The Original Party Animal

Who would have thought that Bart was not a party animal? Either that or he just doesn't like the way the hat makes his head look.

Why would I put a party hat on a dog you ask? Let me tell you; Petfinder.com is celebrating their 10th birthday and they are sponsoring a photo contest. I can't enter Bart's picture in the contest since he's already been adopted (by me of course) but I didn't want him to feel left out when I was taking pictures of his foster siblings in the hat. If you are interested in participating in the contest go to http://www.petfinder.com/petlovers/asdmcontest06.html but hurry because 09/30/06 is the last day to submit your entries!

Good luck to everyone who participates! It's a good thing that Bart can't participate because you know there isn't a cuter dog than my Bart in a Party Hat!

Bart's mom (proud as ever of my handsome little boy)

A new hole has magically appeared in my backyard.

I don't know how they manage it, or should I say he. It rained for two days, then we got cold weather. Apparently the water is sitting just below the surface because the hole isn't that big but my foster, Mac, had mud all over one paw when he came back in the house. How he got mud on just one paw? I have no earthly idea! He is just talented that way. Leave a 6 month old husky alone in the yard for 10 minutes and tell me what YOU find.

He was digging right next to the bricks I just put in along the fence line. Thank goodness I put those bricks in! I have found that it doesn't take a very deep hole for a dog to escape out of a privacy fenced backyard. (Maybe someone can explain to me some time how a 40 lb. husky can fit under a fence through a 4 inch gap.)

Bart's mom
(Just wondering...)

What went wrong?I thought I did everything right. I made sure that before I went to bed last night I let all the puppies out for the last potty before the 3:30am potty break. I am positive they went out at midnight. It was raining though and I didn't make sure they went off the deck and out into the yard but that was because I had to prepare all the food dishes for breakfast. Bart gets one kind, the puppies all get puppy food and Vivi gets another. (If you don't do it the night before, you spend countless minutes with whining, clawing, jumping puppies in the morning tearing your legs to shreds trying to get to the food before it is served.)

I go to bed only to be awakened about 45 minutes later to howling puppies who peed in their crates. I let them outside into the rain and go clean up crates. I re-line them with fresh newspaper. I let the puppies in, dry them off and re-crate them. I go to bed for 2 hours only to have to get up to tend to the puppies again. A repeat of the 1am performance. I get another hour of sleep. Low and behold, I am thrust out of a perfectly wonderful dream to screaming puppies! I repeat the last two middle-of-the-night acts and go back to bed. My alarm is set to go off at 5:30am. I usually hit snooze until 6am. Not today! I was up at the unholy hour of 5:15am. I didn't even get to hit snooze. By the time I got all the crates cleaned it was nearly time for me to be up anyway so stayed up.

Mondays are bad anyway. The puppies get used to having us here with them the whole weekend and letting them outside and staying out there with them. During the week, their whole schedule gets knocked sideways. They have to be crated all day while we are at work and/or school. They really hate that because then they have no alternative but to have accidents in their crates. Whereas, on the weekends we can take naps during the day with all the puppies out in the house and not one accident!

There was one bright spot in my day today though. A friend introduced me to www.despair.com knowing how much I like pain and suffering. This site was hysterical! It really brightens my day to read demotivational quotes and realize how much they seem like my own life! LOL

Bart's mom (cracking up in more ways than one!)

OK so here I sit.

It's Saturday night, the kids are spending the night with a friend and here I sit. My Bart is lying in the kids room waiting for them to return like he does every time they leave the house. Not that I mind having time to myself but I'm not exactly by myself. It's me and the myriad of dogs tonight. Most of them are puppies and they are wearing me out. Let them out. Let them in. Let them out again. Let them in again. (It has taken such a long time to get this paragraph typed because I have to keep getting up!) :o) Luckily there haven't been any accidents in the house since the kids left this evening. I think I may have found the stumbling block on getting the puppies potty-trained! My kids!

Bart has rejoined us. I guess hearing the door open and close so many times finally got the better of him and he decided to grace us with his presence. The first thing he did was go outside and start barking. I assume he was barking at my neighbor. She keeps her window open between our two houses and she had her TV on. Bart thought someone was out there and he must let everyone know that he is there and he has a loud bark. A dog outside barking at 10:30pm, I am sure my neighbor will come by tomorrow and complain again. I wish she would figure out how to close her window so she will finally stop complaining to me about my dogs! They are just being dogs, heellloooo?!

Well, all the dogs are passed out all around the living room. 2 on the futon and the rest on the floor and here I sit on the most uncomfortable chair in the world typing this blog. I am young. I should be out. It's Saturday night and only a little after 11pm but I am so tired after a long day of standing in a line at the vaccination clinic with all the puppies and then taking them to adoption day at PetsMart. *whine* Maybe that's why I am sitting at home on a Saturday night! :o)

I do have to admit though, it has been a very good day today. The weather was gorgeous. The dogs behaved like dogs. The kids were relatively helpful. The cats are behaving like cats, except for the one who thinks she is a dog. All in all, a good day. I only have to wait a couple of weeks to take all the puppies to the dog park now that they have had their booster shots today. And, I spoke with a person at PetsMart who is interested in adopting one of the puppies. The bad thing is, he lives in Texas. We do not adopt out that far so I guess it really is a bad thing. He did seem like a good candidate from what I could gather from my conversation with him. Now, all I have to do is wait to see if he will fill out an application. If we can't adopt to him, maybe we can find someone who can. :-) I like people who love huskies!! :-D

I am not sure why because I usually don't do this on the weekends, but I just checked out Meeshka's blog (http://www.meeshkaworld.blogspot.com/). Now I know why all my dogs have been in and out all night! But what I don't know is when or how they got access to the computer to check out her blog to find out that today has been declared "International Be A Pain In The Butt Day"... The only thing I can come up with is that Bart must have checked while we were out getting shots and looking cute for potential adopters. I will have to speak with him when he wakes up about unauthorized usage of the computer when I am not home.

Counter surfers BEWARE

I have a foster dog, Vivi, who is the softest husky on Earth. Possibly the softest creature ever. She is so sweet, loves to play and is a wonderful snuggler. She does have one tiny little problem.

Let me tell you a little story. There was me, my twin daughters and a fellow husky foster mom grilling steaks one evening about two weeks ago. (Do you see where I'm going with this?) I had just the week prior to that picked up Vivi from a shelter and took her into my home. One would think she would be grateful, right? Well, here is what happened. After the steaks were done, we all adjourned into the kitchen to fix our plates. Of course, everyhusky I have was in there with us. The steaks were pretty big so the 4 of us humans split one steak and left the other 2 sitting on the platter toward the back of the stove. One of my daughters, the other foster mom and myself all went back out on the deck to eat, leaving a teenager and all the dogs in the house. Once we finished eating, we let the dogs out to hang out with us. My daughter who was inside had since gone to her room. The rest of us enjoyed the cool night air for a while with the dogs until it got too cold. We then gathered up our dirty dishes and went back inside. As I was putting my plate in the sink, I noticed the 2 remaining steaks were gone. I foolishly assumed my daughter, who had remained in the house, put them away.

After inspecting the refrigerator and not finding the steaks, I took a look around. I keep a towel on the floor of the kitchen near the water bowls to absorb some of the water the dogs dribble all over while they are drinking. The towel was wadded up and there was salsa stains on it. I had found my steaks, or at least the telltale signs of where my steaks had been. Vivi is not a big dog by any stretch of the imagination. She only weighs about 40lbs. And, as I said, she is the sweetest little love bug. How is it that I know she is the one who took the steaks? Simple process of elimination. Bart hasn't stolen any food off the counter or table since the peanut butter and jelly sandwich he stole from my daughter when we first started fostering him about a year and a half ago (he is now our forever baby), so that takes him out of the running. That, and the fact that he sat at the back door and barked at me the entire time I was eating. The other dogs are all to short to get up on the stove so that eliminates them. Which brings me back to Vivi. It just goes to show that no matter how cute, sweet and fluffy a husky is, do NOT trust them! Ever! Especially with 2 huge steaks! I was so looking forward to making myself a steak and egg breakfast burrito the next morning too!

I have vowed to never let the incident be repeated. We grilled steaks again this past weekend and left the dogs outside while we ate our dinner standing at the kitchen counter. Before I left the kitchen, I put away all the food.

Bart's mom
(why is it that I am changing everything I do to accomodate my dogs? could it be the big tattoo on my forehead that says "sucker for huskies"? who has been teaching these huskies to read?)

I tried this out yesterday and managed to mess it up...It's my first time blogging so you need to factor in the learning curve. I think I have it now so here is what I posted before, I know it's a long read but it's my blog so I can do whatever I want.
Have you ever agreed to do something and then regretted it later? I was thinking over the last few days that I was regretting fostering 3 non-house-trained puppies. Well, you see, I have 2 children already (they are girls and turning 15 next month, aren't I being punished enough?). I also have 2 cats, one of which thinks the entire house is his litter box, and a forever dog (Bart) whose bark can grate a persons nerves in less than 5 seconds flat. He is a husky/shepherd mix and the love of my life but, sometimes, quiet would be nice. Although, now that I have 3 puppies in the house, I don't think quiet is an option!

I came home yesterday and my children, even though they are the ones who got me started on fostering rescued huskies, had still not cleaned up the puppies’ crates after they had been in them for the previous 8 hours (the puppies were in the crates, not the kids). I walk in the door, after what seemed the longest day at work in the history of work-dom, to be greeted, while still dressed in my slacks and dress shirt from work, by a wild pack of dogs covered in mud. By wild pack of dogs, I really mean 6 huskies of every shape and size and all very excited I am home but most definitely covered in mud!! Needless to say, but I will say it anyway; I was covered in mud as well before I even got through the foyer.

I had a plan, an evil plan, but never the less; a plan was in place for the evening. I had read Meeshka's blog (www.meeshkaworld.blogspot.com) and had the most wonderful plan in mind for how I was going to spend my evening! According to Meeshka, her humans spread doggie doodie over the spots where they dig and they won't dig there anymore. My huskies have been digging with a vengeance over the past few days and, of course, it is in the lushest part of my backyard. My plan was to spread the hideously stinky packages I had been left from the day before and that morning over the holes after filling them back in as best as possible. Surprisingly enough, it actually worked; I did get this accomplished in a minimal amount of time. The dogs sniffed and walked away! I was amazed and stupidly thought the rest of my night would continue on this wonderful note. Boy! Was I wrong!

I let the wild beasts back in the house and within the first 2 minutes of being back inside, I had a pee accident to clean up. While I was cleaning up this mess, two more were made behind my back. Again, while cleaning up these two messes, another one was made in a crate that had erroneously been left open. And AGAIN, I turn around and there is another one! I was losing my mind. Every time I cleaned up one mess another one was made while my back was turned. I think we had about 7 accidents total in the house after having an entire weekend with no messes in the house!!! Of course, I expected help from the teenagers who got me started fostering huskies over a year and a half ago. But, no, it was not happening.

Anyway! I finally got to go to bed last night but had to get up not once, not twice, but, yes, three times to let puppies outside and clean crates in the middle of the night. I was definitely not pleased but I know they are puppies and will one day they will be able to hold it longer than 5 seconds!!

I was at work today, feeling a sore throat coming on and am getting achy and am, of course, super tired. I think to myself on the way home, maybe I should call my children to see how things are going. The report I got was short and whine-y. I cut the call short and just hope and pray I make it home without falling asleep behind the wheel. I got home tonight and the dogs are outside. I think to myself, "This is so great. My work slacks aren't getting covered in mud!" I change into "sloppy" clothes since it has been raining for the last few days, I know the mud isn't far behind but I am hoping the evil plan from yesterday actually worked and the evil husky puppies haven't been digging again. I looked out my sliding glass door into the backyard and, much to my chagrin, every dog is covered from head to tail in mud! I lost it! I turned on the hose and went to town rinsing off everyone and everything in sight covered in mud. The dogs really did not appreciate my cleaning method, but with so many right now, I didn't see that I had any other choice.

I apparently entertained the evil huskies so much during our outside bath experience that the moment I let the dogs in the house they immediately jumped on my futon (to dry off of course) then they ran and found the most comfortable places in the house to lay down. Most of the comfy places were on clothes that weren't put away but some of the less creative dogs simply laid on the laminate wood floor after shaking off their excess water on my big screen TV.

Let it be said, I played and played with all the dogs and even encouraged about 10 - 15 minutes of howl/bark time. Not one accident all evening. I am thinking I over exaggerated earlier when I said that I regretted taking on so many dogs all at once. Sometimes, when you get nuzzled just right, all the upsets and worries from your day are just eliminated. Gone. Poof! I am lying in bed now typing this blog with the softest husky in the history of husky-dom lying next to me, belly exposed and smiling like no other, and here I am neglecting her to vent. I think this is the perfect time to sign off my first huge-ly long blog entry and tell her what a good dog she is and then turn out the lights and pray that I get more than 3 hours of sleep before the puppies need to go out again!

Thanks for listening!
(Wish me luck and sanity please!)