SAINTS

here are my highlights of a great, great day.

1. the barn yard rain/sun shelter is up and beautiful, the only thing left is to plywood and shingle the roof.

2. petunia’s rejected house is so very cute now all decked out in white with purple trim.

3. FINALLY the rafters in the outside chicken pen are painted cuz that has been bugging me for months.

4. the duke people ordered 10 large pizza’s from panago…our saintly ones are quite familiar with that box…there were ALOT of pizza thieves in our back yard today.

5. ellie mae went bezerke with the white fence painting crew, she was after those paint trays and snout deep in paint snorkling as fast as she could. mo tried to wrestle her out, ellie got mad and started screaming to beat the band and the fight was on…mo won, yay mo! ellie is now a pink and white pig.

6. copper asleep on top of the picnic table just in case the pizza came back.

7. 2 little girls chasing a 350 pound pig loose in the back yard with all the food, “ellie come, come ellie…” in their very sweet childish voices…we really needed a cattle prod.

8. half a dozen dogs surrounding and sitting in front of a backhoe begging cuz the back hoe driver was eating some of their pizza.

9. a dozen dogs all asleep in the backyard grass at the end of one of the very best days of their entire lives.

10…and my very favorite…tiny 18 yr old tom, the chicken killer, at the chicken fence barking his head off for them to come where he could reach them cuz he was hungry…our smallest chicken is twice the size of tom…but his appitite is big.

THANK YOU SPECTRA ENERGY FOR A VERY WONDERFUL DAY!!!!!!! (next year they want to build us a dock for the pond!!!)

 

big day…my apologies for continuing to write duke energy when it is now spectra energy (duke is easier to remember)…apparently there are 21 employees, spouses and children arriving in about an hour. i have to run into town and grab some paintbrushes and trays so if it stays dry long enough, the kids can paint while the adults build.

plan B if it downpours is to clean out the garage…i hope it doesn’t rain cuz i am not prepared in my head to figure out the stuff in the garage yet.

dex had a quiet night, i am just waiting for him to wake up and get up so i can see if there is any damage from his seizure last night, his poor legs split in a really awkward and unnatural position on him in the beginning before i got him over onto his side so i am afraid he might be sore today.

boo slept curled up next to me all night. i only got one half-assed bite on my forearm for petting her at the wrong millisecond this morning.

ben survived his first lonely night. i got him out for several pee’s and a poop this morning so hopefully he is good in there for awhile cuz i will be busy.

nicole…if you are reading this before you come…we need to set up the tables and the big blue shelter asap this morning so there is a dry place for people to go to and rest.

ok…off i go to town.

boo is home from the vets. she is a bit choked over the whole shaved lion look but oh well. i had them look at her mouth while she was in and it was starting to get sore again so they gave her another depo injection which is good that she got it before she was too bad. the last one didn’t even last 3 full months, hmmm.

frodo is missing. he was around at noon and then with all the comings and goings of machines and monsoons, we have lost him. i am hoping he is just holed up somewhere snug and dry, oblivious to the fact that he is freaking me out!

dexter had a large grand-mal seizure about an hour ago. this is not good. he is sleeping in my room right now.

ben has arrived and has the whole center dog room to himself. i put tyra in with him for awhile cuz he was lonely and she had beaten the crap out of him 8 years ago so he was very polite with her and glad of her company. tyra told me quite clearly that she is tired of being the babysitter/social director for ill mannered puppies and cranky old farts so i let her back with me after ben went to sleep. CAUTION to all volunteers, watch the doors going in and out, he is not to be anywhere near the cats or other dogs except tyra for now. when ben arrived, his mom had harley with them in the car (4 yr old labx that i never met) he had been returned 24 hours after his craiglist adoption and was possibly heading off to the SPCA. i wouldn’t look at him cuz there is no more room here so i waited by the gate for ben and stayed away from the car. i have enough guilt in my life, don’t need to imagine a sad dog left behind in a cage. ben is sad enough and he has couches and a TV.

the guys are still working outside to repair the fields and gravel paths. the posts are cemented in for the shelter that is being built tomorrow and i felt so bad for all of them with this crappy weather.

please god, let the sun shine tomorrow.

mo’s comment about the best laid plans of mice and men became a reality this week (even tho she couldn’t actually remember the real saying). the mud, the machines, the weather and now time itself has conspired against us. going to hell in a hand basket pretty darn quick. and this is where i have to watch myself, my natural inclination and life long pattern of stubborness and let’s get this fixed mentality. which is why we are in a mess now. last week we were coasting along just fine with a muddy, soggy riding ring and now, that ring is almost empty and waiting for it’s new dry surface but the rest of the property is in a sad state of affairs. this is the problem of blindly going where i have not gone before….the learning curve is a bit tricky cuz i can’t see where we are going until we get there. except i do know the rain is coming and we are decidedly hooped.

ahhh well, caution is now the key word…go slow, think it thru, and plan it in tiny clear steps and one day what i see inside my head will be…..  a small world free of freaking mud with green grass and a small gravel path running thru it.

yay joe!!

not sure if i have help here today or not, i think i do but can’t actually remember. i was tired this morning and didn’t want to get out of bed, i am too old for 3 am mindless meanderings. tugs hears the alarm i am ignoring and starts to cry.apparently he is the good morning cop who thinks everyone should jump when the alarm goes off. personally i could have ignored it for another half an hour if he wasn’t so concerned with the rules.

i am taking over the barn for today thru the rest of the week so greg can concentrate on moving mountains around here. we only have til friday to get that stuff moved and spread plus the posts in for the shelter that the duke people are helping us to build. with the weather taking a turn for the worse, timing is becoming a bit of an issue. we really need an army of those bobcat machines and people who can man them too.

little callie (aka peanut) goes to the vet for her spay today. i hope she is not too scared, but who am i kidding, all of them are terrified, even the ones who aren’t little and scared of most of the world. deep breath peanut, this is the last bad thing and then you are done with the nasties for a very long time. life can be good and kind and safe. thx to nicole, and now leila and sheila for being there for her to help her get there.

i better get moving, there is alot to do and come hell or high water i have to get to the post office to mail in my income tax, which is sort of late.

 

tonight i am thinking about the dogs, cats and horses i turned away lately.. i wonder if they are ok. ah well, i really wonder if any of this even matters at all. maybe life isn’t supposed to be fixed. maybe it is meant to be full of pain and sorrow. maybe we only have hearts because they can be battered. maybe that is why animals are alot like us, because they can be hurt badly inside themselves too.

i think sometimes i not only feel responsible too much, but i feel guilty as well. my life is too good, too easy, too free of terrible things like being tossed away or of being forgotten. i have many here who look and see me.

anyway, i am glad i am awake. tyra just got up from her bed and she is sore. she runs too hard when she is pissed at phoebe and i think she hurt herself tonight. i keep forgetting she is getting old now too. i just gave her, her first dose ever of pain medication. funny, i give it so much to all of the others and even to tally when his arthritis is bad, but never to tyra, she has never needed it before. i don’t like that she needs it tonight.

tyra gives up alot. she has given up alot for her whole entire life. she never had just one whole person to herself because of all of the others who need a place to stay. she shares me with not only all the other animals, but with all of the people who come here as well. i hope in her next life she finds someone to love her better than me.

i wonder when all of this is over and all of us have passed away, if there ever was a point to this at all. was laying with dexter in the field tonight and rubbing his belly while he wheezed and rolled really all that important? so what if he died 6 months ago in a city pound? who was it most important to that he come here, the people who found him? the people who have met and loved him here? or was it the most important to me?

he is going to die soon. that is not going to change. 6 months ago in a pound as a stray, or here as a saint rolling in the field for a time, really, in the big scheme of things, what difference does it really make? are all of the dexters of the world, worth the loss of tyra’s one true friend. she looks at me sometimes and i know what she is thinking…” see me? i am here too”…one day she won’t be here anymore and i will grieve not only her loss but what the rest of us had stolen away from her.

everyone else here was a rescue. they came here to what saints is. but tyra was chosen and brought to my home while i still had a home and not a shelter. and tyra was the true beginning of the end of that life, she made me see how many there were like her and has made this great journey with me. and what did she get out of all of this? not very much i think.

sad thoughts tonight for my very best friend who has spent her life waiting for me.

first my contented, awwww, warm and fuzzy sighs.

tom sleeping on my lap after sharing my tuna sandwich for dinner. he wakes up and spies the empty plate on the back of the couch. he heaves himself further up in my arms to reach the plate to see if there is any sandwich left. he disappointedly lays back down with his chin resting in the middle of the plate and goes back to sleep. i guess he wanted to keep the plate close to his tongue in case it magically filled up again while he was sleeping. gosh he is adorable.

bleary eyed, tiny, crippled, dying duck sounding sweetpea digging around in the giant cat box for treats, finishes her snack and asks to please be helped up onto the couch next to me. i hold my breath cuz she reeks and place her at the end of the couch down near my feet that probably smell as bad as she currently does. she sits there looking at me in bleary eyed adoration and promptly grabs my foot and starts humping it. ok, she is so utterly old, wrecked, destroyed, and not the least bit adorable with her thinning, twisted hair, her wrinkled, bumpy, hanging mammary tumours and her bent little tail and eeeeyeeewww! she is humping my freaking foot. yet despite looking a bit of a horror  she knows, inside and out that for some reason, i think she is like the cutest little dog in the world. i adore her as much as she adores me. weird, anyway, i made her stop cuz that was too gross even for me. she is like a female, extreme geriatric egor.

more deep sighs for our not going so well road building. yesterdays bobcat tires were bald and destroyed the lower pasture with all the stuck in the mud times. greg put in a 12 hour day today again trying to repair the damage.  i think we better just forget it and get the road in cuz that mud pit will not get better til we re-seed the entire field. the rental company brought a better cat up today that actually has some tread left on the tires. the riding ring is scraped out and now there is a huge mountain of sludge to move down to the muddy pits below. i don’t envy greg for the next couple of days, poor guy, that is literally a ton of work and more long days. maybe not one of my better ideas, ooops.

new incoming…long story, a blast from the past which someday when i feel like typing alot, i might just tell. but come friday, saints welcomes ben on a trial. i know ben from many years ago, he was quite the dog then and hopefully now that he is old, he will be alot less of quite the dog. but i am not holding my breath. he was a potato ed in a much bigger body with both eyes still working and attached.

sometimes i sigh so deeply, my toes turn inside out.

nudge goes to the vet today. she is still pooping everyday, but i don’t think enough. she has been here for about a month and her history shows that she gets fully impacted every 3 months or so and needs multiple enema’s to clear her out…so my plan is a check at the end of month one and see how full is her colon. enquiring minds want to know. (altho i bet nudge doesn’t!)

boo is going in on friday for a shave. she actually managed pretty good since the last one since her mouth as been relatively fine. but…she is starting to matt up and she is in a crankly “i am going to bite you hard” kinda mood whenever i try to run a brush thru her so i will keep my fingers and she can sleep while she loses her hair. sounds fair to me (altho i bet boo thinks it sucks!)

tom and sweetpea are about to be rudely awakened, ok not that rudely. i gently peel the quilt off of them and kiss their little heads and tell them to wake up sleepy heads, time to rise and shine. (they think rising and shining is over rated!)

greg was looking at my washer again this morning and the awake crew thought we had slipped out so all of a sudden there began the protesting chorus led by maude and wilbur (who may be one of the smallest but is definately one of the loudest) i said HEY! shut up and stop that! and they did. (but they didn’t want to stop, they were just hitting their full voice)

ahhh well…better go feed the barn, run the dogs, and sigh, i guess i better get dressed…i wish i could wear PJ’s all day long. they are comfortable, they actually match and they wash and dry really quick too without a wrinkle in sight.

 

one should rent bobcats more often because one can find missing in action 2nd septic tanks in an unknown location in one’s riding ring. greg found the missing tank when the cat’s wheel broke thru the cement lid…yahooo! now we can hook up the plumbing in both the shops! bye bye porta-potty!

three very nice new volunteers came by today…they took laundry home!!!!! i really like these folks ALOT!

the dogs had a couple of good runs today and all are already crashed for the night. they ate most of my mac and cheese and i am still hungry. sigh, i don’t dare get anything else to eat or they will all wake up again and want some. a dozen dogs make for a fairly reliable diet plan.

eva gave me a bunch of slightly icky, slimey fruits/vegies that weren”t good enough for the bunnies for ellie’s dinner tonight. she tossed them right out of her bowl…she is a high class pig and only eats grade A produce. next time eva can chuck her own cast offs. how many pigs let you wrap your arms around them and kiss them all over? i bet ellie is the only one, i love her.

percy found a new playmate today who is even tougher than he is. it was the bobcat. greg said that apparently percy likes to head butt thousand pound, solid steel, earth moving machines. at least the bobcat doesn’t run away from him like the rest of us do when he is in a playful mood. since percy lets me hug and kiss him also, i love him too.

oh heck, i even love that sod swinger and there is no way he would let me kiss him even if i wanted to, which i don’t!