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Did You Notice the Homeless Guy?

My Mom was the first one to comment about the extra guy in my Thanksgiving pictures. She didn’t know at the time that he was homeless. She just wondered where he came from.

Did you notice the homeless guy in yesterday’s post?

You know, this cute little guy…

Monty

Every now and then, I have to remind folks that our beautiful Brittanys are all rescued dogs. CeCe (now deceased), Meg, and Belle were adopted through American Brittany Rescue (ABR). K was adopted through the National Brittany Rescue and Adoption Network (NBRAN).

The way breed rescues like ABR and NBRAN work, volunteers all across the US work together to do all the tasks/provide all the services necessary to rescue and care for dogs that have been abandoned for a wide variety of reasons. There are dogs whose owner has become sick or died, dogs whose family has gotten divorced or moved and couldn’t keep the dog, dogs that just show up in shelters, and dogs, like Monty, whose family either no longer wants them or feels they would be better off living with someone else. Of course, some of the females that end up in rescue for one of the aforementioned reasoned are pregnant when rescued, so then ABR and NBRAN end up with multiple dogs needing homes.

When a dog is rescued, it needs a place to stay. Ideally that place is someone’s home. There are many, many volunteers all over the country who open their homes to homeless dogs like Monty. These folks not only make sure the dog has a place to live, food to eat, etc., they also make sure the animal is fully vetted, meaning they get a physical, vaccines are brought up-to-date, they’re spayed/neutered, if necessary, and any health issues are addressed. This vetting is usually at the rescue organization’s expense, but there are quite a few fosters who pay for the vetting themselves as another way to help the rescue group. The dogs are also observed closely to determine overall temperament, whether they’re okay with strangers or not, if kids thrill them or terrify them, if they want to eat cats, etc.

It’s a labor of love, that’s for sure. Some dogs, like Monty, are super-easy. Others are more difficult. You typically get to pick what dogs you will/will not foster. And if you end up with one that you don’t like or that just doesn’t “fit” in your home, the dog can be placed in a different foster home.

Monty was actually adopted through ABR by a family in March 2007. This family’s situation changed and they thought Monty would be better off living elsewhere. So they contacted ABR, which they are required to do as part of the adoption contract. Kelly, the angel who fostered CeCe, our very first Brittany, also happened to be Monty’s foster Mom. She lives and works near Winchester, Virginia. Monty was living in Maryland, not too far from us. Knowing that we come through Winchester regularly on our way to and from the WV place, Kelly asked if we’d help.

So, Shannon and I went a picked Monty up on Wednesday evening.

K, Belle and Monty

At first, none of the girls wanted anything to do with Monty. Girl dogs are weird like that. As the days went on, they began warming up to him slowly. Meg became more tolerant and Belle was actually playing with the little guy a bit. But K wanted NOTHING to do with him. For whatever reason, she acted almost insulted that we even let him into our house.

He points!

In case you haven’t already guessed, Monty is not a pure-bred Brittany. What he’s mixed with is anyone’s guess. But he’s a cute little guy.

He looks sort of pudgy, but he’s really just barrel-chested. There’s not an ounce of fat on him.

Monty

Look at the cute face on him. He’s got an under-bite, which I should have made sure to photograph. Sometimes, if his lips are pulled back even a little bit, it would look like he was smiling.

Monty wants a new family for Christmas.

Ho LOVES playing ball. In the house, he’d always bring the ball right back to us. When he was outside, he’d bring it back sometimes.

Hubby and I delivered Monty to Kelly yesterday. She currently has five dogs of her own AND one, now two, foster dogs. Yes, she’s got a big yard and is perfectly capable of caring for that many dogs. But that’s a lot of dogs. Hopefully, Monty will find a home pretty quickly.

He’s really a nice little guy. He’s about six or seven and is completely house-trained. He didn’t even show the slightest inclination to do any scent-marking inside of our house. The yard was a different story, but that’s normal.

Monty isn’t the only dog in need of a home. NBRAN currently has over 150 dogs in foster homes, waiting for adoption, and almost 50 in need of a foster home. I’m not sure how many dogs ABR has at the moment, but it’s a lot.

If you’ve ever remotely considering fostering a dog, now would be a great time to do it. Not sure about long-term fostering? Become a holiday foster home. A lot of foster families travel for the holidays and sometimes need a place to house their foster dog for awhile. Since we have three dogs already, we don’t want to take on a full-time foster, but we will often foster dogs over the holidays for other foster parents who are traveling.

If you are interested, you can learn more about both fostering and adoption through these Web sites: American Brittany Rescue (ABR) and National Brittany Rescue and Adoption Network (NBRAN).

Don’t care for Brittanys? They have great personalities, but do tend to be pretty high-energy dogs. All breeds have rescue groups. Local animal shelters can always use foster homes, too. For dogs AND cats.

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Happy Day After Thanksgiving

I was going to do a quick post yesterday to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving, but the morning flew by. And once we started cooking around 10:30 we didn’t stop doing, doing, doing until pretty late. And I was pooped.

So now it’s the day after…

I hope each and every one of you had a fabulous day. If it was even half as awesome as mine, I know it was good. Because our day was amazing.

It’s odd, though, because we only had a few people here. My Mom hasn’t been feeling well so she and my Dad did Thanksgiving alone at their house. My son-in-law, TJ, is still deployed. The grand kids were at their other grandparents’ house. Amy, who is still recuperating from foot surgery, stayed close to her own home and spent the holiday with friends. Eric’s girlfriend was with her family in Pennsylvania. My brother, sister-in-law and nephew are in Virginia (that’s where they live). So…

Our gathering consisted of Hubby, of course, my mother-in-law, Shannon, Eric and me. And the dogs. We can’t forget them. 🙂

We decided to be different this year and forgo some of the more-traditional fare (like a turkey). All of us prefer chicken. None of us are really crazy about pumpkin pie either. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Shannon, who also likes to cook, agreed that it would be fun to experiment. I’ve always wanted to try sausage stuffing. And I get REALLY tired of the same old side dishes all the time. We decided to start with the must-haves (chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy) and then add some new stuff. Shannon took the initiative to find some interesting recipes. She succeeded, too.

I really am not exaggerating when I said we started at 10:30 and didn’t stop.

Actually, Shannon started on Wednesday by baking totally-from-scratch cinnamon rolls just like Hubby makes. They were designated as our Thanksgiving breakfast. She loves to bake, and it shows. The cinnamon rolls were delicious.

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Icing for Breakfast

One of the must-have-again-SOON recipes Shannon found was Bella’s Brussels Sprouts with Bacon. Hubby, MIL and I really like Brussels Sprouts anyway. Shannon likes them, too. Eric doesn’t particularly care for them. But we all agreed that Bella’s Brussels Sprouts with Bacon ROCKED.

Then there were the Roasted Beets and Sweets…

The Most-interesting Vegetable

As much as I like red beets, I’ve never actually prepared them. Shannon hadn’t either. So we were both quite intrigued by the way the beets looked when freshly-peeled. The recipe was simple to follow and absolutely divine. If you’re a fan of red beets and sweet potatoes/yams, you have to try this Roasted Beets and Sweets recipe. Sorry I don’t have a picture of the finished product to show you.

I did mention that Shannon loves to bake, right? She’s my Kitchen Aide Pretzel Maker, remember? For dinner, she elected to make some dinner rolls. The recipe (actually called a formula) came from her bread maker’s Bible. Check these out…

Shaping the Rolls (I missed capturing the mixing and kneading action)
Oven-ready
Fresh-from-the-Oven Goodness

Those were THE BEST rolls I have ever eaten. For serious. I’m not a huge bread fan. I mean, I like good-quality bread, but I’ve never been one to say, “Ooh, I would love to have some homemade rolls.” Now? We may never let Shannon move out. Having your own personal baker is AWESOME. Especially when they’re really good at it like Shannon.

While she and I cooked and baked, the dogs anxiously watched for our guests to arrive.

"Are they here yet? When are they coming?"

I baked an Apple Crumb Pie, too. Like the ones Brianna and I made back in October.

Please pass the garlic!

We used myriad spices as we cooked and baked. At one point, I had a few extra minutes and decided to reorganize the spice cabinet a bit. If you don’t do that periodically, things get completely out of hand. Shannon didn’t believe me when I told her we had FIVE different containers of garlic powder. So I got them out to show her.

When Eric still lived with us, we went through garlic powder like crazy. I prefer fresh garlic personally, but that boy loves him some garlic powder. Since it’s completely his fault that we had so much garlic in the cupboard, I made him take three of the five containers home.

Staying out of our way.

The dogs were pretty good about staying out from under foot. Every now and then one of them would sneak back into the kitchen. But for the most part, they did pretty good.

Back to our experimentation…

The last experimental side-dish was Garlic Carrots. Oh. My. GAWD. They were very simple, and really, really, really good. They were quite possibly the best cooked carrots I have EVER eaten. Again, I am not exaggerating. They were THAT good.

Experimental Chicken

We had two chickens because we made two kinds of stuffing. And the stuffing that’s cooked inside of the bird is ALWAYS better that the other stuff, so we had to have two chickens for the apples-to-apples comparison. The recipe Shannon chose was Awesome Sausage, Apple and Cranberry Stuffing. It was very good, but the traditional stuffing is still my favorite. That’s like one of my favorite things in the whole world to eat, so I’m not surprised that I liked it better. But the experimental stuffing was good, too.

Traditional Chicken

I’m sort of bummed that I didn’t take pictures of all the side dishes, but we were busy! I did try and get a shot of the meal on the table. None of these pictures are particularly good (there’s at least one person I captured with a weird look on their face or something out of focus in each), but I am posting them anyway because they were all the pictures I got.

Getting ready to eat.

That picture is actually not bad, but Eric is missing.

Hurry up, we're hungry!

This would’ve been a good one if Hubby hadn’t been goofing off and sporting a Gaige-face (Gaige loves to make goofy faces in pictures).

The meal.

And in that last one, I caught my MIL with her eyes closed. Sorry, Mom!

We were all half-starved by this point. Shannon and I somehow messed up our timing. The chickens weren’t finished until at least two hours after they were supposed to have been done. So I couldn’t make everyone wait too long to eat.

And eat we did. It doesn’t look like there’s that much food on the table, but there was. And it was all fabulous. I made succotash, too. That’s a staple. And I didn’t mention the gravy. I make yummy gravy, if I do say so myself.

Is it FINALLY our turn?

Once we were finished, the dogs got to eat their Thanksgiving meal. I use the chicken innards and necks to flavor the gravy base. Once that’s cooked for several hours, I always remove the innards, chop them all up and save it for the dogs. So they got that, some chicken, and a big dollop of gravy added to their bowls. They were all thrilled.

Even though we all wished the rest of the family could’ve come, we all agreed this was quite possibly our best Thanksgiving meal ever. Shannon and I really had a good time cooking together. And everyone enjoyed our experiments immensely. All-in-all, it was a very satisfying and very happy day.

Now, I think I’d better go and eat one of those leftover rolls of Shannon’s. And maybe some mashed potatoes and gravy, too. Plus some leftover stuffing…

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Disheartening to Say the Least

I did/saw something last night that left me with a really heavy heart.

Really.

All of my dogs are rescue dogs. Meg and Belle came to us through American Brittany Rescue. K is a National Brittany Rescue and Adoption Network (NBRAN) dog. Both rescue organizations are staffed by volunteers who do all kinds of stuff like fostering dogs, helping move dogs from one place to another, screening adoption applications, fundraising, etc. It takes a concerted effort to provide the services these dogs need.

After we adopted our first dog, we just knew we had to pitch in to help, too. If it weren’t for all of those people out there, we never would’ve gotten CeCe. She’s the one who started it all.

Anyway… with three dogs of our own, fostering is just not at option for us. So my rescue involvement is limited. I help with gift wrapping fundraisers around the holidays, participate in transport chains when I can and perform home visits. A home visit is when someone actually goes to the home of a potential adopter to make sure it’s a safe environment for the dog.

I’ve done quite a few home visits over the years and have met many very nice people along the way. I’ve also seen some stuff I’d really rather forget. Oddly enough, the last two home visits I did were awful. I did one last night and it was the absolute worst.

Before I even go on a home visit, I like to do a couple of things. First, read the adoption application carefully to see if there are any red flags and get an idea as to what the adopters are looking for in a dog, their history with pets, do they have kids, etc. Next, I like to talk to the people who are fostering the dog being considered for adoption. Typically, the potential adopter and foster parent will have already spoken. But I like to get the inside scoop on the dog so I can determine if the adopters expectations are realistic.

Back in July, I did a home visit in West Virginia. M and C were considering adopting AND fostering. They live in a big, old farmhouse on the outskirts of a cute little college town. They are absolutely delightful people and their home environment is like doggie dreamland. Plus they are very intelligent people who know how to handle dogs.

The home visit I did last night was for a woman interested in adopting M and C’s foster dog. I was tickled to have a reason to talk to M again. She told me all about how well the foster was doing, how far he’d come, what sort of home he’d thrive in, etc. She’d spent quite a bit of time talking to the potential adopter who sounded great on the phone. It sounded like it just might be the perfect match.

Another thing I do is check out the neighborhood on Google. You gotta love street view. When I did that, I saw the house was in an older suburb, more urban than suburban. It’s on a quiet street, on a corner lot, with a nice, big, fenced yard. I was going in with high hopes.

Two weeks ago when we first started talking about the home visit, M said the potential adopter told her she was a little stressed about the home visit and wanted to clean a bit first. People often think a home inspection will involve a white-glove test or something. I figured she was just one of those people who liked everything to be in its place and didn’t want me to see a little clutter.

When I arrived, the woman said something to the effect of, “I’m sorry my house is a bit of a mess. I’ve been working on straightening it. I did make a spot for you to sit in the basement, so we’ll go down there.”

“Oh, I’m not here to make sure you are super-clean or anything. I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said.

And then I walked in to something like this…

It was a hoarder house! (This picture was not taken there.)

I was appalled. And completely at a loss for words. I think I might have said, “Wow, this is really a lot of stuff.”

I had Belle with me. The woman pointed us to a path she’d sort of cleared to the basement. There was about a 4′ x4′ section of floor that was semi-visible in front of a sofa piled high with crap. The woman said, “Here, I cleared a space for you to sit.” But she had to move a pile of stuff to make room. There was no place for her to sit. Belle was having a field day sniffing around.

The woman was very nice, clean-looking, nicely dressed, and well-spoken. One would never know she lived like that. We chatted a bit as Belle explored. At one point, Belle started sniffing at a trash bag that was about 5 feet away against a wall.

“Oh, no honey,” the woman said. “You’ll probably find some chicken bones in there.” Then she looked at me and explained that tomorrow was trash day and the bag was sitting there waiting to be taken out.

Right.

There was a large, round coffee table pushed up against the sofa, also piled high with crap. There was a corner close to me, sort of clear except for a couple of mostly-empty condiment packets of honey. Belle was quite interested in sniffing those. Then she started nosing at a large pile of papers, pushing it aside to get at what was underneath.

“Oh, don’t dig in there,” the woman said. “There’s some chicken bones under there I meant to throw away.”

Oh. My. God.

I was just beside myself. Normally I’d look around the house a bit, see where the dog was going to sleep, etc. Not there.

It was horrible.

I was completely at a loss.

She assured me the place would be clean by Thanksgiving. That’s two weeks away. She also said she’s got a woman coming in to help her, because she knows it’s too much for her to tackle by herself.

I seriously felt like I was in an episode of Hoarding: Buried Alive.

Finally, I’d had enough. I grabbed Belle and we headed up the steps. I had to stop midway and unwrap a large, empty and torn green trash bag from around my foot.

Unreal.

I guess that’s a perfect example of why home visits are important.

This is an interesting Web page that shows the different degrees of hoarding. (last night’s house was about a 5.) While searching for images to use here, I discovered that Fairfax County, Virginia, has a special Web page with information on hoarding.

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Relative Normalcy

It’s never a good sign when you wake up with a headache. I mean, what a crappy way to start a day. Hoping to get rid of the ache, I took some naproxen and then made myself a big plate of blueberry pancakes. No luck so far, but I am still hopeful. At least the pancakes tasted good.

While I ate, I caught up on my blog reading. That’s when I realized I haven’t posted anything for five days. I’ve been collecting various pics to share. But it’s an eclectic collection. So there was nothing driving me to do a posting. Now, however, I think it is time to catch up.

The first couple of shots are from Sunday morning at the WV place. It was in the low 30s when we woke up.

Frosty Window

Doesn’t that just make you want to say, “Brrr?”

Lingering Green

Most of the trees are bare already. Except for the oaks. We have lots of oaks. And they hold on to their leaves for a long time. Apparently some are late in the color-change department, too.

Nakedness

See what I mean about the trees being bare?

Morning in the Woods

This is one of my favorite spots at the WV place. Back before we had Belle and K, we had CeCe and Meg. CeCe was a lot like Belle in that she liked to hang close to Mama during our morning walks. She and I would wait here at the top of the hill on Turkey Hollow Road for Meg to return. Quite a few of CeCe’s cremains were scattered here for that very reason. It’s been almost two years since we lost CeCe and we still miss her.

A Hint of Green

The colors on this green leaf caught my eye. There’s not really anything special about that picture except I thought the leaf was cool. So I am sharing it here.

Cool Colors

Speaking of colors catching my eye, I really liked the way these frosty leaves looked.

Frost

You can see the frost more clearly on these leaves. Quite a few bushes are still green, so the woods aren’t completely colorless.

Belle racing around the corner.

Right before snapping this picture, I’d started walking back toward the house. When Belle realized she couldn’t see me, she came running.

Belle

Here’s one where Belle was waiting with me for the other two girls to come back. As for the other two…

Napping while Mama works.

They did reappear shortly after that picture of Belle was taken. I snapped the above image while I was working. The camera was sitting next to me on the windowsill. My girls always like to be close to Mama. Notice K and Belle sharing that small bed?

K

K is more into sharing than Belle. In this shot, although you can’t see her (the zoom lens was on the camera and I couldn’t fit her into the frame), Belle is pretty much hogging the entire bed. K found a corner to sit on and gave me this look as if to say, “Mama, she won’t share.”

K is truly a Mama's girl.

Belle sits with me in the mornings. It’s rare to see Belle on my lap in the evenings. K on the other hand is all about her evening Mama-time. She’ll come over and give me this certain look. That’s when I say, “You need some Mama love?” Immediately she climbs into my lap.

We did have a bit of excitement on Sunday. Are you ready for this?

The new refrigerator.

We bought a new refrigerator! Now we just need to buy some more food. 🙂

Our kitchen is very small. We never really planned the kitchen. I bought a whole kitchen full of old cabinets and we put them into place. It all works okay, except the door placements are very awkward in a couple of spots. We only had room for an under-the-counter refrigerator. And no room for a dishwasher.

Because Hubby really hates doing dishes, we need a dishwasher. We can’t have a dishwasher unless we re-do the kitchen.

Oh yeah, we have a really cheap, crappy cook top, too. It works, but it is a huge PIA. The burners are super hard to regulate properly. If you turn them back too low, they go out. And they won’t relight unless you put a match to them first. It’s annoying.

Our Little House in the Woods

This is not a great picture since the trailer is sitting in front of the garage. But someone was asking me what our house looks like, so there it is.

Going "down the hill."

The dogs just love it when we walk them down the driveway. They’re all three in the picture, K is just hard to see because she is so far ahead. The girl runs like a Greyhound.

Going back up the hill.

You know what they say… what goes down, must come up. Right? 🙂

And now, for the last picture of the day, we have K.

"Mama, she's not sharing AGAIN."

K is looking a bit pissed off. Is it because Belle is hogging the bed? Or because Mama has no room on her lap at the moment. Or both?

For the record, Belle is wide awake, but she hates having her picture taken. Really. She squints or blinks in most shots unless I catch her off guard.

I hope you enjoyed the mish-mash of photos!

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Meg the Bag Lady

One of the things I love about having dogs around is that they make me laugh.

Really. Sometimes they just do the goofiest things.

They can do gross stuff, too. Take my Meg as an example. She eats pretty much anything. Poo included. And used Kleenex. She just loves used facial tissue.

Meg’s penchant for eating just about anything got her into a bit of a predicament today.

I was out walking with the girls. K and Belle were in the driveway. Meg walked down toward her friend’s house.

A little while later, Meg came running back out of the woods. She ran past Belle, who immediately started following her. When those two ran past K, she decided to run along, too.

They were all making a beeline for me.

"Mama! Mama! There's something wrong with Meg!" (Ignore the glowing eyes, okay?)

I could see something was amiss, I just wasn’t sure what.

Belle looks on as Meg tries to rid herself of the newly acquired accessory.

When they reached me and I saw what the problem was, I started cracking up.

Somehow or other, Meg had managed to get a plastic shopping back stuck around her neck. She was off digging in someone’s trash no doubt.

She was really quite embarrassed.

How do I know she was embarrassed? She didn’t want to let me take her picture. I had to make her sit three different times before I got this shot…

Meg not even a little bit thrilled to be photographed at that particular moment.

First, she gave me that evil eye you see in the above shot. Then she just refused to look at the camera.

"I am NOT going to look. And quit laughing at me."

Finally, I removed the bag.  I felt sorry for her because I know she felt pretty stupid. And maybe I shouldn’t have laughed at her, but she looked pretty stupid, too.

Meg’s a good sport.

Meg looking a bit more regal.

Since she did actually sit still to let me take that picture, I figured I’d post a nice picture of her, too. So you could see that she’s not just a big ole doofus. She’s really very pretty. She is a bit of a character. But that’s part of her charm.

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Where’s ToadMama Today?

I’m in a different state again.

But this time, I am happy about it.

It really looks like Fall here. As far as the foliage goes, it is most definitely past peak. In fact, many, many leaves are on the ground.

Fall is Here

The girls are all very happy to be here, too. As usual. They LOVE running through these woods.

See Meg smiling?

Since it was almost 10:00 when I got home last night, we drove to the WV place this morning. It’s actually pretty chilly. I think it was in the low 50s when we arrived. Now it’s in the 40s. And it’s only about 3:00 PM. I have a feeling tomorrow morning will REALLY be cold when I am out walking.

Fall is in the air.

See how bare those trees are? Meanwhile, back at the cabin…

Hubby clearing the leaves off of the front porch.

…Hubby was struggling to get the leaf blower to run. As you can see, he succeeded.

"I don't like that noise, Mama."

Belle was not thrilled with the leaf blower.

Smile!

I did somehow manage to get Belle and K to sit still for a picture. Belle wouldn’t look at the camera, but look at K smiling!

That moment of stillness didn’t last long.

And they're off!

I’m making chili for dinner. It’s a chili kind of day.

They’re forecasting snow for the mountains just west of here tonight.

Brrr…