October 24, 2007
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Patches is Gone but not forgotten
I had a lot of little things to blog but it all fades into unimportance with the *loss* of Patches. If you haven’t read this before (and I have no reason to think you would be a new reader but….will explain a bit anyway), Patches was a lost dog we took in about 5-6 weeks ago. He was an Australian cattle dog mix, we assumed but we might have been wrong on that and it will be explained in a bit.
He was a good dog after he got over being terribly scared. It took a lot of effort to coax him out from under our travel trailer. We had seen him a couple of times over a few days but thought he might just be a dog owned by someone locally or one of the newcomers to our little corner of the world. He was just what the doctor ordered for our doberman pup who really needed someone to chase and be chased by…a playmate,so-to-speak. Patches (our name for him since New Dog seemed kind of cold) was just a few months older, we think.
Now big dogs, even big puppies, eat a lot. If you go back through my blogs there is an entry on current dog foods on the market and the base ingredient that the majority of them are made from. After doing some research, we found a kibble that did NOT include this product and supplemented it with chicken or lamb (when cheap), rice and carrots. I saved the *broth* from cooking enough chicken for a week to use to wet down the kibble and add a little more taste.
I even cooked up chicken gizzards and livers to add more variety to their food (although I doubt they would have cared as long as they were fed)
The Nutro kibble is one you purchase at a pet store like Petsmart or Pet Supermarket and it’s not cheap even when you buy the big bags. Rice is cheap, thankfully. Even carrots are not too bad because you don’t have to add a whole lot with the *mix*. Chicken is relatively cheap if you only buy what is on sale but you usually end up buying the BIG bags of leg quarters or chicken tenders because that brings the price down more. Gizzards and livers are very inexpensive and the gizzards are a LOT easier to cut up when they’ve been simmered for an hour or so. Heck, I’ve even bought a big bag of wings and spent the time stripping the meat off after they are cooked. Don’t want any bones to get mixed in, do we!
Patches actually seemed to calm Baron down and he started developing better manners. So we were very happy about that. The search for his owner dragged on (he had a rabies tag on his collar and we tried to track them down that way) with no results. We thought he might actually have been dropped off in our semi-rural area thinking a cattle dog would find a home here. We are surrounded by small farms with lots of cows (a pain in the butt in the summer, trust me).
The Beast started doing things that indicated we would keep Patches if no owners were found. I wasn’t against it. Like I said, he and Baron got along like good companions and friends and we didn’t have to worry about exercising Baron. We have a huge backyard that’s fenced in so the dogs could be out there almost all day during good weather.
BUT….reality in the form of expense started setting in. Both dogs needed neutering. Both dogs would require shots and boosters. Baron, we knew since we bought him at 8 weeks old, had all his shots (well, he lacks one but he will get that next week). We were clueless on Patches, other than assumming he had his rabies shot already this year. Then there is the flea & tick stuff you have to put on them. Heartworm medication to prevent THAT problem, especially essential in the South. Those pills cost $10 a pop. It means we spend $20 a month just for two freaking pills. Advantix (flea & tick stuff) is also not cheap. *sigh*The Beast had two strokes six years ago and he was forced to retire because he couldn’t do the work he could BEFORE the strokes. We owned our own company but sold it to employees so we didn’t have that concern unless they couldn’t keep the business going. The Beast acted as consultant, mostly by phone but, later on as he regained some of his stamina, also on site. However, that was *gratis* so we were forced into SS Disability since the hubby was only 58 at the time.
Now, when you are forced into a limited, fixed income, unnecessary extra expenses are heavy burdens. We DID have a teenager that we had custody of at the time but we got nothing to supplement having her. She was our grandddaughter so why would we even expect such a thing? We had pretty much been raising her since she was about 3 years old so it was not a big deal to us. It just meant her mother couldn’t interfere like she had been before that. Every time her mother had her for longer than a weekend, the kid came back to us with a bad attitude. It would take us weeks sometimes to get her back to the happy kid she was before then. She is no longer with us now and is, in fact, a mother herself (and a darn good one, to boot).
Now, we do have savings. And we have owned the last three homes we lived in so we don’t have a mortgage. That all helps but…..we still have auto insurance, homeowners insurance and property taxes that have to fit into that fixed income if at all possible (so far, not possible because our home in Florida hasn’t sold yet)
So, the Beast and I were sitting down, going over facts and figures and came to the conclusion that, although our hearts said one thing, our pocketbook said something different. Patches could NOT become OUR dog. But we didn’t want to turn him into Animal Control because after about a week, they destroy any *strays*. He was too good a dog to have that happen. So I did a little research.
It turns out that the Greater Birmingham Humane Society does NOT destroy animals except for the ill or if they are aggressive dogs. They also have a lot of families in the area that *foster* dogs. I was amazed. They spay or neuter all animals turned in to them and give them an implant under their skin (like Home Again) that is registered when they are finally adopted. Since we had sheltered and fed Patches for more than a month, they considered US the owners of Patches (the Humane Society does NOT take strays but you can turn a dog in if you are unable to keep it any more for some reason). So, we made the trek from our home in Northeastern Alabama to Birmingham (just an hour and a half away).
Now here is what shocked me. I went inside to see how complicated it would be before the Beast brought in Patches. He was taking him for a final walk to say his goodbye. I also wanted to be doubly sure that he would not be put to sleep. Again they told me the reasons that he COULD be (none of which applied) so the Beast brought in Patches right about then. The woman behind the counter took one look at him and said, “Oh, he’s an Australian cattle dog”. I almost fell over because we had to do a little research on the web before we found THAT out. We also found out his coloring (which includes a light blue) is called Merl.
The paperwork got filled out and the woman said to me, “I’m going to foster him out because we have a family that’s partial to cattle dogs.” That made me feel good because she also added…”and they will train him while they are fostering.” Patches DID need some basic training as we discovered but it was almost impossible to train two dogs for us since, even when the dogs were separated, they were totally distracted by either one of us being with the other one. They also wanted each others company all the time.
When they started to take Patches out of the front office to the back, I couldn’t help it. I cried. But I pray each day that Patches finds a family to call his own that will love him and treat him well. He deserves it.
As for our little monster, with Patches gone, he realized he has our full attention now and he *lost* some of his good manners so we are back to some basics with him for a while. I call him a monster only because he reminds me of such a spoiled little kid with this reversal. What a stinker!!!!
Well, I’ve gotten that out finally so I am calling it a night now. I have more to tell but will have to do it tomorrow. My cataract surgery on right eye is on Thursday and two weeks later it will be done on left eye. I am so grateful to modern technology and medical advances because you no longer have to wait for cataracts to *ripen* (you actually went completely blind in the eye because the cataract had to completely cover the cornea). And it’s outpatient surgery that takes 15 minutes to perform. I am SO looking forward to this. I’ve had some incredible problems with it with sunlight and flourescent lighting as well as headlights at night. It’s impossible for me to drive at night.
Have a great night, a wonderful week and a happy life too. Let’s get it all in.
Love ya and be back here tomorrow, God willing/
