too. PetFinder was quick to find me a good match (Puckett: an American Bulldog/Bull Terrier mix). Both were rather much quieter than any of my childhood dogs.Both really only alerted if they were certain you hadn't seen the potential danger. Lana could be convinced to "sing". Puckett would bark a bit when we rough-housed. But, other than that, they were quiet. The cats were as noisy as ever.

We lost Lana in December of 2010 and Puckett the spring immediately following. Both were lost to cancer.

A few weeks after Lana's death, we found a little, brown staffie (Cira) to fill the hole that Lana's passing had left in our home. When Puckett passed, it took several months to find a dog that: a) wasn't prone to chasing cats; b) was compatible with Cira; and, C) that said "take me home" to me. That dog was Lady - a blue-eyed, Pitbull/Boxer mix (apparently, I have a thing for blue-eyed bulldogs). Compared to the prior pair of bullies, these two are noisy. Not nearly so noisy as my childhood dogs, just in comparison to their immediate predecessors. Cira will quietly "moof" or whine when she wants you to invite her up on the couch or throw a blanket over her. Lady will talk - if you prompt her - and will bark madly if there's someone at the door.

Still, the cats were, on average, far more vocal than the dogs - especially when you measure it in interactive vocalizations.

Even knowing how vocal - how much company - my cats were, the house seems sooo quiet without them. No longer do I come down to a cacophony of "good morning" mews as I rush to get ready and out the door for work. No longer does Grumbles follow me into the bathroom to chat at me while I take my biology-break. No longer do I have anyone glaring and mewing at me to clear the laptop out of their way so they can lay in my lap.

How much of an impact was this vocalization? For the past several years, my wife had been lobbying to get a third dog. With two dogs and two cats in a small house, I'd demured. I'd told her, "maybe after the cats have passed, we can think about fostering". Donna also made frequent mention of how much she disliked having to clean up after the cats - litter box, water splashed out of their bowl, the drifts of fur, etc. Suddenly absent the cats, Donna is finding that she misses them. She misses their talking. She misses their company. And, today, she brings up the topic of adopting a homeless bengal or two (after the day before reminding me that, with our small cars, three, fifty-pound dogs might make holiday travels problematic).

Umm... "I thought you didn't like living with cats".

To be honest, if every cat were like Bella and Grumbles, I think you'd probably have a lot less people wondering "why do people have cats as pets". And I think that less because of my own feelings about them, than the fact that my wife is having to fight the urge to try to fill the hole they've left and seriously thinking about cat(s) rather than a dog.

End Times (Again)

Not that I want her to feel bad, but the problem with pets with a terminal diagnosis is they often "rally" during their decline-trajectory. So, in the days leading up to the appointment with the euthanizer, you're periodically left to wonder, "wait: did I jump the gun on this? Do I need to delay?"

Last night, while she was pretty low on energy, when I took her over to the food dish, she ate well. This morning, I came down, and, for the first time in days, she was off the couch. She was actually down at the water dish, drinking. There was no pee smell on the towel she'd been sleeping on. The secondary (low-sided) litter pan had been used for urination (and the absorbant was pretty much soaked).

I guess I'll see how she's acting when I come home from the work: if she's still in a rally, I'll call the vet who's scheduled to come, tomorrow, and ask her opinion on the matter.

Bah. I don't want to send her off, prematurely, but I don't want the rally to end, be in worse shape than she was before, and have to seek out an emergency euthanization.

I'd made a similar mistake with Puckett. We'd scheduled him for an appointment, based on diagnosis and earlier trends. Difference was, I'd scheduled further out. Then, a few days before he was due to go to that appointment, he crashed. We'd gone for a walk to enjoy the weather. He'd been especially energetic on that walk. However, when we came back and I went to feed him a chunk of cheese slathered in peanutbutter, he refused and gave me kind of an "I'm ready, now" look. I knew that if we waited for the appointment, he'd have been "beyond ready".

I don't really want that for Bella - especially given that I can't even really make the gamble worthwhile (she doesn't do treats).

:(

Ok, So Maybe She's Got Some Boxer In Her

When we got Lady, the rescue organization had claimed she was part boxer. Given her appearance - Lady pretty much looks like she's 100% pitbull -  that the rescue is based in Maryland and the rescue had her fostered in Maryland, we'd sort of assumed that the "boxer-mix" description was to avoid any problems with Maryland's anti-pitbull laws (that were on the books in 2011). I mean, does this dog look boxer-y to you?

Yes, she's a fairly vocal dog.

Yes. she's very "handsy".

Yes, she's got (ever so much of) an underbite.

Yes, she breaths like she has a bit of brachycephalic syndrome.

All of these are things that are common in boxers. They were things exhibited by our prior (very boxer-y) boxer-mix ...but she just doesn't look terribly boxery...

A little before Thanksgiving, I noticed a growth on her right ear. Having lost her predecessor to skin-cancer, and that she is a white dog, I was, to say the least, "concerned". I decided to watch it and see if it grew or went away.

It didn't go away, by Christmas, so we opted to take her in the weekend immediately-following Christmas day (was planning on the following Monday, but our vet has no-additional-cost Saturday hours and offered us an earlier appointment). The vet took samples of the growth and said she'd call as soon as she got the results. She cautioned that, with the time of year, it could be a little longer than usual.

Tonight she called back. The good news is, it's not cancer. The bad news is that she apparently has canine leproid granuloma - something for which there's not really good treatment options other than "management". That said, they're primarily cosmetic in their impact.

Oh... And they're fairly rare (most vets only see a couple occurrences in their careers) and predominantly found in (in order of prevalence), boxers, mastiffs and other bull-breeds. So, maybe this is just another indication that Lady may actually have some Boxer in her.

Cats Are Great

...If you like to receive daily doses of neglect and disapproval.

Over my 42 years, I've had several sets of cats. Currently, I've a brother/sister pair of bengals. For cats, they're pretty damned social. They love people. The love to just hang out. If they were politically motivated, they'd be part of the "Occupuy Your Lap" movement.

Even so, they're still cats. If they do something ungraceful - such as falling out of their cat-tree - they give you that "you didn't see nothing" look. If you've left them home alone to long, they'll sit in the center of the room ...with their backs to you, very pointedly ignoring you.

Still, this pair is a lot better than most of the cats I've encountered over the years. I've never understood friends who've had cats that only ever seem to come around when they're hungry - otherwise hiding under a couch or some other dark, quiet nook in their owner's house or apartment.

The Pain of Bully Ownership

Since shortly after moving in with my now wife, we have had one or more dogs. Due to my wife's allergic sensitivities to longer-haired dog breeds, all of our dogs have been bull mixes: our first pair were an American Bulldog/Boxer-mix and an American Bulldog/Bull Terrier-mix; our current pair are an American Staffordshire Terrier and a American Pitbull Terrier. All four have been great dogs. They've been friendly, happy, people-oriented dogs.

We frequently take our current pair for walks around the neighborhood. Most days, our walks are uneventful. We walk anywhere from a half to a mile-and-a-half around the neighborhood.

Late yesterday afternoon, we took our dogs for a walk. My wife wanted some stuff at the local convenience store, so, we leashed up the dogs and walked over. We decided that, rather than walk the short way around our block and back to the house, we would go home by the long way around our block. 

I'd had my head down, grinding documentation for work, all day. I had no real grasp on what time it was. It turns out, our walk back to the house coincided with when the local middle school was letting out. As we were comeing to the end of our block, the school bus left off a mob of kids. Several of them caugh sight of our dogs and came ambling over. They did the usual thing of asking "are they friendly" and, upon giving our affirmation, began to fawn over the dogs. We stood around and chatted while the dogs happily soaked up the attention. A couple minutes into this, one of the kids said, "wow, she's really pretty (referring to our blue-eyed dog, Lady): what kind of dog is she?" I replied, "she's a pitbull". All but one of the kids tensed-up and stepped back. Fortunately, the one most engaged in fawning over Lady kept right on going. She pointed out to her friends that "there's nothing to worry about - they're friendly dogs". They relaxed but didn't return to fussing over the dogs (though the one continued her attention). 

This strikes me as really sad. I mean, here they were, happily interacting with the dogs while they were unaware of their breeds. However, upon hearing the word "pitbull", immediately changed how they saw the two dogs. I get that pitbulls have had a lot of bad press over the years. And, if I were going just by that, I'd be wary about approaching them - moreso than, say, a Shi-Tzu. But, to have been interacting with demonstrably friendly dogs and then going cold at the mention of a breed? It just doesn't make sense: act based on what you see before you, not what you see re-hashed in the fear-mongering press.

 

Disheartening Realization

When Puckett died, after being my pet for slightly less than seven full years, I'd hoped that the rescue we'd gotten him from had been wrong on their age estimate. When we'd brought him home, June of 2004, they'd estimated his age at about 1½ years of age. That would have made him less than nine when he died. As awesome as he was, I didn't want to think that he could have been that young. Knowing that we were the second family to adopt him (he lost his first rescue home when the couple that had adopted him got divorced), I'd sort of assumed that they must have meant he was 1½ years-old when they adopted him. This would have hopefully meant he was at least two years old, possibly over three years old when he came into our home. This would have meant he was nine or ten when we put him down at the beginning of April. Either age would still have been to young, too short a life for such a great dog, but, still: better than nine.

Recently, we adopted a new dog. It had taken about two months to find a dog that both said, "hey, you really want to take me home" and was cat compatible. The only other dog that said "take me home" pretty much failed pre-adoption cat testing. Ultimately, we found an AmBull/Pitbull-mix that both said "take me home" and gets along with cats. This is her:

A Pet ConFab

She and Grumbles frequently share my couch with each other. Basically, if I'm home, they're both on my couch with me

The other thing you might notice, if you've read prior posts on her predecessor, is that the sorta resembles Puckett. That was an accident, more than anything. I wasn't looking for a Puckett-clone. And, personality-wise, while both are/were very happy dogs, they are more different than just their gender and breed-mixes. I don't have any temptation to call out "Puckett" when I really mean her (closest I came to that was a reflex response to Donna screaming at me, "call your dog!" when she was being under-foot in the kitchen: my programmed response, after years of such entreaties was, "PUCKETT!").

When we adopted her, the rescue had her name listed as "Miss Lady". In reality, she didn't really know she had a name. However, she's very much not a lady, so, I kept the "Lady" part of the name mostly for its irony-value. She's just in recent days started responding to it as though she understands "oh, when they say 'Lady' they mean me." She's only ten months old and is still very much a puppy in her actions and outlook on the world. Seeing this puppyishness and remebering back to when we got Puckett, it becomes evident that Puckett died on the wrong side of nine years old.

Not a (Completely) Cold Fish

First, let me start out by saying that, if no one has yet coined the term "emotional initiative", I hereby stake my claim to its creation. What I mean by "emotional initiative" is the normal capacity to spontaneously react with appropriate emotional response for a given stimulus. In other words, the ability to viscerally feel the normal spectrum of emotions. Why this comes up is, lately, I think I've come to the realization that I generally lack this capability. It feels like most of my emotional existence lies on the bluer end of the emotional spectrum. But, mostly, I lack the ability to feel anything, or at least, it feels like I don't react with the same types or degree of emotions I seem to observe expressed by other people. I'm kind of dead inside.

What most brought this lack to light was the recent passing of my dog, Puckett. I've had pets "all my life". I've had dogs. I've had cats. I've had rabbits. While the passing of each saddened me, the loss of Puckett has been the one pet-death that has really hit me hard. He's the first pet I've actually missed. I've never really missed pets (hell, I don't really know that I miss people to any normal, non-detached degree). I think I've discovered why that is.

If you had to take the emotional state of "happiness" and put it into a tangible, physical form, that form would have been Puckett. There are plenty of dogs who are pretty up-beat, but Puckett seemed to just always be that way. I mean, the damned dog wagged his tail in his sleep! Even if you couldn't see him, you knew he was around just by the insistent thump of his tail wagging into his cage, a door frame, a door, a wall or whatever happened to be within tail-reach. He always had a kind of insistence with his happiness. As obnoxious as that may sound, somehow, with him, it wasn't. If it was anything, it was infectious. I don't know anyone that spent any amount of time with him that would disagree That's a huge part of why it has always boggled my mind that he was given up not just once, but twice. I still don't understand how it was I was lucky enough to have come upon him and I don't know how two sets of owners could have been stupid enough to let him go.

When we got the cancer diagnosis, it filled me with a sense of dread beyond simply knowing I'd too soon be without him. I knew that a big part of my happiness would be gone. It's that whole not seeming to have much of a capability to initiate the feelings of happiness or joy within myself. Things that tend to make most people happy sort of just roll off me like water off a duck's back. I'm able to acknowledge that good things have happened. I'm even able to sort of appreciate them. But, such things have, at best, a transient feeling to them - for better or worse, most things feel that way. Having Puckett around, I often felt like I was actually able to experience those kinds of feelings through him. He was the kind of dog you could just look at and it would lighten your spirits. And now, that's gone. All that's left is my "normal", dead self.

We've been trying for coming up on two months, now, to try to find a pup to fill some of the huge hole he's left. What should be a fun experience, getting to "interview" lots of dogs, has been a soul-crushing experience. Each time, I go out, hoping to find that connection. For the most part, I haven't. Yeah, the first part of the visits are often uplifting, but then there's the hangover from it - the emotional letdown of going home, empty-handed. Sometimes, it's even worse.

A couple weekends ago, I met Mook. He was a nifty Boxer/American Pitbull mix. Something about the way we interacted said to me, "you need to take me home." He was too big. He was an energetic handful. But, in spite of that, there was still that, "you need to take me home" feeling to him. Unfortunately, he fairly badly failed cat-testing. Give we've got two cats, we have to have a dog that gets along with cats. So, I had to take a pass on him.

This weekend, we met two dogs, Micah and Miss Lady. Each had qulities to recommend them.

Our current dog, Cira, seemed to love the time we spent at the dog park with Micah. Yeah, she was having fun playing with all the dogs, but she did seem to be gravitating towards him, in particular. I got the feeling that, were we to bring him home, they'd be the doggy version of "best buds for life." Unfortunately, I didn't feel much of a "you need to take me home" feeling from him. I don't know whether this was just because he was surrounded by and distracted from playing with a pack of other dogs or just that there wasn't really a connection to be made (I'm firmly of the school that dogs claim their owners at least as much as we claim them). I just don't know. I'm thinking that, before I can say, "we need to bring this guy home," we need to try to get a meeting under circumstances that are likely to foster a connection. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how best to go about that. Worse, because of prior disappointments, I'm afraid to try to make a connection in case he fails the cat test.

After meeting with Micah, we had to take Cira home to bathe her. She'd gotten quite dirt and slobber covered from the 40+ minutes of running around in the Clarendon dog park. This cost us the opportunity to meet another boy - at least for this weekend - but still left us with time to go meet Miss Lady. Like Micah, Miss Lady is a gorgeous-looking dog. Where Micah was a gorgeous red-brindled and sleek bully, Miss Lady is a too-skinny ball of energy recently rescued from a high-kill shelter. She has arresting white/blue eyes and a friendly demeanor that says, "you want to take me home." Or, at least, I think it does.

Her eyes and her manner are evocative of Puckett. I'm hoping it's mostly her manner and not just the color and quality of her eyes.

At any rate, meeting her did make me feel something. I should probably sort out the source if I'm to do the decision justice. Yesterday, her interaction with Cira was very poor. So, I'd thought I'd been rescued from having to sort out whether the source of that feeling was genuine or not. Today, however, when we went to a dog adoption event in Columbia, to meet a different dog, Miss Lady was there. And, today, she and Cira got along very much differently than their first encounter suggested they ever might. There wasn't anything in the way of raised hackles. There wasn't any growling, snarling, barking or baring of teeth. There also wasn't any of the "I don't like you so I'm going to go over here and do my best to ignore you" posturing we'd seen the day before. In fact, they just generally seemed a lot more interested in each other and able to get along. At one point, I was giving dog-treats to each and Miss Lady thought she'd try to intercept one that I was giving to Cira. Cira calmly asserted herself and no growling (etc.) was evidenced from either dog. More of an "it's my turn" from Cira and an, "ok, we have to take turns" from Miss Lady. So, now I'm torn, again.

Worse, I'm a touch beaten. Part of me really wants this dog. Part of me is really afraid that the universe is teasing me, again. And, a third part of me is thinking, "you're really overthinking all of this." Probably, I am. I don't know that most people go through this when looking for dogs. Most people are more impulsive in their decisions. Most people are easier to let themselves go. Or, at least it seems that way. I just don't really know. All I know is that it's really draining. All I really know is that feeling tends to be really draining. Perhaps that's why I tend not to do it, much?

Is There a Doggy eHarmony?

Seems that the recent spate of bad dog-luck is extending into our search for a replacement for Puckett. Winston's rescue organization non-sense and Snoop's cat-test failure both sucked, but they'd mostly appealed to Donna rather than me.

Recently, we'd found Mook. When we first visited, my initial thoughts were "this guy's too big" and "Donna would never be able to control him." So, I'd sorta written him off almost immediately. Unfortunately (not under normal circumstances, but in this case, sort of "yes"), the rescue-coordinator that was seeing after him was the same one that we got Cira from after Lana died. She had pictures of Cira as a puppy and her siblings that she wanted to show to us. So, while she and Donna looked through her computer for the pictures, I was left to commune with Mook. Unfortunately, that was long enough to let me see something in him I liked that I hadn't seen in the others.

After we left, and we walked into Snoop's cat-test failure, I found myself less than disappointed that Snoop had failed. Snoop was a nice enough dog, but, he hadn't stirred anything in me like Mook had. So, it left me with a reason to contact Mook's rescue-coordinator and ask "can you please cat-test him". She was happy to do so. 

That request was made Sunday evening. I've been waiting, cautiously hopeful, since then. Today, the result of that test came in:

We did the cat test.  I picked up Mook and took him to Kitty City.  [The Evaluator] was there and performed the test.

******* 

[Evaulator's] Write-Up:

Mook is too interested in cats for me to feel safe about suggesting him for a home with cats. He viewed a cat thru a wire door and barked intently and loudly. He did re-direct easily for a treat somewhat easily and focused on me when I asked him to sit. This was positive. When I put down a circular, plastic cat toy with a fake mouse in it this REALLY seemed to interest him, so much that he bloodied his mouth playing with it trying to get the mouse. He became VERY fixated on this toy and the fake mouse.

I suspect strongly that a cat that moved quickly at all would catch his interest and he would give chase. I think that he has a strong chance of hurting a cat (perhaps unintentionally) by chasing/catching. If a cat hissed or scratched back he may go after it and hurt it. He may retreat but from what I saw with regards to his interest in the cat via barking and VERY strong interest in the small fake mouse, I suspect he has a decent sized prey drive.

********

My current dog, Jack, and my deceased dog, Dylan, are/were also very interested in cats and at times acted similar to Mook.  They were around a cat at my parents, but they never hurt one.  I agree with [The Evaluator's] description of the events that took place, but I am not sure I would rule him out of your home - because of your past relationship with AFH.  We know you care for your animals and would not risk anyone getting hurt.  Mook's website postings will be updated to no cats for other adopters.

Should you decide to try Mook, you will need to make a lifestyle change (keeping the cats and dog separate, etc) indefinitely to keep the cats safe.  This type of change is certainly not something everyone wants to do.  And, you can't risk not knowing where the animals are and forgetting to shut a door or gate to keep the cats separated from Mook.

When Mook first arrived, he did not play well with other dogs and was a complete pain-in-the-ass with his jumping/humping, so I see hope for him, but hurting a cat is not something anyone wants and it would make sense if you decided he is not the dog for your family.  If the prey drive is there, the training won't change the behavior and things may not still work out in the long run.

Please let me know your thoughts.

My thoughts? Ugh... My thoughts were split. The emotional part of me that Mook had grown on while Donna and his coordinator looked for pictures made me want to risk it. For better or worse, I have a strong "executive function" to my thinking processes. For as impulsive as Donna tends to be, I tend to be deliberative. So, even though I wanted to take the risk, my rational side said, "no, not a good idea." So, with a heavy heart, I wrote back to Mook's coordinator:

Dunno if you remember our house. We live in a two-story duplex with a semi-finished basement. The bedrooms are on one floor, Donna's work-space is in the basement and the main floor is where day-to-day living takes place. I'm not sure how we'd be able to partition the house such that we could ensure no bad "accidents". It wouldn't be fair to either Mook or the cats, even if we could partition, as it would mean keeping one or the other mostly segregated from the human occupants of the house. For me, that would probably only be marginally better than kenneling. While it might be ok for a short-term fostering situation, I wouldn't want to make it a permanent thing for a dog that likely has the best part of a decade left on his clock and cats that have the best part of half a decade left on their clocks.

Ugh. Seems our dog-luck, with the exception of finding Cira, is at a low, lately. Who knows, maybe with the luck-run we'd had in finding Lana, then Puckett, then Cira - all with next to nothing in the way of compatibility issues - we ran through our fair allotment of dog-luck and need to "recharge" it.

I'm feeling like I need to find the canine equivalent of Match.Com. =)

The part of me that he grew on while you and Donna looked at Cira's picture, make me want to take the risk. However in good conscience (i.e., my internal "voice of reason"), I don't think I can. I don't want to put him through the disruption of trying to integrate him here and then, if that fails, having to put him through the disruption of putting him back into fostering.

Have you any suggestions on how we get our luck back (since there is no dog version of Match.Com)? I mean, the run of three (Lana/Puckett/Cira) made it seem like it wasn't unreasonable to expect to find a bull-type that would work and that "spoke" to us. Just been a lot of disappointment, post-Puckett.

It sucks. Mook is a really awesome dog with a lot of potential. Unfortunately, right now, Mook isn't a dog I can take the risk on. When I adopt a dog, I want to pretty much know that we'll be his furever home.

So, I guess the question stands: is there a Match.Com for dog rescues. If there isn't there damned well should be. I think I read, recently, that something like 1-in-600 dogs that ends up in shelters/rescues/etc. ever get placed. Between basic compatibility issues (such as getting along with incumbent pets), the whole "is this my dog/am I this dog's human" question and finding rescue organizations that are worth working with (I've found several good ones and, unfortunately, a couple really unpleasant ones, over the years), trying to do the right thing and going the rescue route is hard. The experience makes me really understand why it is that people, looking for a dog, don't go the rescue route. Finding a puppy is just easier, and most people are all about "easy".

Right now, I just feel soul-punched. I miss Puckett. It feels like "my dog is dead" in a much more significant way than just the fact of Puckett's passing. It feels like there's not a light at the end of the tunnel. It's particularly weird given that, in my life, I've seen five dogs to their end. This is the first time I've felt like this is my end with dogs. Half the time, I feel like the dogs we're looking at are more for Donna's benefit than mine.

I Just Don't Get It (The Dog Rescue Organization Edition)

There's a lot of things out there that I just don't "get". So, undoubtedly, I have or will continue to post "I Don't Get It" posts. This post is prompted by the complete and utter dismay, hurt, confusion and fury caused by our attempts to wade back into the doggy-adoption pool.

Back in 2003, when Donna and I were in the first year of our marriage, we'd decided we wanted to add a furry member to our family. We knew that we liked boxers, bulldogs and similar dog breeds. We had a shelter near our house - the Animal Welfare League of Alexandria's Viola Lawson dog shelter. Unfortunately, at the time, they didn't have any dogs that both spoke to us and didn't trigger Donna's (mild) dog allergies. So, we expanded our searches.

Initially, we tried to see if any of the breed-specific specialty rescue groups had any dogs we were interested in. Our first stab at this process was the local Boxer Rescue group. We got in contact with them and ended up selecting a pup named AnnaBelle:

AnnaBelle

As you can see, she was a lightly-brindled, Bogey-faced boxer with un-altered ears or tail. She was very sweet. Unfortunately, she was overly excited by the presence of our cats. We were willing to work with her to help her adjust. However, the woman who was fostering her decided that we were an unfit household. Apparently, our yard and our house weren't big enough and we didn't have enough time for her. Now, I might have been able to take this at face value had I not seen the house where she was being fostered (I'd gone there to do the initial paperwork). This woman lived in a townhouse not even half the size of ours and it had no yard. Factor in that this woman already had another boxer (or two - can't remember, clearly, at this point) and had a day-job of her own, and all I could think was, "are you fucking crazy?? How is her fostering situation even remotely better than what we were looking to offer that we could be considered unfit for the reasons given?" So, I kind of decided, "lesson learned: don't go to breed-specific rescues. The people that involved with them are well-meaning but a little too into their charges to see the big picture."

That lesson learned, I decided to do a more generalized search. We tried again with the Lawson shelter, but they still had no pups that we liked and didn't trigger Donna's allergies. So, I hit up Google. By way of Google, I found PetFinder.Com. I put in the search string "boxer" and our ZIPcode. Bunches of results came back. There were few fully boxer dogs in the results that weren't in breed-specific rescues. Since I'd already decided to avoid breed-specific rescues, they were straight-out for consideration.

However, I did find a sweet-looking American Bulldog/Boxer mix named Lana that was in the care of "A Forever Home" dog rescue.

Lana

Her PetFinder profile said she was sweet-natured, low-key and good with cats and young children (at the time, we were still hoping to have human children). So, we contacted A Forever Home to find out when/where we could meet her. They were having an adoption event at the PetCo in Chantilly, VA in just a few days. So, we put in an application and marked our calender to go meet her. We got there before she did, so we waited. Eventually, they brought her in and I think we fell in love almost immediately. We made arrangements for home inspection and a home visit. In just a couple weeks, Lana was ours and our family was starting to feel complete.

By the next summer, we were feeling the urge to get a playmate for Lana. Things hadn's been going well on the baby front. We'd not yet given up, but we still felt the need for another dog. So, same lessons from the past in mind, we started searching again. We tried A Forever Home, first, before hitting up PetFinder, but they didn't have any pups whose pictures spoke to us (no bullies of any sort at the time). I still don't remember what my search term was this time, but it turned up Puckett:

Puckett

The above isn't really a bad picture of him.Puckett just was not a classically good looking dog. He was 100% personality. Fortunately, the Picture that his rescue organization (Friends of Homeless Animals) had placed on his profile page captured that personality (I've done a lot of perusing of PetFinder, in recent months, and I've yet to find a picture of a dog that really makes the dog speak to me in quite the same way). So, we called their phone number and made arrangements to visit and to bring Lana along for an introduction.

FoHA is out in the boonies of (barely) Northern Virginia. So, it was a little less than an hour's drive from our house to their compound. It was a beautiful, late-spring day that day. We hopped out of the Saturn and uncarted Lana and tracked down the woman we'd spoken to prior to our trip. She let us into the play/introduction yard and went to fetch-up Puckett. Lana had scurried off to explore  the play yard. Eventually, the staffer showed up with Puckett and brought him into the yard. Puckett introduced himself by rushing headlong at Lana and attempting to bowl her over. He kind of bounced off and the two of them began running around the yard, playing with each other. Things looked good, so we arranged the home inspection and visit.

Later that week, a volunteer came out to bring Puckett for a visit. We needed to ensure he wouldn't try to eat the cats and FoHA needed to make sure our home was adequate for his needs. The visit went well, and by the following Sunday, they brought him back and we signed paperwork on our new boy. So, by June 21st, we were a two-dog househould.

We went along as a two-dog household until December of this past year. Then, we were, briefly, a one-dog household, again. Fortunately, we were able to find a new pup through A Forever Home, again.

Cira

Things were right with the world: we were a two-dog household again. Then, Puckett got sick and, all-too-quickly, we were, yet again, a one-dog household. All in the space of about five months, two dogs, gone, and a hole left in our lives, again.

So, I started the search, again. I tried with both FoHA and A Forever Home. Neither seems to have as many bullies, any more, as they did when we got Lana and Puckett. I can only assume that, with things like the Michael Vick nonsense (and the resultant awareness that seemed to spawn TV shows like The Pit Boss and Pitbulls and Parolees) that there's an up-surge in interest in rescuing bullies. This is good for an unjustly-maligned group of breeds, but not so good when you're the one looking to fill a hole in your home. Worse, it seems like the ones that are available for rescue are getting snapped up by breed-specific rescues.

And, that's where we found ourselves: stuck with having to contact breed-specific rescues. I'd learned my lesson once, before, and had avoided them. Unfortunately, it seems that I no longer had the choice on dealing with them. Unfortunately, it seems that what caused my prior lesson to be learned hasn't really changed. Worse, it seems like, with the influx of new "rescuers" the "blinded by good intentions" effect is even worse.

Yesterday, we had a second home visit with this guy:

Winston

Yeah. He has a resemblence to Puckett. It was accidental. The first pictures we'd seen of him, he looked only like a white dog with mismatched eyes and batty ears. Wasn't until they sent us more pix that the resemblence became more acute (and, I overheard our neighbors comment to that effect during his first visit).

Everything had seemed to go well. The woman who ran the rescue was present and agreed that he wasn't cat-aggressive, just very curious. She offered us the option of keeping him a few weeks to see how things went. She said she'd just need to set us up with a "foster-to-adopt" contract. Unfortunately, she hadn't had the contracts with her. So, she'd need to arrange to come back the next day (today) with the requisite contracts.

In retrospect, this seemed kind of fishy. I mean, what kind of well-run rescue organization doesn't bring the paperwork with them for an adoption visit? When I offered to let her use my computer to download and print any forms she needed, she balked, claiming that she didn't have her login information to get the forms. So, she and the woman who was actually fostering the dog packed up and left indicating they'd bring him and the paperwork by at around 13:00.

Last night, I couldn't sleep. I was excited by the prospect of the new dog. I didn't get to sleep until after 4AM, this morning. Thus, I ended up sleeping in later than I usually do. I came downstairs to take care of my morning medicine and finish readying the house for the new arrival (we'd gone out the night before, after they'd left, and picked up toys a second pet gate to assist with the transition process). I then logged into my computer to read the morning email.

I was really only expecting to see the usual FaceBook notification and miscellaneous spam. Instead, I found a fucking bomb in my inbox:

Good morning Tom,

[The foster] and I have intensively talked about Winston and we both feel that he is going to be "too much dog" for your household. He is still all puppy and needs intensive training and exercise, more than other puppies his age because he is so outgoing and interested in everything. You are working fulltime and Donna seems very busy with her household plus he will need to get desensitized with the cats which will take much effort and patience to do so. Sarah [sic.], your dog is absolutely adorable and we think a little more laid back older male who gets along with cats would be a much better fit for you.

I have asked [the foster] to not bring Winston over today. After all we need to make sure that everybody, dog and human, are happy at the end. Let me know how you feel about it. I would be happy to talk to you about it on the phone if you wish. Thanks, and I am looking forward to your reply.

Each time I read this email, I get more furious. I play back in my mind what could have caused this and can't really find anything. I mean, for fuck's sake: the foster for the dog has a day job. This dog sits in a cage, during the day, while she and her husband are at work. At our house, Donna is home all day and would be able to oversee the transition. We already have a trainer (we've used previously for Cira) who is a pitbull specialist (he has three of his own) to help us with training and adjustment. We have one bully and had two previously. Our pets are well fed, receive lots of attention and get regular medical care. The foster, at the prior visit, had been all too happy with the situation, as had the person that did the home inspection and the person who did our background check.

Judging by how the foster reacted to the rescue organizer's weird conduct towards the end of yesterday's meeting, it seems unlikely that the foster had any part in the decision. I can only assume that something she wasn't willing to discuss changed the rescue organizer's mind. Worse, rather than saying, "I can't place this dog here, we need to find a better fit," it seemed like she chose the ruse to disengage. So, right now, I'm feeling hurt, confused and lied to. It actually feels worse than our first foray into rescues.

Dear rescue organizers: one in 600 homeless dogs ever finds a home. It's great that you care about the dogs you've accepted into your charge, but your level of "caring" blinds you to the ability to place dogs in good homes. Worse, because you're holding onto these dogs for some kind of "perfect" home, you can't accept new dogs. It's your conduct that means that more dogs die than have to. You are the embodiement of "the road to hell being paved with good intentions."

Granted, this isn't true of all rescue organizations. Like I say, we've had good experiences with two places, now. For those two organizations, I feel eternally grateful. Now, though, I'm just really gun-shy about breed-specific organizations. So, I dunno if/when I'm likely to find a pup to fill this hole, because it seems like these groups have cornered the market on the kinds of pups we like.

One Step Closer

Just got word back: our adoption papers have been approved (vet and other references checks are passed and the home visit was a "go"). Now, we just gotta get coordinated on when they can bring the new pup over to see if he's good with cats.

Pack Mule

That's Gizmo/Winston with doggy carry-packs on. He's high energy, so, may have to keep him weighted down on walks to help tire him out. And, yes, he's got mismatched eyes.