YAY for the Weekend!

I have absolutely nothing planned for this weekend and that's the way I like it! Believe it or not, we just got cable at our house yesterday! We have had no satellite dish or anything for years. We just didn't want to pay for something you could get for free. We have two big screen plasma TV's with a HD antenna on on top of our house. The quality of the picture is amazing! It's actually better than cable because the signal doesn't have to travel through the cables or something (no idea). Anyway, I think I'm going to plop myself on the couch and watch Rachael Ray and the History Channel for hours. I may not even leave the house.

I also got a new laptop last week and with the new cable we now have wireless Internet! I feel so "new-age". I can sit on the couch with my laptop and blog away! What fun! I may hit a yard sale or two. Reynie has inspired me to go out and find some old chairs. I love the look of those beat up old kitchen table chairs and I have the perfect spot in my house for one. I searched the adds for some close by yard sales and found some estate sales at old homes just down the street. Who knows what I will end up with!

I hope everybody has a safe and fabulous weekend! I hope I get to read about lots of fun stuff on Monday! Toot-A Loo!!

Penny aka "Tiny Dog"

Last but not least, you are going to meet Penny. Penny has only been with us for about six months. Despite her short time with the clan she has really become our “little princess”. She has an entire wardrobe consisting of everything from raincoats to dresses to hoodies (which are her favorite). She has her own little pink princess dish for her special food. Even goes to work with me every day where she has her own little pink bed to relax in as Mommy works.
Penny came to us under strange circumstances. Two children (maybe 10 or 12 years old) walked up in the yard one day holding this tiny dog that they thought was a puppy. I, being so incredibly smart, new that this puppy was a much older dog. They said she had been dumped out on the road and their parents would not let them keep her so they were trying to find her a home. Well, I’m a sucker and told the heart-broken children that I would keep her and try and find where she belonged. I just did not believe the story about her being dumped out. She is a full blooded Chihuahua and a Senior. Who could do such a thing?

The following day I put up signs about a lost dog, called all the pounds in the surrounding counties and posted an ad on Petfinder.com. The ad ran for 4 weeks and I called the pounds every other day to see if anyone was looking for their lost baby. No Luck. No one ever responded to the lost dog signs and I never got a phone call from the ad posted on the Internet.
Jason didn’t want to keep her. He was adamit about finding her home or finding a place for her to live. I was adamit about keeping her and I was NEVER going to give in. I had wanted a Chihuahua ever since I fell in love with one of my best friends. His name is Tad and he is the cutest thing I had ever seen. So tiny and bouncy and lovable….I had to have one of my own. But how? I am so against buying from backyard breeders and pet stores and the rescues are impossible to deal with when you already have FIVE other dogs. I really think God sent her to me because 3 weeks later my sweet Missy died. He knew I was going to go crazy (I did anyway) if I didn't have something else to focus on. I love this little dog and she LOVES me.

I think we were meant to be!

I've Benn Tagged!

Alright, this is my first time to be "tagged". God, Do You Hear This Southern Girl Rambling to list six weird things about myself. She played by the rules so I will too!

1. I totally pick at my toenails. Maybe that's more gross than weird!
2. I cannot stand the smell of toothpaste! And if someone else is brushing their teeth in my presence I swear I will puke! The slobber and ickyness of it all mixed together just kills me! It o
doesn't bother me when I am brushing my own teeth, thank goodness, but when other folks do.....YUCK!
3. I have a tiny little gap between my two front teeth and I always do this weird thing were I try to blow out the food that gets stuck there when I eat. Dental floss maybe? To easy!
4. I have to have leather furniture but I don't want to sit on leather. I have to put a blanket down. Go figure.
5. I am obsessed with changing the sheets on my bed. And thanks to Kari, I have to have at least a 350 thread count.
6. I used to be TERRIFIED to fly even though my dad is a pilot. One day, I just got over it and now I fly all the time.

I would tag some folks but I am so new at this that I don't know anyone to tag! I hope everybody doesn't think I'm too weird now!

Wordless Wednesday: St Lucia Rainbow

Hanz Dog

Oh, my sweet pitiful Hanz Dog. Hanz has been around since the first day I met Jason. He was born June 26, 1996. The man that raised him until he was six months old was not really a dog person. He bought Hanz because he liked the appearance of a Weimaraner. He new nothing about the breed, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but let's just say Weims are a handful. He had no patience with Hanz and according to Jason's mother (her boyfriend at the time was Hanz's owner) he was not very nice to him. His mother brought Hanz to Jason when he was a six month old lanky legged puppy with no manners to speak of. If you don't know anything about Weims, here's a little info: THEY ARE BRILLIANT AND HIGH STRUNG AS HELL!!!! Thank goodness Jason was out of work for six months (due to an accident) when he got Hanz because all he did was train, train, train. He trained him to "go to bed" (when he was in trouble he was told this and he would go to Jason's bed and sit there until he was told to come out), play dead, sit, stay and lay down. He also was taught hand signals for all of the commands.

I could go on for hours about this guy. He has done so many crazy things like peeing on my neighbors back to bringing home bread in the middle of the night every time he escaped the fence. I am so afraid he doesn't have much time left with us. He is now blind in one eye, deaf and has arthritis. His balance isn't what it used to be and he sure doesn't have the energy he used to. He has a hard time getting up and down stairs and on occasions his legs will just give out. It's so hard watching him get old knowing what a strong and active dog he was. He still is the center of my husbands life. I don't think Jason will ever love another dog as much as he loves Hanz and when his day comes, I may have to put Jason down with him.

Lady Bug aka "Big Girl"

Lady Bug is another one of our "rescues". My neighbor had seen her on the side of a busy 4 lane highway for several days last October.

She had just had pups and you can see from the picture above that she was starving! My neighbor has a dog that is very shy and does not like the company of other dogs. So she asked me to keep her until she could find her a home. Of course I said yes and She fit right in with all my other hoodlums.

She was very trusting from the start, had the sweetest displacement, and seemed to be a great dog. Needless to say we fell in love pretty fast. My neighbor did all the searching for the owners. She also searched for the puppies she had recently had in the brush on the side of the road where she had seen her those couple of days but to no avail. I was secretly wishing she would not find her owners or a new home. Is was as if she had always been a part of our little clan.

A month or so past and I knew she was mine for sure the day I picked her up from the vet after being spayed. A young vet assistant brought her to the front as I was paying the bill. I was standing around the corner and she could not see me. I said something to the lady at the front desk and that was all it took. She bolted from from the unsuspecting assistant, jerking the leash right out of his hand, rand around the corner and plowed into me. Her tail wagging ferociously and whimpering the whole time. She jumped up and wrapped her front legs around my waist as if she were hugging me. All this because she heard my voice. I hadn't even said her name. I called my neighbor that day and told her to stop looking for her a new home. She was mine.

As you can see, she plumped up in a very short period of time. This is her right after she was spayed. She actually isn't fat. This is just not a very flattering picture :-). She now spends her days chasing squirrels in the back yard, harassing the cats in the neighborhood and slobbering all over me when she gets the chance. She scares everybody to death that comes in contact with her but she is more scared of them. She also has a pink bed.

I just wish I knew what became of the pups.

Ellie aka "Smelly Belly"

My next fur kid I will introduce you to does not have a sob story like the previous baby. As a matter of fact she couldn't survive one day in the "wild". She is the only one I have had since she was a puppy and she is rotten to the core.

We got Ellie three days after Jason and I were married (07-19-2002). Two weeks before the big day we lost one of our other bassets, Sally Girl. She was only two years old. Needless to say Jason and I were devastated. I wanted to call off the wedding and not leave the house for a very long time. But my Dad intervened and talked a little sense into my head and we got married.

We were married in Gatlinburg, TN on a Friday, stayed for a couple of days in a log cabin in the mountains, and were home by Sunday night. During those two weeks after Sally died and before we got married I cried buckets of tears and moped around the house. I never thought I would get over her sudden death. She was a shy little thing and only loved her Daddy and I. She was never friends with a stranger, never mean, just very standoffish. When she died she was surrounded by strangers (she was at the vet) and I could hardly stand to think she was scared because Mommy and Daddy were no where to be found. It took a long time for me to get over that feeling of guilt.

That Monday I had had enough of that lump in my throat. I wanted a puppy to ease the pain. I didn't want to replace Sally, but what better cure for sadness than a stinky little puppy, right? So we drove over to Fayetteville and picked out the CUTEST red and white basset hound and named her Ellie. She was the sweetest, cutest, lovable thing I had ever seen UNTIL we got her home.

She did not stop screaming, I mean SCREAMING, for almost three weeks straight. If she was awake she was screaming. If she was eating, she was screaming with a mouth full of food. If she was pottying, she was screaming. No whining involved. She was actually screaming! It was terrible. It was annoying. It was the worse sound I ever heard. Most folks would have taken her straight back to where she came from but we persevered. After those three weeks of Hell, I guess she finally realized that we weren't so bad and finally shut her mouth.

Ellie rules the nest in our home. That includes us. She is gentle and has a huge personality. For a basset hound she is quite intelligent. She's no Einstein but she holds her own. She has given me 6 and a half years of loyalty and never judges a thing I do. Who could ask for a better friend?