Category: pets

Since Belle joined our family back in January, some things around the ToadMama Abode have had to change. My morning routine is just one of them.

Belle, you see, is a morning girl. And she likes to eat on time. Twice a day. Meg used to eat once a day, in the evenings. So she’s not complaining about this routine at all.

The latest Belle ever lets me sleep is 7:15. That’s the latest. But most days she drags me out of bed earlier than that. She’s bouncing off the walls with energy, ready to run, and play. And she wants to eat. So I get up, make my way blindly downstairs (my eyes take a while to open fully) and let the dogs outside. Then I get my coffee started. By then, the dogs are ready to come in and get their breakfast.

While they’re eating, I fill my coffee cup and plant myself on the recliner so I can ingest some caffeine and wake up fully. As soon as Belle is finished with her breakfast, it’s lap time.

While I’m waking up, I like to check my e-mail, catch up on the news, update my blog, etc. Using my notebook computer, of course, which sits on my lap.

It’s a good thing I have long arms. Because mornings here are all about Belle. She has to sit on my lap. She’s relentless. And she’s so darn cute, I just can’t say no. So I’ve had to adjust my notebook positioning to allow Belle the lap space she needs while still letting me reach the keyboard.

It seems to be working. Belle looks quite comfortable, doesn’t she? Hubby disturbed her a bit, waking her up while taking pictures. But she went right back to sleep.

She can see one of the bird feeders from my chair, too. So she changes position quite frequently. And she likes to stretch. Which can present a problem.

As time passes, she slowly ekes out more and more lap space. Like I said earlier, it’s a good thing I have long arms.

Anybody know a good way to keep dog hair out of a keyboard? I need to start looking for a wider chair…

Today is February 3rd. It’s officially been one month since Belle joined our family. She’s such a sweet, loving, funny little dog.

While she looks a lot like C, who we lost on November 20, she’s definitely her own dog.

C, pictured above, was a sweetheart. And we still miss her. She was a wonderful dog, too, but she certainly had her weird quirks. We attribute most of that to the fact that, for almost the first eight years of her life (before we got her), she was kept in a kennel and used for breeding. As hard as it was to let her go, we know we made the last years of her life happy ones.

Belle, unlike C, had a pretty normal life before she came to live with us. Her first 16 months were spent with a loving family in NJ. She ended up in rescue because her family got divorced and were losing their home to foreclosure. From November until we got her in January, Belle lived in a loving foster home. They showered her with affection and treated her like the little princess that she is.

When I met her, it took all of about two minutes for me to fall in love with her. Despite wondering whether it was weird that she looks so much like C, I knew she was the dog for us.

Hubby, Meg and I were lost without C. It didn’t take long at all for our little “Tinker” Belle to worm her way into our hearts.

Belle, pictured above, has a lot more brown on her than C. And she has a pink collar, which I never would have dreamed subjecting C to. But Belle is such a cute, little girly-girl. To a degree. Looks can be deceiving. She’s really a spirited little firecracker who runs like the wind, is obsessed with the birds and squirrels in our yard, and LOVES to run around the yard playing with Meg. C was never a “player”; she never learned how to play.

It isn’t just the date that plunged me down memory lane. We just learned that friends of ours had to put their dog down the other day. It brought back memories of what we went through with C. How much we loved that neurotic little dog. How difficult it was to see her suffering. How we tried and tried to bring her back to good health. To no avail. How hard it was to finally make the decision we knew was the right one.

It hurt. Bad.

Our hearts go out to our friends Tim and Lisa who we know are suffering as they struggle to get through this very difficult, painful time.

I’m very thankful to have such great dogs in our life. Having Meg, aka Crazy Girl, and Belle just makes life fuller. I can’t imagine life without dogs. I’ve given them and will continue to give them both extra hugs and kisses today. Losing a dog just makes you love the ones you are still blessed to have even more.

Speaking of thankful… I can’t NOT mention Belle’s foster parents, Michelle and Chris Falkinburg, who helped bring Belle into our lives. I know they still wish they’d kept Belle for themselves because she is such a little jewel. That’s the hardest part of fostering. An article in the recent American Brittany Rescue newsletter about this aspect of foster parenting ended with, “If it helps anyone, remember we are helping some families heal as well as the Britts.”

So, Michelle (who I know reads this Blog, desperate for news of Belle), thanks for making our family whole again. We really, REALLY love our new little girl.

I’m trying not to get too excited. We’re only supposed to get 2-3 inches. But my girls had so much fun last week and we only had one inch!

I had fun watching them, of course.

I hope we get dumped on! C’mon, wish us lots of snow. (-:

There was lots of bird action in our backyard today. Instead of posting them all one by one on my Blog, I posted them on Flickr and embedded them below for easier viewing.

I hope you enjoy them. Let me know if you have a favorite.

You know, I could rename this Blog The Dogs’ Life and it would be totally appropriate. Sometimes it feels as if the dogs have taken over. They haven’t. But it is winter, I’m sick (still), and there’s just not a lot of other stuff happening that’s worth blogging about.

Although here’s an interesting fact Hubby pointed out yesterday… this is the first time in two years I’ve gotten sick from a source other than one of the grandchildren.

I did manage to catch some interesting pics yesterday, which I’ll share here for your entertainment. It’s a bit of a hodgepodge of images, but I believe you’ll find them interesting.

“Mom. I’m boooooored.”

“Um, me, too, Mom. Are you going to sit on that chair under those blankets all day? Huh?”

“C’mon, Mom. Look! There’re all kinds of critters out there!” (Note: I have a feeling our sliding glass door will be perpetually dirty for years. It’s my fault. A full birdbath and bird feeders will do this when you live with two bird dogs.)

Wondering what kind of critters she is referring to? Birds mostly. See for yourself.

There are Dark-eyed Juncos (above, on top of feeder; that’s a Tufted Titmouse in the feeder).

Tufted Titmice in action.

At least one White-breasted Nuthatch.

And squirrels.

Oh yeah, there are Blue Jays, too

It’s been quite interesting. There have been some other visitors here today, which I’ll try to get pics of between naps if I can.

Let me know if these animal pics bore you.

By “us” I mean my dogs and me. The “much” I’m referring to is snow.

To be quite honest, today didn’t start out so great. I have a cold. It started late last night. I felt like crap this morning AND I had a work project due.

Once I had fed the dogs, ingested some much-needed coffee and got the work processes rolling, I decided to head downstairs for a breakfast break.

That’s when I noticed that it was snowing. Snowing! Big, fat flakes.

I LOVE snow. I especially love it when it is unexpected. Even if I had watched the weather forecast, I would’ve been surprised. They were calling for snow showers. This morning’s event wasn’t a shower. It was coming down hard.

“Girls,” I said excitedly. “It’s snowing. Wanna go out?”

Meg, not being a morning dog, wasn’t very excited. Until she got outside and Belle got her going. Then she was running so fast even her old, heavy ears were flying.

We only got about an inch of snow. And it only lasted for a couple of hours. But those couple of hours were fun. Wanna see how much fun? Check out the SNOW DOGS on my Picasa site.

Once I get rid of this cold and start feeling human again, I’m going to do the snow dance. I am ready for some major snow. Doesn’t the Blizzard of ’09 sound like fun? C’mon, doesn’t it?