My Animals

The last two weeks have been an expensive emotional roller coaster with regard to my pets!  Actually, it has been longer than that, but I digress...  Between aging issues, surgery and allergies, my three dogs and I have had a rough two weeks.

Looking back, I realize that I have only mentioned my animals in a very brief way.  My second blog post included pictures of everyone, but no back story and  at the beginning of this year I blogged about my barn kitties.  

I am a huge animal lover and for years have had multiple dogs in my house.  Currently, I have three roommates, Lempe who is 13, Augie who is about 6 and Moses (Mosey) who is 2.

Mosey Augie Lempe - freshly shaved for summer.

But let me go back.  I love to reminisce about all of my beloved animals.  Just the other day, I had lunch with a few friends and that was all we talked about.  Our animals.  

Anyway, when I was a kid, we had a couple of standard sized Dachshunds, Rommel and Gretchen.  Both were mean, I still have scars from Rommel bites and Gretchen hated neighborhood kids.  She was very overweight and always had a dirty stomach and for some reason couldn't run in a straight line, so when she chased kids, she ran diagonally across the yard.

Those were the only dogs we had growing up.  Ironically, when I was a kid, I fell in love with Great Danes after seeing the movie "The Ugly Dachshund" with Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette.  It was about a Great Dane puppy mixed in with a litter of Dachshund puppies and the hillarious things that happened as he started growing.  Anyway,  when I was 21 I got my first dane, Waldo.  He was a beautiful all black dane with uncropped ears that I got from a pet shop in the 1970's.  He was huge and very sweet.  He lived almost 12 years, which is very old for a dane!

When I was in my 20's I lived in apartments and moved around a lot for my job.  I had two indoor cats, Garp and Frigate, who were with me for years.  

When I moved into my first house in Atlanta, I got my second Great Dane, Cosmo.  He was a gorgeous brindle with cropped ears.  When he was a year old I went back to the breeder and adopted his sister, Sketch.  Cosmo was a dark brindle, tall and thin and rather high strung.  Sketch, on the other hand,  outweighed Cosmo by almost 40 pounds.  She wasn't as tall, but she was huge and stocky and a much lighter brindle and soooo sweet and laid back.  Here is a scanned picture of Cosmo.

Cosmo

He is very handsome, don't you think?  I have pictures of Sketch and Garp, Frigate, Rommel and Gretchen, but I haven't scanned them (this was before digital cameras). 

Cosmo and Sketch and the two cats and I moved up to Maryland (from Atlanta) and to the farm in 1995.  My sweet Stan joined us on the farm.  I talked about him in my blog post from last January.  He was a stray who started hanging around the farm.  He was just awesome!

Stan

My aunt's dog Skippy also came to live with us on the farm.  Skippy was Auntie Marilyn's beloved Jack Russel.  He weighed about twice as much as he was supposed to, my aunt used to say that was his conformation.  He was so spoiled.  An example, once he stepped over from the couch to the coffee table which was full of magazines and stuff and did his little quick-step happy dance, scattering paper everywhere.  Auntie Marilyn said "isn't that cute?"... and she meant it!  That dog could do no wrong!  But in time he crawled under my skin and with his big personality, kept up with the big dogs and was much loved!

Skippy

Sketch had bone cancer and died when she was 5 when we lived on the farm.  My two cats, Garp and Frigate died when we lived on the farm, as well.  Cosmo who lived to be 10, Stan, Skippy and I moved from the farm in Southern Maryland in 1998 to where I am now on the Eastern Shore.

New Year's Eve 1999 (the big millennium New Years) Lempe came prowling around the perimeter of my yard.  I coaxed her into the garage with a bowl of food.  The vet estimated her age to be about 2-3 years old at the time.  She and Stan were best friends. 

Lempe

 

I let Stan out one day in December of 2000 and he never came home.  That was the saddest time.  By then, Cosmo was gone and it was just Skippy and Lempe and me.  At the end of February 2001, I decided it was time to get another Great Dane.  I was still so sad about Stan and thought a new puppy would help us all.  

Roscoe was a harlequin/merle dane with cropped ears.  I think it was the day after I brought him home that he swelled up with what the vet called "puppy strangles".    

Puppy Roscoe

Deke - Roscoe - Lempe

Shortly after I brought Roscoe home, another stray found his way to my house, Deke.  What a sweet hound dog!  

Deke

When Roscoe got to be about a year old, he became aggressive and attacked Deke.  Luckily my sister took Deke and he lived a long and very pampered life with her family.  He died last year.


When Roscoe was about 18 months old he was diagnosed with meningitis.  That explained his sudden aggression towards Deke.  We tried steroids but it became apparent very quickly that he would not be cured and in the meantime he almost fatally attacked Skippy.  Roscoe died when he was only 18 months old.

Deke and Roscoe

Shortly after Roscoe died, I adopted my last Great Dane, Leo.  A very well bred fawn dane with cropped ears.   

Leo

 He was the so big and beautiful.  He had Addison's disease and wobblers.  He died at only 3 years old.

It is now 2010, my sweet Lempe has been my companion and has helped me train and been a great friend to 8 brothers!  She is having some serious health issues and we aren't sure how much longer she will be here but we are going to enjoy every minute we have with this very special girl. 

Our Lempe

 

Busy Week!

Just when I thought I had worked out a pretty good system...  This week caught me completely by surprise.  That sounds a little dramatic but I was seriously stressed and I felt exhausted from working really hard and accomplishing very little.

The last few weeks were very productive.  I was practicing the Dralle Method and successfully working like a little beaver writing up, taking pictures and listing on eBay.  I was listing 15 - 20 items at auction every day or so and easily accomplishing my goal of 25 to 50 and more auctions each week.

Last Saturday my family came over for a little pool party.   I had the nicest day!  When Monday came, I had nothing ready to list.  My existing auctions were ending almost every day.  On Monday night eBay announced a 10 cent auction listing sale for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  Also on Monday, I got a call from TomCat Solutions asking if I would foster a couple of barn kittens for a week or so.


That was a no-brainer for me, I adopted two kittens last year and I am so glad that I did.  I was happy to help out!


On Tuesday a cage was set up in my barn and 5 kittens arrived.  Unfortunately, one or two of them had the sniffles so they all started on twice a day antibiotics.  There is one yellow stripe and 4 gray striped kittens and they all look the same.  Luckily my friend who lives down the street, and who is always so helpful, has agreed to help me with the medication that they need for a week.  We dose one and transfer it to a holding cage and so on.  Each day it is taking almost two hours between feedings and medication dosings.

Meanwhile, I had nothing to list on eBay.  I desperately (okay, a little dramatic) wanted to take advantage of the listing sale.  Since I hadn't been out yard saling on Saturday, I had nothing new.  Oh yes, I have plenty in the containers under Bijou's table but that is the stuff that I am saving for a cold winter day.  (it is also the stuff that is hard for me to motivate myself to get into)


So, I thought I would look in my own cabinets.  After all, why waste a 10 cent sale on $9.99 items that usually only cost 25 cents to list?  Wouldn't a better idea be to find some higher priced items?  In those cabinets I found a Waterford biscuit barrel, a Toby jug, an Atlantis crystal decanter, some sterling cork toppers, also some other items from earlier yard sales.  Plus ten more lots of postage stamps that I have had since I first started selling on eBay.  I ended up with only 33 new auctions but I saved a respectable amount on listing fees.

It took three days to pull together those 33 auctions.  I just couldn't seem to find time to work something through from start to finish.  It really sounds like a fairly ordinary week but while I was in it, I felt frustrated at all times!

There are only a handful of yard sales for tomorrow.  It is the Labor Day weekend so I wasn't expecting many.  Tomorrow starts a new week!  Let's hope it is a productive one!