All and all it was a very great trip and much needed relaxation. Kadan got to see and play with Jake and my brother’s and his fiance’s new 10 week old Maltese/Poodle mix (I refuse to call it a MALTIPOO. Can’t even begin to describe how much I despise breeders of “designer dogs”). Her name is Maddie. I kinda have to wonder how they plan to housebreak a puppy in a 9th floor apartment. I was really against them even purchasing Maddie in the first place, trying to get them to go to a shelter or rescue instead. But his fiance wanted a “Maltipoo” RIGHT NOW, and found a breeder on Kijiji.com, aka just another online classified littered with backyard breeders galore who are continuing to increase the pet overpopulation problem. Maddie wasn’t even 8 weeks old yet, no shots, no deworming, and she’s essentially mixed breed dog being passed off as an expensive “purebred designer dog” from a profiting backyard breeder that charged them $300. Incredibly stupid move on their part, but they think they got a “really good deal since Maltipoo’s go for $1000′s in the LA area”. Oh man, don’t even get me start. Oh well, what’s done is done. It was their choice, however idiotic it might be.

Here’s a few pictures my brother snapped of the dogs while we were there. Enjoy.

Lounging together on the floor.

Aw, the boys are holding hands :P

Jake and Maddie

Sleepy Maddie needs some tear stain removal =[

Myself watching Happy Gilmore and getting caught offguard by Mr. Photographer

Might be making a trip down to grandma’s soon to visit her. Will be bringing Kadan of course; I’ve never spent a day away from him since I adopted him. Grandma’s always wanting me to work with her Sheltie, Buddy, and the guy she’s renting out her guesthouse to apparently has a little Pekingnese mix that’s driving them both batty with her hyperactive-jump-on-everything behavior. Will have the camera on me for pictures and I’ll be sure to report in how it goes.

He’s also on Petfinder.

I’m a sucker for herding breeds, so naturally I became concerned, especially since he’s so young! 6-7 months, it says. He’s in a shelter in Visalia, CA, which is central California. It’s not an area very well known for having a high adoption rate, so most of the shelters are extremely High Kill, and when I first noticed this guy, his euthanasia date was March 17th. I’ve been trying to contact the Border Collie Rescue of So. Cal in Phelan (which is about 30 minutes from me) and have yet to hear anything back from them. I tried posting on craigslist in Visalia/Tulare, Los Angeles, and Inland Empire to see if any rescues would be able to get him and bring him down here where he might stand a chance of adoption in a rescue, but most people who replied said they are full, don’t have enough foster homes available, etc. I tried my local rescue Helping Paws, where we adopted Bindi, and they told me that they would do what they can, so I’m hopeful.

I can’t make it up there to Visalia to save this guy on my own, but I’d totally foster him if somebody could get him down here to me. But that’s half the trouble in itself. I’m waiting to hear back from Helping Paws, and am glad that apparently some of my efforts at contacting rescues and the Visalia shelter itself have not gone to waste because his euthanasia date was moved from March 17th, to March 24th, giving us more time to try and figure a way to get him out of there.

The loss of Pepper yesterday has made me all the more determined to save dogs in trouble, especially for those of which it’s still too early for them to die.

Wish Rocky luck!

My stepfather had Pepper put down this afternoon.

He never told me any details because he knows how angry and upset I am with him, but he either finally found somewhere that would do a convenience euthanasia for him, or she’s sitting in a shelter somewhere waiting out her final 5 days before they kill her.

The thought of it makes me sick to my stomach. I’m angry, heartbroken, and been crying my eyes out all day. I really hate being consider “family” to a man who thinks that animals are just disposable possessions.

She got old, so he had her killed.

I guess living with a person like this man for most of my life has made me more of the compassionate animal lover that I am, and it’s why I’ve gotten so involved in rescue and whatnot. It can be hard sometimes when everything you believe in is continually criticized and shot down, but I persevere. I’ve seen first hand most of my life how cruel some people can be with their pets, how thoughtless and carelessly they can toss them aside…and I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to help the ones fortunate to make it out alive and into new, caring homes.

I only wish I’d have been able to save her, too.

I grew up with Pepper (you can read my full introduction entry about her here. I was 6 years old, she was 6 weeks.  I’ll always remember the time when my stepbrother had first brought her home. She was so tiny and cute. As she got  a little older, we had adopted a pot belly piglet named Wilbur, and she’d constantly try to chase him around the yard, and her little puppy nails scratched him up quite a bit. Took some time before we were able to get her to calm down and stop pestering poor Wilbur. I think she just thought he was another puppy for a long time. Haha.

When she was about a year old, my stepbrother had moved out to live with his mother. She spent the next few years living with them in Perris, CA. But despite not living with us, she never forgot us. We went to pick up my stepsister Melissa one time and I asked to go see Pepper in the backyard. They said to be careful because she doesn’t like strangers. “Bah”, I thought. “I’m not a stranger.”

Sure enough, she never forgot me. We’d been seperated for a few years but one sniff and she was all licks and tail wagging.

I also remember when Melissa’s mom abandoned Pepper in that backyard. She moved out out her mobile home and couldn’t or wouldn’t take the dogs with her. She merely called us to say if we wanted her, to come get her before animal control did.

She must’ve been back there for days. There were two other dogs with her, no food, hardly any water. She was so skinny and neglected. Ever since then, she ate like it was her last meal. Scarfing it down as quickly as possible. For a long time she also drank large amounts of water, like she couldn’t get enough of it. She also became a resource guarder, not towards people, but the other dogs in the house. I think it’s because she had to fight for the food in that backyard with those two other dogs.

I also remember the time around 2000 or so…we were living in a five-plex apartment at the time. Mom had come home from the grocery store, and the dogs ran out to the car to greet her. When we came back in the house, we noticed Pepper was missing. Murph was there, but Pepper was nowhere to be found. We went out walking for a good 2-3 miles around the neighborhood, calling for her. We took Murph with us, telling him to “Find Pepper!” and thinking he was sniffing her out. But we couldn’t find her and just came back home. The next morning, one of our neighbors knocks on the door and asks us why our dog was in the car. We had a Ford Escort. Apparently when mom came home with the groceries, Pepper hopped into the car through the trunk and into the backseat and nobody saw her, and shut the trunk trunk. She’d never left. She just got locked in the car, and spent the whole night in there, oh so happy to get out.

When she was young, she had really bad separation anxiety. There were many times at that apartment that my parents would leave her in the small backyard when we’d leave home because she’d tear up things in the house. We would continually come home to no Pepper in the backyard. She’d climb the fence and run around the neighborhood ’til we got back home. My stepdad decided to tie her up in the backyard instead, so should couldn’t climb the fence. When we got back home, there was a giant gaping hole dug out all around her. Like a miniature doggy bunker.

I also remember the times when I was a young teenager, and would have her come intimidate my would-be bullies and scary neighbors. We didn’t live in the nicest of areas in town, and nasty neighbors and their older kids would threaten to steal things from me or cause physical harm, etc…so I’d simply call my dog out. I knew she could hop the fence in the backyard, and there were times she’d fly out the screen door or screened windows if she thought I was in trouble. That was Pepper in a nutshell: Looks like an innocent Labrador, with the fierce protective loyalty on an Akita. If she was in the backyard and someone was harassing me, all I had to do was call her name and off she ran. It pretty much freaked out these two drug user teenage twin sisters who were heckling me for whatever reason I can’t remember anymore, when she came crashing through a loose fenceboard in the NEIGHBOR’S yard. There was a chainlink fence that separated our two backyards, with the perimeter fencing all wood boards. She apparently decided to go through the chainlink instead of trying the wood fencing in our yard and came waltzing out that loose fenceboard barking and growling, stopping at my side happily when my bullies fled away screaming how much they hated my dog.

Pepper kept our druggy neighbors from breaking into our house once, too. They decided it too risky to burglarize the house, and decided to go to the detached garage instead. They got caught when we noticed a table of ours sitting in their livingroom through an open window. When the cops questioned them about why they did it, they mentioned that they needed the money, but weren’t stupid enough to try anything with “that crazy dog in the house”.

Oh Pepper…you were so infamous in your youth! But every dog slows down eventually. It took you a while to finally realize that you weren’t a puppy anymore, but boy did you give ‘em hell ’til that day came.

I’m gonna miss you old lady. I love you, and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep you from the inevitable. I really hate him for taking you from me so soon. It wasn’t your time, and there was no excuse for it. Old age isn’t a disease, and you weren’t some retired guard dog of his to be tossed out like trash when you got old.

Part of me is happy, knowing that he can’t do anything to you anymore. Knowing that you’re free from him. But the other part of my is angry and heartbroken because you’re not here anymore. I wrote so much about you last night, and today you’re gone. It makes me sick to my stomach. I love you so much. I hope you’re up there with Murphy, the cockatiels, and our stray kitty friend Freeway. No matter what anybody says, you were a GREAT dog. Your love and loyalty will stay with me forever, and I’m so thankful to have spent 15 years of my life with you. We grew up together, you were one of my very best friends and like a little sister to me. I will never forget you. Rest in peace old lady. I love you.

It’s very interesting having two “toddlers” as I call it, and an “old lady” in the house. Pepper’s old enough to be thKadan and Bindi’s great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, [insert more "great"s] grandmother, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Pepper’s really starting to slow down lately, and the arthritis is really starting to bother her back legs, but on good days she’s still up and about trying to chase and play with the two rambunctious kiddos. Then it’s like after the good day is over, and she got in all her exercise, that back right leg gets to bothering her again, and she’ll limp on it a bit for a couple days before it’s good to go again, only to be overexerted yet again and start the cycle all over again.

Sigh.

It’s hard watching your dog try to do the things she loved to do when young, but struggle to do it as a senior. She used to love chewing on rawhides, and the occasional recreational raw cow femur bone (did I ever mention I was a fan of Raw Feeding?) but it bothers her teeth anymore to chew things like that, so even the tastiest looking offering gets refused. She used to love playing tug of war with a rope toy, too, but again the teeth bother her so she doesn’t try to tug anymore. One thing she does still enjoy is fetching a tennis ball. Guess that’s one thing a Labrador Retriever (mix in her case) loves well into their senior years.

She still has quite a bit of life left in her, but her hearing has gradually been going, her eye sight isn’t the best anymore with cataracts, and when the other two dogs bump into her and knock her over on the tile floor in the kitchen, she needs help getting back up because she has no traction on her foot pads anymore to get a grip on the tile and pull herself back up. Because of that, she gets really agitated when the other dogs get near her in the kitchen. She’ll bark or growl to get them to back away…likely because she knows what’ll happen if she gets knocked down in there! She’s telling them to back off so they don’t hurt her or cause her to fall and hurt herself. I had to help her up earlier this evening after they tripped her and couldn’t get up.

My stepdad keeps saying he wants to have her put down because she’s “getting old”, and tries to justify it saying that she’s lived 3 years past the average life expectancy of a labrador and is becoming too much of a bother to deal with.

Old age isn’t a disease. I can’t wait ’til he’s old and arthritic so I can ask him if he thinks it’s time to have HIM put to sleep, too!

I can understand having your senior dog put down if they are in considerable amounts of pain, have poor quality of life, or just seem to have lost the light in their eyes that was once there in those happy eyes.

I read somewhere once that you should write down a list of 3 things that your dog has enjoyed the most in their life. Once your dog no longer cares about those things, it’s time to consider letting them go.

For Pepper, my list would be 1) Going for walks and car rides. She’s ALWAYS loved it, and still does. She’s great on a leash, and even if she’s at a slower pace now and can’t go as far, you can still see that she loves going. 2) Playing fetch or chase. She’s great at playing hide and seek with you, and loves to chase you after she’s found you. And the aforementioned tennis ball fetching is still very much there. And lastly 3) FOOD! Many dogs will reluctantly eat or even refuse to eat if they aren’t feeling well, don’t feel well enough to get up and eat, or so on. Not Pepper. She’s still a foodie and eagerly awaits each meal. She still even has it timed. She’ll start bother Mom or me around 9:30am/ 6:30pm if she hasn’t had breakfast or dinner yet. The all-too famous Pepper “Eat Dance” comes into play where she’ll dance around in circles excitedly, back leg limp or not.

So in my mind, she’s got plenty of life left in her. She’s lived this long already and been the healthiest dog ever. My first dog, Murphy, had to be put down at age 11 from cancerous tumors that had started in his mouth and proceded into his nasal cavity. With him, he had started losing weight from the cancer, didn’t want to play anymore, and had too much difficulty eating and occasional sneezing fits from discomfort. We didn’t feel chemo was an option, it would just prolong the inevitable and he’d be miserable. While he was very happy to go with mom on that final car ride to the Vet, his quality of life was just not great anymore so we knew it was time to let him go. With Pepper, I do not feel that it’s her time yet, and of course I don’t want to see her go. But again, she’ll let us know when it’s time, and I’ll keep defending her until she tells us that it’s time, even if it means quarelling with my not-so animal friendly step parent in the process.

My financial woes have been at an all-time low (rhyme unintended), I had some medical issues with my health crop up (resulting in $3000 of bills for me, yay!) and my online time as well as blogging time about the fur kids was one of the first things to take a hit. I apologize for the hiatus, but it was much needed. I feel I’m able to continue now though, so here I go :)

First, an update on things that have happened since last August.

Kadan and I have ditched the Gentle Leader collar now that he’s become a  polite walker. That’s not to say he doesn’t still try to pull, because he does, but now it’s being handled with just the plain nylon collar. I’ve been wanting to try out the Easy Walk Harness since I’ve heard nothing but great things about it, but for now, nylon leash and collar will do.

In late January I got back in contact with Animal Behavior College to see about enrolling. With my current budget and inability to find a job despite numerous attempts at applications in the past year (nobody wants to hire unless you have experience anymore!), I decided I needed to step out into the world and try to get my career started, even if it meant going slightly into debt by way of a student loan.

Animal Behavior College has this partnership with SLM Financial for Sallie Mae student loans, whether you’re going to community college, a university, or career training (which is was ABC is considered, a vocational school). Having no credit history of my own (I’m 21 and all), I needed to have a co-signer. I of course, went to my grandmother who has superb, perfect credit. She was all-too willing to co-sign for me, since she’s one of my biggest supporters in my dog trainer career endeavors. Unfortunately, despite having a great co-signer, I still got denied for the loan…well over a month and a half after applying. See, they neglected to mention that I needed extra info from my co-signer after I initially applied for the loan (through the school itself). ABC’s counselor assigned to me called me up to let me know that I needed to call Sallie Mae and see what information was needed. I did so, and after going through countless annoying teleprompts before finally speaking to a living, breathing human, I got someone who told me that they needed to speak with my co-signer, and I would have to have her call back. So I hang up, call back my counselor to let her know what’s up before calling my grandma. Grandma is 78 years old. She’s not too great when it comes to techie stuff, especially teleprompts, and she would need all of MY information just to be able to get to talk to someone anyways, so I asked if they could call her instead. They said no. So I told her I’d just try to do a 3-way phonecall with her so that she could talk to whoever needed to talk to her.

The day of the 3-way call, things seemed to be going fine. I had grandma on the line, Sallie Mae on the other line dealing with all the teleprompts..then I merged the call. Well once they kept redirecting me to different customer service agents to take my call, it would keep dropping my grandmother from the 3-way, thus destroying the whole point of calling altogether. Eventually a woman finally told me that I could try getting grandma back on the line, but if they talked to her and she didn’t have all of the “necessary information ready”, they’d be unable to pursue any further actions on the loan. AKA, if she didn’t have all of her personal and credit information ready at THAT MOMENT OF THE CALL, they wouldn’t try again and deny the loan. So maybe this was a good thing that the call was dropped? – is what I thought initially. The woman gave me a list of things grandma needed to have and to call back.

We tried, but same thing. Couldn’t get through teleprompts + call redirection. At this point, I just decided to give up on Sallie Mae. Too much of a hassle, in my opinion.

A couple weeks later, my grandma calls and leaves a voicemail on my cellphone. She says she got a letter in the mail from Sallie Mae that gave her a number to call, and that she talked to an agent or whatever and gave them all the information they wanted. All that was left was for me to call them within 24 hours. So I immediately called when I got the voicemail about an hour later. I get to a customer service agent who puts me on hold while they bring up my records, only to come back and say my co-signer was denied.

“WHAT?!”

They proceed to explain that at this point I need a new co-signer. At that point I was angry. All of this hassle they’ve been putting me through, only to get the information from us and deny it in the end. PERFECT CREDIT — DENIED. My only good co-signer out the window.

I asked the agent WHY I was denied, and they said it was confidential. Confidential how? It’s MY loan we’re talking about. But he said he couldn’t disclose the information to me because it concerned my co-signer, blah blah. Okay, whatever. He again asks for another co-signer, and I resisted the urge to tell him to shove it and hang up. (Was very tempting, but not his fault afterall!) I instead just asked him to cancel the loan application completely, and that I was through with Sallie Mae. No more.

He asked me to please stay on the line to leave feedback in a “brief survey” about my Sallie Mae experience. That’s when I hung up.

About 3 weeks later, March 10th or so, I receive a letter in the mail that was postmarked on March 6th, but the letter inside dated February 6th. It was from Sallie Mae stating that I needed to give them co-signer information within such and such amount of time or my application would be denied.

This letter was dated a MONTH before it was even sent out to me! So THAT’S why I was denied a loan? Not because of some issue with my grandma’s credit,  but because of THEIR negligence to send out this letter on time? You better believe I was fuming.

So long story short — Sallie Mae sucks, I would NEVER recommend them to ANYONE, and no Animal Behavior College for me this Spring as originally planned! Tentative plans for Fall though. Hopefully things go well this second time around. By then I hope to have the money to pay for it on my own. I’m actually kinda glad that loan didn’t work out though because really…I can’t imagine what they’d be like if I owed them money, after all the trouble I went through just trying to get the loan in the first place. Sheesh!

Well that’s enough of a book of an entry for today. I’ll continue will the more POSTIVE stuff tomorrow.

Today however, was a breath of fresh air. Humidity was gone, and there was a nice cool breeze. My mother had to take my younger sister to the dentist this afternoon around 4PM. The last time she had been to this dentist, Mom wound up stuck in the waiting room for upwards of four hours. To save her from boredom if this happened again, she asked if Kadan and I would like to accompany her this time, seeing as how there is a PetSmart in the same shopping center as the Western Dental we were going to. I said sure. I love being able to take Kadan out shopping to PetSmart. He enjoys checking out the fishies, birds, guinea pigs, and kitties for adoption in the store, and generally loves going down the toy aisle. It’s loads of fun.

So Kadan and I geared up for a trip to PetSmart. I bought him a Gentle Leader

head collar about a month or so ago.

The Gentle leader is amazing when it comes to keeping your dog from pulling on a leash. Kadan is a purebred Siberian Husky; his breed was bred to PULL and RUN, and do this for miles on end with a pretty heavy load. He may be 7 months old right now, but he’s at least 21″ at the withers and 48lbs now, and boy is he strong. He’s not too terribly hard to manage right now on a regular collar, but he’s the type of dog that will continue to pull no matter what I do. “Be a tree” and taking a few steps back doesn’t work. He’s dead set on moving forward, even to the point of nearly choking himself. Jake is the same way. The Gentle Leader makes walking him a breeze though. I eventually want Kadan to pull me. On roller blades, a mountain bike, maybe someday even a sled. But for now, I want him to walk alongside me nicely, and the Gentle Leader helps with that.

It looks a little odd though, I’ll admit. My dog pretty much looks like a little horse puppy with a halter on his face, and I’m sure a lot of people wonder what on earth I have on my dog. My grandma is one of these people. She calls Kadan my “little pony” when she sees him with it on. I get a lot of strange looks when I take him out to public places like PetSmart and Petco, too. Even after a month, Kadan is still not too used to the idea of wearing it either, so he goes through the motions of trying to pull it off his face with his front paws and dewclaw. While we were inside PetSmart and passed the checkout stand, he dropped to the floor after the cashier gave him a biscuit and proceeded to paw at the loop on his nose.

“Aw, he doesn’t like that thing on his face, does he?” she pointed out.

“No, he’s not quite used to it just yet. Just like any collar though, really.”

Which when you think about it is true. Most people don’t remember the first time their puppy wore a collar and leash. Some people don’t know what it’s like at all since they adopted a rescue that was already introduced to it before adoption. I remember Kadan’s clear as day. Unlike with the Gentle Leader, 12 week old Kadan thrashed around like a fish out of water once he noticed the sensation on his neck, and the tug of the leash when he tried to run away. The Gentle Leader reactions are merely lazy attempts to get the loop off of his nose. He doesn’t thrash or panic. He lifts his paw, gives it a shot, and “hey…it didn’t work. I’ll try again later when I get the chance to lay down.”

So Kadan and I made our way through PetSmart and were greeted by a woman with her two young children. She owns a female red/white, blue-eyed Siberian Husky that she rescued from the shelter before they were going to put her to sleep. She told me of how a neighbor called Animal Control on her when they thought she owned a wolf, and how the shelter had told her that she was taking a risk bringing this dog home since they’re vicious towards other animals and can’t be trusted with kids. Well, “Ginger” sleeps with her kids at night, plays wonderfully with her two small Yorkies, and has never showed an ounce of aggression towards anything.

It’s really disheartening when you hear about the bad rap some dogs get, even from shelter workers. Every dog is an individual, and Siberian Huskies, while known to have a high prey drive, are individuals, too. I have no trouble with Kadan chasing small animals or children, and he’s friendly as can be, and loves meeting new people. Ginger’s little kids came running up to him all happy and petting him as he smothered them with kisses. The little boy actually called Kadan “Ginger” at one point, probably because the two share similar Husky markings. I really dislike people that stereotype dog breeds =[ It happens with nearly every dog, but some of them get the rap worse than others..such as American Pitbull Terriers. I’ve come across many a friendly Pitbull, but there’s always that one idiot owner that ruins it for the rest of us. My nextdoor neighbors being one of them =/

Anywho, our trip to PetSmart lasted about an hour or so. We walked around, talked with other pet owners, visited with some adorable kittens, got doggy cookies from the store employees, and everyone commented on how beautiful Kadan is. “What a handsome devil you are,” I told him. “Getting all these girls to give you cookies just because you’re cute.”

Sinbad is my late grandfather’s pride and joy, and was his living legacy for the many years after his death in which she talked and sounded exactly like him. We have his picture of him and my grandma, plus him in his younger years placed behind the top of her cage as seen above. She is currently my mother’s eternal two-year old child, stuck in her terrible two’s.

Grandpa was quite the handyman. He’d go around to yardsales, buy stuff, take it home and fix it up, then sell it again at his own yardsale. At one yardsale, he came across a family giving away two Cockatiels. He gave one to my mom for us kids to have as a pet, and kept the other for himself. Thus began his passion for training birds. After some time, he came across a man selling several 10 month old African Greys and Amazon Parrots. Being an animal lover and former petshop owner in his youth, Grandpa decided that he’d take them, and gave his Cockatiel “Fella” to us to keep while he moved on to training these larger birds. Eventually he realized he took on way too much to handle and sold all of the parrots except two: Sinbad, a Timneh African Grey, and Julio, a Lilac Crested Amazon.

Sinbad became his instant favorite once she began to talk. He would take both of the birds into the back bedroom of the house each day for a “school session”, in which they would listen to a tape of the same thing each day in hopes of getting them to mimick it and talk. Every time he took them in there, he’d say to them “Let’s go to school!”. Finally one day my grandma heard someone say “Let’s go to school”, and although it sounded like Grandpa, it wasn’t. It was Sinbad.

Julio never learned to talk, but Sinbad will talk up a storm. Grandpa unfortunately did not get to spend much time at all with his beloved birds before he passed away to cancer in 1995, and for many years, Sinbad was a comforting voice for my grandmother to listen to. She sounded exactly like my grandpa. But as the years went by, she gradually picked up new words, and lost her old ones (since Grandpa was no longer there to say them), and now she sounds like my grandmother. Although Sinbad and Julio were both left in Grandpa’s will to go to my mom, Mom decided that it’d be best that grandma keep them since they were Grandpa’s most treasured companions. Not to mention the fact that Sinbad’s voice was Grandpa’s.

As of last September, Grandma decided it was time for Sinbad to move in with us in our home. African Grey’s are very hyper birds that bore quite easily. Sinbad had gotten into the habit of climbing down from her playstand atop her cage and chewing at the wallpaper on the wall behind her. Other times, she would fly (if her flight feathers had grown back in), or hop down and walk over to various places around the house to either find Julio (to Julio’s dismay) or to go chew up the bookcase. Grandma got to the point of where she could not trust her to be outside of her tiny 16″x16″ cage, which meant extreme boredom for Sinbad. She got into a routine of plucking her feathers out of boredom. Realizing she would be better off in another home, we took her in.

I placed an ad in the Recycler looking for someone who had a nice big parrot cage that they would sell me decently priced. My mother’s birthday was in September and on the week that we went down to bring Sinbad to our house. I decided the birdcage would be a nice birthday present. Little did I know that I wouldn’t have to be spending a penny, as a very nice lady in our town offered to give us an old cage of hers, free of charge. It’s a large, 5 foot tall, 3 feet wide corner cage, and Sinbad absolutely loves all the room. In fact, after spending so many years in such a small cage at Grandma’s house, Sinbad has no desire whatsoever to even leave her cage. She would prefer to be inside it or on top of it at all times, but never away from it. She’s led such a sheltered life in a quiet home for so many years, and hasn’t been introduced to too many things, such as new fresh foods and toys. We’re gradually introducing these “scary” things into her life, and she’s taking baby steps, but she’ll get there eventually.

As for Sinbad’s intelligence and vocabulary…she’s quite a smart bird. She picks up on the intonation of your voice when deciding upon which words she’ll use to interrupt your conversation. If you sound angry or upset, she’ll be quick to say “Shame! Naughty boy/girl (depending on whichever she feels like using. She says both “naughty boy” and “naughty girl”). If you’re giving a dog a treat and she notices, she’ll make a noise like a kiss and say “Good boy~”, mimicking my grandma praising her male dogs with a kiss on the forehead. The dogs could be barking at a knock on the door and she’ll be quick to tell them “No barking!”, as my Grandmother would often scold her Shelties Cagney and Buddy for nuisance barking at the phone ringing or even the littlest of noises. She’ll ask “Want a peanut?” if she wants a peanut, “Eat your grapes” or “Did you eat your grapes?” when she wants grapes (which are given to her daily, otherwise she won’t stop talking about them). If you say “Sinbad, what are you doing?”, she responds “Huuuuh?”. She will sing “I love you, a bushel and a peck”, and end the song right there. She used to make attempts at “I left my heart in San Francisco”, but preferred to change the lyrics to “I left my— Cisco~~” and ended it there.  She can wolf whistle and make a whistle like a firework, as well as mock you when you cough, sneeze, or sigh. She really enjoys mocking people. One of her favorite things, however, is to carry on conversations with herself, in which she plays the role of herself and my grandma. It’s quite interesting to hear your bird recite an entire conversation in which my grandma scolded her for chewing up the papers on the bottom of her cage, or ruining the wallpaper and bookshelf.

“Sinbad?” she’ll say. “What did you do? Naughty girl. You’re a shame. Shame on you. Why did you do that? Get back on your perch. Go on, get back on your perch. You’re bad!”

Other times, she might recite a conversation in which grandma is petting her and giving her kisses. “Sinbad, let me pet your head. Come on. Let Mommy pet you. You want a peanut? Lemme pet your head. Good girl. You’re mommy’s good girl. I love you mommy.”  <- These types of her recitals are the most cute to listen to.

Parrots may just mimick, but I truly believe after 16-17 years of being around Sinbad that they understand the situations in which it’s proper to say a certain word or phrase. If I walk up to any of the dogs, she always makes the kissy noise and says “Good boy”. If my mom grabs her coat and purse, she says “Mommy go to the store”, which is what grandma would always tell the animals before leaving. If you mention the cats, she says “Where’s the meow?”. My personal favorite is when she intentionally makes annoying squawking and high pitched noises to get somebody to tell her to stop, and then she proceeds to scold herself saying “You stop that. Shame on you.” and goes through her whole vocabulary of it. She pays very close attention to everything that goes on in the livingroom, and it’s amazing how she responds verbally depending on what she sees and hears. They say these parrots have the mentality of a two year-old child, thus why I call her my mother’s eternal two year-old. Terrible two’s because of how mischievous she is.

Definitely an interesting and very unique pet. She’s only two years younger than me, which feels kind of odd in many ways. To think that these birds live up to 60 or so. She’s a living family heirloom pretty much, haha. I do love her very much so though, even though she’s pretty bratty. The only person she won’t try to nip at still is grandma. You have to be VERY nice and convincing that she’ll get something good in return if you want her to come out on your hand or arm, or to pet her. Otherwise she just tries to intimidate you to get a rise out of you just so she can go and scold herself. Nutty bird.

This is Kadan. Or rather, this is Kadan at 12 weeks old when I first adopted him and brought him home. Kadan is the first dog I’ve ever owned and been completely responsible for. When I got him, he was worm infested and his coat didn’t have that puppy fluff to it, but he made a quick turn around in a short number of weeks after two rounds of Nemex-2 and some added supplements of Fish Oil pills in his meals. Kadan was about 20lbs in the picture above.

This is Kadan now.

48lbs and probably still growing. When I first brought him home, he wasn’t much bigger than the cats. Now he towers over them like the husky beast he is. Kadan is also the tallest dog in the house now, having grown taller than the girls Bindi and Pepper, much to their dismay. Kadan is like your typical Siberian Husky in that he loves to run, greatly enjoys cold weather, howls instead of barks, “talks back” all the time, and has the cutest, kindest face I’ve ever seen on a dog. Kadan is quite a pain to get to come inside at night due to probably the fact that it feels cooler outside at night that it does in the house. Siberian Huskies can live in weather that goes well below the negatives in Fahrenheit, so hot summer weather is a doozy and freezing desert winters are a blast. I can’t wait until the temperature starts dropping in the next few months. I plan to have Kadan learn to pull me around, and we’ll definitely be making some trips up in the mountains this year to frolic in the deeper snow. Our town hasn’t seen snow [that has stuck to the ground] in going on three years now, although the weather has certainly been cold enough for it. I’d also like to have him try out Agility once he’s of age. He’s certainly got the speed for it. I’ve had him pull me down our street on roller blades on a few occasions, and you can just feel the joy bursting out of him. He loves running and he loves pulling. It’s years upon years of pure instinct going through that body of his.

But then there’s the times where he comes off as a defect; he can be so lazy at times. When most people who know the breed think about a husky, they think runner, stubborn, hyperactive dog and is out of control and hard to train.

Well, Kadan does his share of talking back to me with his little roo-roo’s here and there, but otherwise he’s pretty well behaved for the most part. In fact, I’d go so far as to say he’s the most well behaved puppy my family has ever had. Knock on wood. Whereas Jake and Bindi took forever to potty train, Kadan grasped the concept in a short couple weeks. Puppy Jake chewed through a futon mattress, carpet, wood paneling, children’s toys, school supplies, video game controllers, boxes of laundry detergent and so on. Bindi was the same, albeit more controlled provided she always had a ball or kong around to put in her mouth while teething. Kadan has chewed very few things up. He got a hold of a bedspread when I accidentally left his crate pushed up against the bed when we left him for a couple hours. And earlier tonight, he bit through the cord of my mouse after becoming entangled in it without my knowledge. Kinda like a fox in a hunter’s trap gnawing off it’s own foot; only in this case, he just chewed the cord off of his foot and that was that.

But as I said [Knock on wood x 2] he’s very well behaved for a puppy of his age, and I’ve yet to have much trouble at all with him misbehaving. For the most part it’s all mistakes of my own for when he’s done something wrong.

Even so, people keep telling me “It’s coming”, “Just wait”, “It’ll happen soon enough.” So here’s to keeping eyes peeled for interesting stories chronicling my Kadan’s puppyhood and adolescence, in which hopefully he doesn’t get into too much mischief!

Cloud…this guy is a riot, I swear. First off, despite his femininely cute color and looks, as well as his seemingly girlish demeanor, don’t let it fool you: he is a boy. I don’t know how many people it’s been who have seen him that immediately say “Oh she’s so adorable.” and I have to correct that he’s not a female. He’s just…peachy colored, almost to a pink. Who says guys can’t wear pink, anyways?

Cloud comes from another litter that was the product of strays. My mother and younger sister found “Mom Cat #2″, a gray Turkish Angora-ish kitty, sometime in 2004 in the Walmart parking lot hiding underneath their car. Apparently somebody dumped her there after discovering she may have become pregnant. Mom brought her home with no intention of keeping her. She just wanted to save her from becoming roadkill in the parking lot, and she seemed sweet as can be. That is, until we brought her home. Tidus was about, oh, 2-3 years old at the time. By this point he had lived as an only cat for enough of a length of time as to become, let’s say…intolerant of his own kind. Therefore upon bringing Mom Cat #2 home and letting her into out backyard to feed her, Tidus who was also outside at the time saw her and a nice verbal lashing ensued between the felines. Long story short, Mom Cat #2 won the hissy feline bitch fit and Tidus has yet to ever challenge a female cat since. Boys, of course, are a different story.

Anyways, fast forward to April 2nd, 2005. Cloud is born in a litter of four kittens. By this point, Mom Cat had become our “stray we haven’t gotten spayed yet”, so to speak. My parents didn’t exactly call her “ours”, but she lived inside and around our house for a year already, having had a previous litter of kittens under our couch on July 14th, 2004..of which we had kept one gray kitten from, who is no longer with us. Time went by, she got pregnant AGAIN unfortunately, and here we were with four more bundles of kitty joy. At this point of my life, I was 16 years-old and had been suffering panic attacks at school, thus being put on independent home study. In other words, I was there when the kittens were born, and there pretty much all day every day as they grew up. Cloud always stood out as not being “all there”, if you will. All of the kittens in the litter had their strange quirks, like maybe they all had some sort of issue with being born to a young mother, or just slight brain damage of some sort. Cloud’s brother “Vinny” short for Vincent, a black tabby, was incredibly skittish about anything and everything. “Batman”, an orange tabby, was aptly named due to the fact that he had seizures at 5 weeks old, effectively putting him in a sleepy comatose state for two days, afterwards I had to spoon and syringe feed him powdered baby food, and he was “blind as a bat” for several days before he went back to somewhat normal. Even then, he wasn’t all there at times it would seem. The only female of the litter, Zelda, looked exactly like her mother. My older sister adopted her, and she was quite a hyperactive psycho kitten (and apparently still is). Then there’s Cloud.

Who most of the time seems like his head is in the clouds. Cloud is not graceful. At all. If you were to compare him to Tidus when it comes to jumping onto a table or counter full of items standing upright that could easily knock over, Cloud would bump into and send clattering to the floor nearly every single item, while Tidus would glide right past. I don’t know if he just doesn’t care if he rams into things or if he just doesn’t know how to exhibit any feline prowess in navigating these things. Either way, he can’t do it.

Cloud also has no fear. Of anything. Our dogs are all large breed and Cloud is not afraid of any of them. He chases them around the house, lets them chase him, lets them nibble all over him, sometimes lets them put his head inside their mouths, and still he just sits there. Cloud has been well known for being highly at risk for dangerous outside because if he is in our yard and he sees a stray dog walking down the street, he’ll try to go after it. I caught him one night stalking a stray Rottweiler who happened upon on street, sniffing the perimeter of our fence in the front yard. Whenever there’s a stray around, I immediately bring Cloud inside for his own oblivious sake.

Another odd quirk with Cloud is his tail. This thing clearly has a mind of it’s own. Normal tails do not wag on a cat unless they are angry or in a feisty mood. Cloud’s tail wags over practically anything. He’ll be sitting on the back of the couch behind your head and suddenly his long, thin tail is just beating you upside the skull. Or he’ll lay in your lap and start beating you in the chest for no apparent reason. It’s amazing. I don’t think he even realizes what he’s doing. It’s like an odd reflex. I’ve raised many a cat and kitten over the past 10 years, and I’ve never seen anything like it.

Then there’s his fluctuating weight. During the summer months, this guy is long, and thin as a rail. But once winter hits, he becomes a giant hairball of fluff with the stomach to boot. Thus why in autumn and winter he is “Big Fat Clo” and in the spring and summer, he is “Non-Fat Clo”. Clearly part of him must believe he needs to hibernate in the winter since he packs on so much weight. Tidus is the same weight year round. Cloud easily gains 2-3lbs before the winter is over. And that’s a lot when you take into consideration a 12lb cat.

So my dear ol’ Cloud is pretty much the doofiest cat I’ve ever met and had the pleasure of knowing his entire life. He’s clumsy, devilish, rambunctious, and very affectionate. But he’s one of the main perpetrators when it comes to the animal high jinks in this house.

Bindi
Australian Shepherd/Border Collie Mix
Female, 20 Months Old
Born February 11th, 2007

Oh, Bindi. What can I possibly say about you? Bindi is the source of most, if not all, of the canine chaos in the house. She’s a mixture of two high-energy herding breeds, and she’s just going, going, GONE most of the time.

Bindi came into our family on a whim, pretty much. My stepfather decided one day back in May 2007 that since he’s getting older (he’s currently 53), and had never had a dog of “his own” before, he wanted to get one before he was too old. He never had a dog when he was a kid, and all of the dogs he’s had in his two marriages and former relationships all belonged to his significant other, and he had really nothing to do with them. But last year he decided on a whim to go around to the animal shelters and then to PetSmart when a rescue had brought in some of their dogs for adoption. I was with him, my mom, and younger sister when we went to PetSmart last May and came across Bindi. I knew that him getting a puppy was just going to be like a novelty thing; he’d be enamored with her for a couple weeks, and once she started getting bigger, it’d be my mother and I that did all the training and caretaking. Having that in mind, I figured that when it came to helping him pick out a dog, I should suggest something more that I myself would pick. This decision somewhat has been biting me in the ass since then (which I’ll elaborate on later in this post), but I don’t really regret it just yet.

They had several different random mixed breeds of puppies available from the rescue group, but we had decided the puppy would be a female, and the only female they had out of the puppies was the – what they thought Australian Cattle Dog mixes – but I’ve decided to be Border Collie/Australian Shepherd. Bindi was the only female of the two remaining puppies from the litter. Her brother had a medium stumpy tail and smooth coat, whereas Bindi has the rough coat and nearly non-existent stump of a tail like a bobtailed Aussie. She’s all black save for the white on her chest and bits between her toes. How these people thought she was possibly Australian Cattle Dog is beyond me. Her face is totally like that of a Border Collie, as is her coat and seemingly unending energy and drive to work. She’s got the physique of both breeds until it comes to the tail, which is clearly all Aussie.

Like all rescue dogs, Bindi comes with sad background story. She was born to stray, likely feral parents out in the middle of the Mojave Desert, somewhere out by the dry riverbed just outside of Silverlakes in Helendale, CA. The rescue group said her estimated date of birth was somewhere around early February 2007, and had on her paperwork February 11th. She was about 3 months old then when we got her.

As any dog owner should know, the first 3 months of a puppy’s life is CRUCIAL for socialization. Bindi was out in the middle of the desert with only her littermates and stray parents for these first three months. As such, she was very shy and unsure of people for a very long time. The rescue group merely just had the puppies spayed and put into new homes. They didn’t really bother with working with them on their shyness, as was clearly apparent when we brought her home and the trouble all started that same night. She didn’t know how to react to our current dogs Pepper and Jake, and snapped at them when they came up to sniff her. She warmed up to us fairly quickly, but when some family friends came over to visit and see him for the first time, she flopped onto her back submissively and lay there petrified and unwilling to move.

Some of Bindi’s actions are similar to something you’d see in the wild. Untamed, or “primal” as I want to say, though I’m not quite sure that’s the correct way to put it. She’s very timid, and can be fear aggressive at times. She’s always nervously running about with a toy of some sort in her mouth, and constantly rolls submissively onto her back to the other dogs for seemingly no reason. Just walks up and boom, she’s upsidedown on the floor. Sometimes she aggravates Pepper pretty bad when she does this in conjunction with an incessant need to nose Pepper in the mouth and lick at her face. I’ve never had a dog do this kind of thing before. It’s more like something I’ve seen in wolves on television than a domestic dog. It’s the things like these that pop up everyday that really make me think it’s due to her having spent those first three months in, well, “the wild”.  A feral dog pack behavior, I suppose. It should really be addressed by a professional behaviorist, and should have certainly been addressed MUCH earlier than now, but…her legal owner is rather unwilling to put forth the money.

I would really like to get Bindi into agility or flyball, too, but unfortunately my stepfather is very old fashioned in his beliefs about what a family dog is, and believes that all dogs are good for is protecting your home, and any other type of training just makes them robots. Unfortunate for Bindi, considering um…she’s not a guard-dog breed, but I do things with her anyways, even if it’s not the formal training I would hope it to be. One of these days I may end up coaxing the guy into just letting me have her. I love her to bits and know she’s so full of potential and needs a better outlet for all that energy. Not to mention her mess of behavioral issues that get her into lots of trouble with the other dogs in the house, namely Pepper. But she is a great dog deep down. She’s still very young and has more time to mature ahead of her, and I have plenty of time to work with her on all these things, even if it is on my own.