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?

Small Paws, Bonded Pair Of Bichon Frise For Foster Or Adoption

Courtesy Of Small Paws Rescue

We still need a foster home for this bonded pair. They are being boarded in Tulsa. They are darling boys from an owner surrender to a kill shelter. We can fly them to you for foster care and we are also accepting adoption applications as well. There will be a two-for-one- adoption fee for them both!

Meet Schotzy and Sassy! They are both darling and are a bonded pair. They may be siblings. They were surrendered to a kill shelter in MO.
Got room for two more?? How to Become a Much Needed Small Paws® Rescue Foster Parent! Fill Out an Online Adoption Application!
Small Paws Rescue

This is TC now.....help me keep my marriage, get these dogs before I do. I can't judge other people but to surrender these two to a kill shelter makes me ill. Thank goodness they will be fostered or adopted now..... hopefully. Check out their other bichons and mixes and if you can't do anything else donate to them or your local animal shelter. I've got two big garbage sacks of clothes to go to our thrift shop that is ran by the local animal shelter. Every little bit helps. I'm serious, I'm going home soon and these two would make wonderful playmates for Dispatch but he would have no Daddy or says Daddy so SAVE ME FROM MYSELF....please?
Just think, if you adopted these two you could have TWO blogs about bichons..... JK, I have two animal blogs and only one bichon.....it is possible to live without a bichon but you just feel sooooo much better with a little teddy bear face staring @ you sleepily in the morning with one eye cracked open.

Further Adventures With The Bichon And The Border Patrol

For those of you who have never been close to the Mexican border with the US by way of highway there are inspection stations where they stop all vehicles and search for aliens or anything illegal such as drugs. I've always wanted to say "no habe englais" when they ask if I am an American but I've refrained which is just as well considering jailhouse orange isn't my color and I thoroughly respect the border patrol, they have guns. A friend of ours did get stopped for an hour or so when the search dog went nuts over her truck, they wouldn't let her call her husband and he was waiting for her up the road. Evidently she had ran over something like a tossed out bag of drugs or something. I told her I would have asked if I was under arrest and called my husband when they said no. I'm stupid that way though and probably would have worn jailhouse orange but she got to leave after an hour of puppy going nuts. Another friend of ours (HI KELLY!! how ya doin?) was driving a truck from WI to TX weekly and one night he was tired. The border patrol asked him how he got such a nice new truck. You'd have to know Kelly but he said well the drug running helped pay for it. They did not find him humorous but let him go after a day or so.

So now we come to the Dis and what happened today. I try to hold Dispatch tightly and attempt to make him be quiet when the border patrol opens the door and peeks inside. I swear I think the dog is learning to read because I pick him up several hundred times a day but when we get close to the border patrol station he starts that thing that's between a cough and a bark when he sees the signs, then when we get closer and Daddy puts on the brake he goes into the full bark. Shush is not really in his vocabulary if he thinks there is a good reason to bark. A german shepherd and men in green suits opening up vehicle doors is plenty good reason he thinks to throw a full blown fit. So Dispatch is barking... he is evidently telling the German Shepherd I'll mop this place up with you, see what a giant q-tip can do (meaning Dispatch the Bichon) I know the search dogs are highly trained but it seems every time we pull into an inspection station they go nuts? So the younger border patrol opens the door and says we are OK but he's going to have to arrest Dispatch for threatening him and disturbing the peace, he almost has a straight face as he is saying this above the big deep barks and the little not so deep barks. Then he asks us what we have on the truck and then says we need to LEAVE as the German Shepherd is saying let me @ the q-tip fluffball and we will see who does the floor mopping. I believe Dispatch said in parting that if the GS tried to mop the floor with him he would choke on the fuzz and die before he got Dis bit but I could be imagining that?

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!!

Catherine Zeta Jones Maltese Puppy

Pictures from Splash......Looks like a Bichon Frise to me too but they say it's a puppy and a maltese. In any case she is one of my favorites and seems sort of down to earth, once you get past being married to Michael Douglas and that movie star stuff. Maybe that's why I like her, her husband is so much older.....did I say that? LOL

"The Shop" and Animals

I tried to get the top picture larger but....It was taken about 1980 or so, my daughter Christy was holding Heavy Dog and JJ was holding Suzie? I think these were poodle border collie mixes bred from years of people WANTING these poodle border collie mixes. Sugar and Spice were the first ones, vicious sisters, tried to kill each other regularly but so sweet to all humans and other dogs.
The next picture was taken about 1984 or 1985? This was by the woodstove in my dad's mechanics shop. He kept EVERYTHING as you can see. Christy, my dad, and JJ. Dogs were Sally (golden retriever/german shepherd/stray from KC MO, named after Sally Rand the stripper, my dads idea)Log(my dog, Sally and the St. Bernard next doors unfortunate but LOYAL offspring, Log looked like a stump when he was a puppy) Oetman (Sally had 13 puppies I got her spayed right after that, didn't think she was old enough, Oetman was/is a preacher)Martin(offspring of an errant Airedale and ??? who came to our house and left shortly after she blessed us with puppies, we had Martin, John and Abraham, John died and yest they were after the song). In JJ's arms Cujo, yes that's Cujo, she's smaller than Dispatch I think, wire haired Terrier. That dog was SPOILED. I made the kids hats that were 6 ft long and were scarves or mufflers too. How lovely. My dad wasn't crippled yet, I think he jumped off of the tractor shortly after this picture was taken (huge tractor and he JUMPED)and had a botched knee operation due to worn out cartilage and had 5 more operations and could barely walk the rest of his life. Oh yes, the cat? Why that's Shop Kitty!! What else did you expect her name to be? We had more dogs @ one point but had a farm and just seemed to collect them.... then we had the sheep that ran with them and thought it was a dog......and yes there were dirty calendars hanging about, it was a mechanics garage you know. Dirty in those days was pretty mild though!! LOL I thought bathrooms were supposed to have those calendars and black lingerie tacked to the wall in them, @ least mens bathrooms?
Today seems like memory day.......I wrote about Florida and art galleries and a hat on Tresa's Blog.

Earthquake in Haiti, How to Help and News, Also Katrina Pictures

Cnn on the earthquake in Haiti. At the bottom of the page is a number to call for relatives and a link to go to for information.

Pat Robertson either has lost his mind or need to be sent to Haiti to prop something up. Sorry if that offends but that's the way it is. Don't get me started, I'll sound like One Tin Soldier.

Dooce has a link to Chris Sacca and how to help.

You can visit the Red Cross site to see how you might help.

I do believe in the power of prayer to whatever higher being you espouse.

Britt Bravo has several links on how you can help as does planetgreen.

I will share some of my Katrina pictures taken right after the public was let into the destroyed area around Gulfport/Biloxi. The pictures say January 1st of 2006. They were mostly taken in Pass Christian and Longbeach MS, the one of the dog was NW of Gulfport a stones throw away from where Brett Favre grew up in Kiln. The dog is standing in my office, so many phone towers were down I had to go up on the hill to get phone service or internet for awhile. The apartment building was in Biloxi I think or right between Biloxi and Gulfport. Most (except for the one that's obviously on the beach) of these pictures were taken blocks or 1/2 mile or more from the beach. Remember the United States had her own disaster not too long ago, let's help our close neighbors in their hour of extreme need. Please?