What A Bichon Has To Go Through!

Hey, this is the Dis again.  I bet ya has no idea of what a bichon has to go through to keep everyone in line do ya?  For example these pictures.  Mama wanted a nice portrait of me... she had to WORK for it though.

Then Daddy takes me for a walk (the humans had crassly taken care of their own needs first by showering which they seem to enjoy beyond reason, they don't even let their smell build up) Anyway Daddy takes me for a walk and this Basset Hound wanders up. I take care of him in short order by telling him I have no desire to be his friend, I have human friends and if they disappoint I can always talk to the demons in the corner who never disappoint. (Mama says I have a very rich fantasy life) Daddy said he has never seen anything like it all I had to do was stiffen up and the Basset was like sorry sir so sorry....evidently Daddy does not understand my true power and reach. I spread fear wherever I go by spreading my smell. Sometimes the one who calls herself Mama laughs because I spin my wheels or kick like a bull and forget to leave my p-mail first....sometimes I forget to leave it all together because she is laughing so hard @ me showing what a BIG tough dog I am. Then we go back to the truck and she picks the grass off of me that I have kicked up on my back...perhaps that is why the demons in the corner respect me? Sometimes I think others cannot see the demons in the corner but I do.....

Dog Is Tossed Out of Window And Survives, Runs In Traffic

Teddy a bichon from Hastings NZ is back with his family today.  Complete story @ Hawkes Bay today.
The dog disappeared Wednesday night from the family home.  The family has two disabled daughters and Teddy is a companion to them and is a s of therapy dog.  The family also planned on breeding other therapy dogs.

Teddy was evidently thrown from a car window and then police and his owner had to bribe him with food to get him caught but eventually he was caught, dirty and disheveled.

I once participated in an attempted dog rescue like this but I never did find out what happened because the police came but the dog was out of my sight.  I was driving down 110 down to the casinos in Biloxi MS, we lived there and I think I was going shopping for a bar-b-que grill.  My husband had left earlier and had my bichon with him.  All of a sudden I see a little white ball of fur barreling up the exit ramp.  Instincts took over,  swerve to side of road, open car door and try to catch dog as he runs by, he looked @ me like I was the most hideous thing in the world.  It wasn't my dog, it was a Maltese, he's running up the freeway, people are chasing him, everyone is stopping, I'm out running up the highway trying to get people to stop or go around so as to not hit the FAST little white ball of fur.   The dog found an opening in the fence around the highway and the police were below but I couldn't see what happened, he was never in the pound so I'm assuming they found his owners.  That little short legged white dog could BOOK.  It was funny though because almost everyone on the freeway stopped and got out and chased this little dog.

Good Morning America March 1,2010

Dispatch the bichon  was like 9 months old here.  We let my oldest daughter cut his hair, she has bulldogs, perhaps Dis was supposed to look like a bulldog?  Then evidently we moved his precious basket from it's accustomed place and carelessly sat it on Mountain Dew bottles, so he  was supposed to be there?  Or so he thought?  This was in 2004.  You still move his basket up high and he will get in it if he possibly can.  Mugsey used to too and sit in Dispatches basket which was rather amusing, I'll have to find that picture. For those of you who don't know Mugsey was a lab, looked like Marley.

It's 7 am and so far I've found a mistake on the web site I'm helping with.  BTW Jan said the link didn't work on my other post, dunno which link so I will give you all of them.  fawnsgalla-rhea.com is one but you can copy and paste that one, it's not done by any means, it's the website pegysus web design is making, the gallery is the big thing on that site and then there will be a shop also.  Tresa's Blog and the Elderly Cheese Stick Gestapo is one and Florence View with my views on facebook and picasa is another.

So this morning?  You ask how is my morning going?  Well thanks for asking. I've

1. Woke up @ midnight after 3 hours sleep with a cold and helped my husband unload tomatoes, I mean like actually picked up boxes of tomatoes and rearranged them on a pallet.  I can do this, just not a good thing in the night.
2. Then we slept another hour before we finished delivering @ Wal Mart.  I dreamed someone was in my house unexpectedly like I just looked up and they were there.  Good thing I didn't wake up screaming because I screamed in my dream.  It was all OK though, it was just someone trying to solve a crime with my help?  (since I'm such a super sleuth, NOT)
3. Leaving Wal Mart my phone fell off from the laptop and landed in the dog water.  I'm connected to the internet with it now and it really didn't get wet inside.  Nokia E71x will withstand a short dunking.  I turned it off and took it apart just to make sure.
4. This is sort of gross but funny.  We left Dispatch in the truck for 5 hours yesterday, he was fine, I took him potty directly before and after we got back in and he headed back to the truck so I thought he was through since that's his signal.  We were going to our next drop (the tomatoes) and he was on my lap this is like 15 minutes later.  I thought he was having like spasms?  He was shaking intermittently, I'm like oh now what is wrong with him, all we need is another vet bill, is he in pain, is he cold?  So I cuddled him.  We stopped when we got off the interstate and I told my husband the dog may have to go poop, evidently that solved the shaking problem, he was so excited to see us when we got back in the truck he didn't have time to finish what he needed to do potty wise like a kid.  It wasn't funny but it was, poor puppy was saying, oooohhhh I gotta go, I gotta go, oooooooooh why didn't I go before......

So how has your Monday morning been?  I'd better catch another nap because my mind just went blank as to how I put a link in here.  Press the link button would be a good guess...........

Daily Dispatch And Mama

And now we have our Daily Dispatch.  This picture was taken when he obviously had not consented to letting me brush him yet (lets say January 2004), I also did not know what a bichon was or that he was a bichon, he was a funny looking poodle though.  I'm not sure why the kitty was outside as she lived in the basement where he drug her by her tail away from her food bow most of the time but she might have been living up to her name meow meow and driving me nuts.  Kitty caused Dispatches first visit to the vet as she did scratch him once when he was running away.  Caught his little man parts and they swelled and swelled.  It was fine after a little ointment but this is part of the reason why Dispatch really has it out for most cats.  I've changed the curtains since then.  I inherited those from my ex step mother.  Just didn't want you to think my taste ran to that. Just sayin....

Meow meow the cat?  I'm sure some will say I'm a horrible person for this but I let her outside part of the time and she might have been killed.  She might have died of old age too I don't know.  You see we didn't know how old the cat was.  Or the cats sex.  Do you see how furry the cat was?  There was NO WAY to determine exactly, it was probably a girl.  My daughter brought it to me.  She got it from her mother in law.  Do you want to know WHY said mother in law got this cat from the pound and immediately had to get rid of it?  It was MEAN to her, would get under the bed and growl and hiss and growl when MIL walked by.  Bye Bye Kitty.  But get this my daughter gave me a cat that seemed to attack another woman?  Granted the cat was meek and mild with us but......It loved to sit between my husbands neck and the computer chair if it could worm it's way in there, mean kitty.  I remember WHY the cat was outside now, I was outside, did you think those flowerbeds planted themselves?  Probably Skeeter the dog had a great deal to do with Meow Meow disappearing, she hates cats.  Only chases them when I can't see though.

I Sleep With These Males And A Dog Story

OK, this is my husband and my bichon frise, I know the bichon is kissable but doesn't my husband have handsome lips? This is what the bichon would like to do all day, ride on my husbands lap being supported by the arm so he doesn't have to expend so much energy. Laying on the floor otherwise is hard work you know?  I've since washed the windows inside and out since the second picture was taken.

 

It seems a dog somehow got on an ice floe and drifted for 75 miles in the Vistula River and the Baltic sea.  The dog is currently being interviewed for former owners.  I'm not kidding they are letting the dog see people who claim they have lost him, the shepherd has turned down two so far by not greeting them like a lost dog should greet an owner.   The dog isn't a huge dog but has a thick coat.  Poland has been experiencing an exceptionally cold winter thus causing extra ice floes, even in river, the dog wandered onto an ice floe and probably cursed in doggy and said "what have I done!"

Kids VS Dog or Who Is More Jealous?

I think these pictures were taken in January or February of 2005 which would make Kaylin (granddaughter) almost 2 and Dispatch 1 1/2, isn't Kaylin a doll, she still is and not because she is the child of the one the other kids call my favorite (my favorite is supposedly my oldest stepson whom the other kids say can do no wrong in my eyes, @ that point I tell them I've disliked them all equally @ times). Anyway this is back when we thought Dispatch was a poodle which is another story, thus the horrible haircut. That and my oldest daughter decided to try her hand @ grooming him.

Dispatch (the dog in the picture a bichon and maybe poodle) was pretty good with the grandkids, didn't trust them but there was good reason. They did strange things to him. He did bite another granddaughter but she was teasing him taking food away from him and then giving it back, he learned better. Also Dispatch learned that if I had the camera out he had to be in the picture. He likes our children, loves some but that's another story.
Our children are all horribly jealous of the dog except for the two youngest who are both blond and Christy and Christi respectively, that's what happens when you have a blended family, I can't say Judy is jealous either but she is the youngest of my husbands two oldest daughters, so it's mostly the oldest kids that are jealous? My husband had a 10 year gap in between his two sets of kids so the respective oldest 3 of each family are the worst about not liking the dog. They say we spoil him horribly and they were never spoiled like that. One did admit ONCE that I must have spoiled the kids and they not known it considering how much I spoil the dog. She has @ last count 7 dogs with separate schedules because some of them fight so I don't know about me spoiling MY dog? We got Dispatch when the youngest child we had living with us was barely out of high school. Anyway the kids were basically gone from home and we had this foo foo dog that they were jealous of. We aren't talking babies here, they are in their 20s and 30s and professionals for the most part. But they don't want to h
ear about the dog, they grimace when we have to go home because the dog is there, they pass over the dog pictures, ...........they call him horrors, that stupid mutt?

For an example my oldest daughter who is really a loving caring upstanding person (she's the school nurse, has 4 kids, and a sunbeam group @ church) and I were talking the other day. I told her I had the new video of Dispatch "talking" on youtube and she said she could care less?

We went on a trip to the Florida Keys one Christmas eve when we were in Ft Lauderdale took my youngest daughter and my husbands youngest son and of course Dispatch too, it's referred to sometimes as the trip from hell because they had to ride in the back seat of the pickup with Dispatch who wanted his Mommy and Daddy in the FRONT seat the whole time. We went to the dog beach down there BTW, there and Dairy Queen, only two times we stopped except some state park with an old bridge and lots of shells. And yes the dog got ice cream @ Dairy Queen. BUT I did try to make the dog behave and not be like attached to me the whole trip.

So in short I guess the dog was our answer to the empty nest syndrome (what empty nest, they kept trying to come back!) and the kids didn't like what they viewed as a stupid replacement. And of course when we got married most of them were WAY too old to sleep with us (5-21 years old) but the dog gets to sleep with us, and go everywhere with us, and I carry him when he wants carried, and play when he wants to play (sometimes). I think the worst is if I talk baby talk to him and they say I never talked that nice to them. AND if they had came in from outside and jumped on the furniture with wet feet they would have been severely punished and the dog isn't, and he gets to sit on my lap when I watch tv or "daddies" lap. There are myriad more reasons why they think he is spoiled. Probably one of them is I blog about him and animals and not children but I don't think they want so much of their lives and habits exposed as Dispatches have been?

Anyway the kids are jealous of Dispatch. My husbands cousin has 3 girls the same age as some of our kids. They didn't have a dog inside when the kids were growing up either. The girls left home and voila, the parents get a dog. They have a NEW house in town, nice house and they get a terrier. Their girls tell me the dog eats steak and gets towels warmed up for him but I'm not sure that's all true. They say you have to be careful when you have a new baby when you have a pet already established in the home but no one ever warns about getting a new pet when you have children who are already established in the home?

Dog Work And Bad Breath

Dispatch has always been a busy dog. He's always been a people dog too, accommodating and sweet smelling. Here he is making sure Mama doesn't make the mistake of leaving him in the camper as he's pretty sure he wants to go in the car where the suitcases are...... sitting in the street should work?
Here he is directing the morning gathering of a hurricane crew cleaning up after Katrina in Biloxi MS. His Daddy and "brother" are the two biggest ones.

Here he is either washing Matt's boot or checking air pressure in the tires with moisture?

He is keeping Daddy firmly in the chair later in the week. Daddy had gotten staph from a chainsaw cut on his leg and a case of Daddy telling Mommy I don't need a bandage anymore a sock is fine......took 6 months and we both had staph by the time it was over. For the med geeks it was MRSA too! Daddy wasn't even supposed to be out in the heat but he thought Mama couldn't boss the hurricane cleanup crew as well as he could, he was probably right.
Dispatch was keeping Daddy weighted in the chair. Daddy isn't a good patient.
Dispatch even smells good when he is so upset he doesn't know what to do? Mama took him to the vet and they had a groomer there too. Horror of horrors. He'd never met a real groomer before and this was first in a long line This is also when the vet confirmed the French Canadians we lived by in FL were right. They said "ee es sich a sweet beeechon (bichon)" (talking about the dog when I would walk him) I said in my Missouri drawl, "hez a podoll, don't chall know a podoll when ya alls sees one?" (I maybe exaggerated my drawl a bit?) But I am digressing he still smelled fairly good.

Part of the problem is his Daddy has a nose like a bloodhound and always has. So when Dispatch started getting bad breath we looked to the teeth, a bit of tartar but not much, so we went with the treats and the bones designed to clean teeth. This was in September or October I think, I bought doggie toothpaste and until you've used that on a dog you haven't lived. We finally just stick it on a paper towel wrapped around our finger (plastic finger thingy was gone out of our toothpaste for dogs) and I disinfected his toothbrush and use it because I forgot mine. Yes I use the dogs toothbrush but get over it, IT'S DISINFECTED!!! He only used it once anyway, that was enough for me and him both. His breath wasn't much better, in fact it was getting worse. So I said OK, he can do pepto bismol so how about listerine and water on a paper towel and swab out his mouth? After this he seemed to prefer his Daddy over his Mama so much more? Wonder why? Every time I went to the pet store I forgot to buy anything for his breath. So yesterday Daddy and I were shopping and I'd refrained from buying the breath tabs for dogs @ Wal Mart because lets face it, Dispatch is picky, if it's not cheese, milk, ice cream, or meat it had better be really sweet or he'd better be starving. He refused to eat pork except for bacon or ham for years. The breath tabs are mint flavored. Daddy said let's try them as Daddy can smell the dog clear across the truck. Do you think he would even get CLOSE to them?
Does this look like the face of a mint eating dog? He will struggle but let me do almost anything to him. He let me dig @ his head once with tweezers to get a partial tick out of his skin. I break the breath tab in half, I plead with Dispatch, get a death grip on his head while he's on my lap and stick the mint in his mouth and he sort of chews on it in an effort to push it out of his mouth. After about 3 of those sessions the breath tab is mostly gone and I stick it in his food hoping he'll have a change of heart. The mints do seem to be helping.
Tomorrow maybe a post on Doggie flatulence..... yes he passes gas and it's HORRIBLE!!

Merry Christmas, Tiger Woods, Web, and Dispatch of course!

On Animals that give pause.com I have a post about Dispatch pawing frantically @ my arm and wanting to be held CLOSE, it's called assume the position because I spend much of my day now riding in the truck holding him if he weasels his way on my lap.
This picture is not Dispatch sitting on my lap. It's what he does as an alternative. He stares into a black hole in the dash of the truck. There is nothing there? It's actually a drawer you can throw stuff into from above. The truck makes noises with it's motor and road noises sound like they are coming from the motor. Read the other blog and you will get the drift. The motor is sort of there and he is....?
Call me Polyanna and stupid but I wrote a post on Tresa's Blog about Tiger Woods and how he's a dog but most men are dogs.....I said MOST, ok it should have been SOME?
Also my daughter has her website up about her pet care business. Check it out and if you are in KS? The kid rescued a opossum and tried to keep it as a pet. What more can I say other than her nickname was Elly Mae for all her "critters"..... See if you can find the Charlie and Mugsey pictures, the yorkiepoo and the golden lab.
AND Happy Holidays, we are alive and well. We've been living healthier lives (no smoking, almost no sweets, husband now knows how to look for carbs on food labels, he's mildly diabetic, we both need to loose weight) Anyway I haven't done much for a month but ride with him in the truck, solve sudoku avidly, and I did clean a bit before I left home, I have 5 garbage sacks of clothes for charity and relatives and Christy's shorts from high school cheerleading are no longer with us. It's been 15 years and I still had the shorts.. I could wear them too!! LOL
That is my excuse for not blogging or keeping in touch. We also aren't heating the computer room @ home all the time so that cuts down on computer time. But I've been thinking of you all and feeling bad about not blogging or commenting and I want to wish everyone the happiest, most peaceful holiday season ever. And we might even eat a piece of candy then too!! ;-)

Daily Dispatch or Bicho Frise says I WILL GO!

No this isn't a picture of the unfinished door trim in the family room or my dirty old flip flops (I have it planned when I'm in the truck with husband, I have on jogging clothes @ night and put on flip flops and a hoodie and stumble in to bathroom and breakfast covering head with hoodie, sounds like a plan to me?). Dispatch got up on the bench by himself which is no small feat considering his water dish and food dish were in his way when he jumped!! So he is better, much better, read the previous few posts, he had anal gland problems and then limped. The Bichon is laying on top of my coats because he knows something is up and he does NOT want to be left out. My husband is taking short trips in the truck and I will be with him some. The "junk" is piled up so I can take it to truck. See whole grain club crackers? Water instead of Mountain Dew? we are living healthy now! Anyway the dog will be with us obviously. Kids and other relatives are here to take care of Skeeter. She's not doing too well. Here's a picture of her and the "posse"or our small dog collection in our yard. She's got to be 13 and she could be 18 or more years old. Did you ever try to get 4 dogs, 2 of whom aren't yours to stand still?

I have new posts on Tresa's Blog about the grandkids and on the "other" Animals That Give Pause about big cats. I don't mean overweight house cats that make up Dispatch's nightmares either. I mean like large dog killing cats in Missouri.

I haven't had time to go to other blogs or comment lately. I haven't forgotten and think of you all every day, Rae, Judy, Lilly, AL, Anne, Cindy, Jan........ and all the others who have wonderful blogs and whose links are below to the right if YOU perhaps would want to go read their wonderful blogs I wouldn't feel so guilty about not going there? Not exactly subliminal messaging, how's this? go to my other blogs and clicky clicky and then go to the blog list @ the bottom right and clicky clicky and comment nicely. How's that for subliminal? You would really help me assuage my extreme feelings of guilt that could lead to anxiety and depression and paranoia. Better subliminal? Too much?

If you are still reading this perhaps you have masochistic tendencies, did you ever look into that? I'M KIDDING!! OK??