Hi Everybody! Old boring X is back!

Thanks for understanding my need for some solitude in the last couple of weeks. First off, I appreciate everybody’s kind words about the loss of our pets. Things are getting better here. We have looked at a lot of pictures of Lily in her happier days, and it has helped. We are getting better at remembering the good times, although, it is still difficult at times. But, things are doing better.

I am getting a lot better physically, too. In the past year, when I have been in Windows Live Land so much, I was tied to an oxygen machine, and had to stay in my lazy boy chair all day, every day. I don’t have a lap top. I was using my computer sitting in my lazy boy chair all this time. Being online was my only contact with the outside world while my hubby was at work since I couldn’t go anywhere.

Now that I’m feeling a lot better physically, and now that it is spring, it is time for X to go outside and play more often. My lung disease has improved a LOT and I am able to do more and more every day. Being cooped up in my house when I was sick actually made me more sick. Going outside and playing in the backyard with my pets is making me stronger. I only need my oxygen at night now, so getting around is a lot easier.

Another thing is, my regular doctor and my lung doctor keep pestering me to give away my birds. Parrot-type birds have protective feather dust that is bad for my lungs, according to the doctors. I think it was the mold, and NOT the birds that made me sick. But, still, being cooped up with feather dust all winter probably was not helpful, either. Taking my birds outside, and visiting with them there, is better for me physically.

There is NO WAY that I am going to get rid of my birds, so I just have to be wise about it. Now that I feel better, I have taken over the job of cleaning the bird cages. Keeping the cages clean, and taking the birds outside on nice days to give them spray-bottle baths (which they love) is good for my lung recovery, now that it is nice enough to go outside.

It’s going to take a lot of time to get caught up responding to all of my friend requests and private messages I’ve received lately, (if I get caught up.) Please know that I appreciate all the posts and private messages about the loss of my pets and I appreciate hearing about all of your own pet experiences over your lives. It was a big help to me and my hubby to have so much support from people who understand how it is to love a pet.

Unfortunately, at this time, I am unable to get the strength emotionally to respond to all messages personally. Just know that I really appreciate hearing from you all, and it was a big source of comfort.

Like I said, right now, it’s not healthy for me to be inside on the computer so much. I need to be out in the sunshine moving around to keep getting stronger. Besides, it was a long, cold winter, and things are getting green outside. It is my favorite time of the year. I’m going to be spending a lot of time in my backyard with my dogs, birds, bunnies. Besides, the fishpond that my hubby built me several years ago is starting to grow new lily leaves, and I found a brand new baby goldfish that I have never seen before. I love to sit outside and marvel at God’s creation. I especially like to watch the wild birds as they start getting ready to have families.

So, here’s the deal, X is back in Windows Live Land, but I probably won’t be as available as I have been previously. Being on the computer all day while I was sick made me get cabin fever. Now that I have the option to go out and play, I will be doing that more often.

Besides, my house needs a lot of work. While I was so sick with the lung disease, I couldn’t do anything around the house. My poor hubby had to work all day, plus take care of me, plus do all the shopping, cooking, laundry, and everything else. Now that I have been feeling better physically, I’m gradually starting to help with the housework. I am slowly but surely turning into a Housewife, which I have never, ever been. I have always been the self-sufficient career girl until the pesky lung disease which made me lose my job, and is keeping me from being able to get another one.

So, what have I missed?

X

Goodbye Lily. We will miss you very much…

Our little bitty doggie Lily, died, last night. As I have done in the past, I’m going to use my blog to deal with my feelings and write a tribute to her:

We first saw Lily a couple of years ago in the waiting room of a vet’s office, (not our usual vet, but a bird specialist that we had taken my cockatiel, Penny, to).

She was literally skin and bones. She was a stray or abandoned and a couple had found her and brought her in for medical treatment. After that, they were going to try to find her a home as they already had a houseful of dogs.

My hubby had been wanting a little bitty dog to add to our family, and I had agreed that when we saw one who needed us that we would take it home. We immediately looked at each other and knew that this pitiful little doggie was going home with us. On the way home, we stopped at Petsmart to get her a leash. I was afraid we were going to get arrested for not feeding her, she was literally that skinny.

Lily came home with us, and gradually gained weight, and we found out more about her. It didn’t take us long to find out that she was totally deaf. Then, we realized she was practically blind. Our regular vet told us that she was probably at least 13 years old. My hubby and I realized that God picked us to take care of this little doggie and let her live out her old age years in a loving home.

Lily was a Rottweiler trapped in a little doggie’s body. She was only a foot and a half long, but in her mind she was ferocious. She never let her size get in the way of her attitude. But, she had a wide range of emotions. For some reason, this little doggie loved to get trapped, and let her daddy (my hubby) rescue her.

Here she is stuck totally inside all four legs of a stool, waiting for her rescue. Lily loved getting in positions for her Daddy to rescue her. She would (intentionally) get herself stuck in the funniest places. One time, she crawled into my crochet basket and got stuck. She was so cute, and it was just her size, that my crochet basket became her little bed.

Each time she got stuck, my hubby would “rescue” her, pick her up and baby her, saying: oh, did the poor baby get stuck?  Well, of course, the "poor baby" learned to get herself stuck more and more often so she could get my hubby to cuddle her on cue. My hubby was wrapped around her little paw. She loved being babied by my hubby, and my hubby was the right man for the job. Lily was my hubby’s baby.

At first, she was a happy little doggie. First thing in the morning, when she felt the best, she would run outside with our other dogs. We called her our bucking bronco. Her front end and back end were so far away from each other that she looked like a see saw, alternate ends going up and down, bucking like a wild horse. She would make us laugh out loud.

Then, one day, she couldn’t get up. All of a sudden, her back end did not work. We took her to the vet and got steroids to hopefully allow her to walk again. But, in the meanwhile, we had to loop her leash under her back end, to hold it up, while she walked with her front legs.

She gradually regained the ability to walk, but she was never the same after that. She never was our little bucking bronco again. Once in a while, we would see one or two bucks when she would try to run, but it was not like it used to be.

Then, recently, Lily started going downhill fast. My hubby and I agonized over what what the right thing to do. In addition to being blind and deaf, she was also now incontinent and confused. She would walk in circles constantly, plus her hair was falling out. I called our vet’s office a couple of weeks ago, and asked about what was right for her, wondering if she was having a happy life. I was told to think about her point of view: What would we want if we were in the same situation?

So, my hubby and I talked about it some more and decided that we would just try to keep her as comfortable as possible and wait for the inevitable.

As she got more and more confused, her circles got smaller and smaller, and more erratic – rather that walk around the whole room, her circles were down to three feet across. It was hard not to trip on her, and the other dogs were frustrated that she did not understand the rules of dog society as she would walk right into them, or across their bed while they were sleeping. They would growl at her, to warn her, but being deaf, it did not help. The situation was difficult.

A few weeks ago, we had to decide to just keep her leash tied next to a doggie bed, for her safety and ours. As she always loved naps, this worked out pretty good. Between walks outside to try to get her to go potty, and breakfast and dinner, Lily was usually on her bed, asleep. At night, she slept in her basket, within reach of my hubby, and during the day, she slept on a doggie bed in the living room, where most of the action is during the day while my hubby is at work.

My hubby and I still didn’t like that she had to be tied up. Sometimes, we would let her have the laundry room all to herself, so she wouldn’t have to be on a leash, but she would just walk in circles until she fell asleep. It was not much of a life for Lily. Still, we worried whether we were doing the right thing. When we take in a pet who needs us, we let it live the rest of its life with us.

I did not feel right about artificially cutting that life short unnaturally. I have had two dogs put to sleep, one who had cancer, and one who became allergic to her own blood. They were both suffering, but I never got over it, and I didn’t want to do it again unless I had to. Lily was confused and confined, but she wasn’t suffering, I reasoned.

But, all in all, we knew she was dying. We prayed that when death came, it would come all at once, so she wouldn’t have to suffer.

So, last night, my hubby put Lily outside to go potty before bed. When he went back out to get her, she looked lifeless. My hubby cried “Please help me” and I ran to see what was happening. We both tried mouth to mouth resuscitation, but she was gone. (When I had my dog, Bo, put to sleep when she had immune mediated hemolytic anemia, I had seen the “light go out” in her eyes. I saw the same thing in Lily. I knew she was gone….)

My hubby and I both get very attached to our pets, some pets more than others. I knew that Lily was my hubby’s baby, so I had to be strong for him. I did not let myself feel any feelings last night. I had to take care of my hubby. I had to be the strong one as we went out in the rain and buried Lily….

Goodbye Lily, we will miss you very much.

X

Pictures of our short time with Lily:

	Lily in her pink winter jacket checking out the snow in our backyard.
	Lily enjoying a ride around the yard in the wheel barrow courtesy of my hubby.
	Lily in the sunshine

Lily, the bucking bronco, with her ears flying, trying to catch up with the bigger dogs. Belty, black dog, and Nicki with the pointy ears are twice as big as Lily. With Lily in the air, in mid stride, the picture makes her look like one of the big dogs. She’d like that…

“If there are no dogs in Heaven, then when I die I want to go where they went.” Will Rogers

(edited to add: I looked up when we first met Lily. It was April 28, 2006, so we shared our life with Lily for just under three years. Here’s the blog I wrote when we first met Lily)

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When it rains, it pours… Pet problems…

(I am way behind on answering my PMs, and I am way behind on accepting network requests. I have not been online the last couple of days. I apologize, but I will eventually get back to everybody.)

We have been having several pet issues this week. Last time I blogged, I wrote about Pipsqueak, our lovebird, dying. But, the day before Pipsqueak died, my cockatiel, Penny, had a stroke (or something), that scared the dickens out of me.

Penny:

Penny spends a lot of her time with me. If I am in my lazy boy chair, like now, typing or watching a movie or crocheting, Penny is on my shoulder or on a perch on the armrest, or running back and forth the two.

Well, a couple of days ago, while Penny was on the armrest perch, her right wing shot up into the air and stayed there. At the same time, her right leg collapsed.

I picked her up and put her on my chest while I examined her. She could not walk, she just tipped over. It was very, very scary for me. While I held Penny with one hand, I called my hubby with the other hand and asked him to pray for Penny. After we prayed, we visited more on the phone. Penny is my constant companion, and it was very stressful for me to think she was about to die.

The thing with birds, they hardly ever have any symptoms. Usually, the first hint that something is wrong is when they die. I was thinking that Penny was going to die right then and there.

As my hubby and I talked on the phone, I was describing what Penny was doing. My hubby works just around the corner and he was going to rush home and take me and Penny to the vet. The bird vet is just a few doors down from where he works. We could have gotten her to the vet in just a few minutes.

But, whatever happened, it went away. Gradually, her wing went back into place, and she gained control of her right side. Suddenly, she was all back to normal, just walking around on my chest, and then she ran down my arm to get back on her perch. The whole incident just lasted five minutes or so.

I told my hubby that she was all back to normal, and that I would just keep an eye on her.

So what happened? Was her foot asleep? Was it a charlie horse? Did she have a mini-stroke? I don’t know. She is her usual self now, like nothing ever happened. But, I know that Penny is a very old bird. I know she doesn’t have much time, anyway.

Lily:

In addition to the bird problems, we also have three quite elderly dogs. Our oldest dog, Lily, is getting worse and worse in the last few days. We took her in just two years ago. She had been abandoned.

She was already totally deaf and mostly blind when we got her. Now she is getting incontinent, and confused and just wanders around aimlessly. We’ve been thinking hard about what is best for her, wondering whether she is having a happy life.

Homeless Pet Town

My house is where homeless pets come to live out the rest of their lives. Most of our pets come from sad situations. The cute baby animals don’t  have much of a problem finding homes, but the old, handicapped, abandoned and mistreated pets come to live with us. Whenever we get a new pet, it is a pet who needs us, one that wouldn’t have much of a chance otherwise.

The sad thing is, that when you take in the old, sick, mistreated animals, they don’t tend to live a very long time after they come here. That never gets any easier for me. But, I just have to think of the good times that the pets got to have that they wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Fred and Ginger – a Success Story:

My two best survivors right now are two handicapped parakeets that have lived here for several years. They were abandoned on a doorstep, literally.

A parrot owner had found a shoebox on her porch with two featherless baby parakeets with crippled legs. I happened to be at the pet shop when the babies were brought in, and the pet shop manager asked me to take them.

They had to be hand fed, but they grew up just fine. Now, they are both in love. I have six parakeets besides Shelly who was widowed when Pipsqueak died. The six are in three committed relationships.

The two handicapped parakeets can’t get around much, but their mates sit beside them and lean their heads on their necks to snuggle. It’s the cutest thing. I can’t get close enough to take a picture because they get scared easily and move, but it is so sweet.

Their mates compensate for their physical limitations, and everybody is happy. (That is Ginger in the picture. You can see his leg sticking off to the side, instead of being next to the other one)

I am happy I am able to give happy lives to needy pets, but it is very sad when one dies, and that happens way to often around here.

Sorry this is so long. If you made it this far down, thank you. I use my blog as a diary to talk out things sometimes, like today.

X

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Goodbye Pipsqueak. We will miss you very much…

My lovebird, Pipsqueak, died some time during the night. Writing a tribute to my lost pets is a way I have found to deal with my grief.

I first saw Pipsqueak in the “sick room” of a local pet shop. Pipsqueak had been injured terribly. I was told that he had been attacked by other lovebirds. The top of his head and his neck were covered with large wounds, and he had a lot of feathers missing. I took Pipsqueak home to help him recuperate and make him a member of the family.

I had another lovebird at the time named Sunshine. After a long period of introduction is separate cages nearby, Pipsqueak and Sunshine got to be good friends and I could trust them together in the same cage.Lovebirds, despite the name, can be very violent towards other birds that they didn’t grow up with.

Soon, Sunshine was tending Pipsqueak’s wounds, nibbling off the edges of the healing scabs. They were a very sweet couple together. Sadly, Pipsqueak outlived Sunshine all too soon, and he was alone in a cage.

Then, Pipsqueak found out how to open his cage door, and he would go next door to the parakeet cage to let himself in. He just enjoyed being with the parakeets, and behaved himself most of the time. Sometimes, he would chase the parakeets around and pull their tails and try to bite their feet. So, I kept having to put him back next door in a cage by himself.

But, he kept going to visit the parakeets, and I would keep an eye on him and let him visit with them as long as he behaved himself. Eventually, he got to be special friends with Shelly, one of the parakeets. I watched them together a lot, and then decided that they could live together in Pipsqueak’s cage. Pipsqueak never acted aggressive towards Shelly.

In the last few months, I’ve been blogging about Pipsqueak and Shelly deciding to start a family. With lovebirds, you can’t tell if they are male or female, but, after seeing Pipsqueak and Shelly mating, I knew for sure that Pipsqueak was a boy.

Shelly started laying eggs, and Pipsqueak was always at her side watching over her.

But, then I started noticing two sizes of eggs, one size in Shelly’s food bowl where she laid her eggs, and slightly larger ones around the cage. Eventually, my hubby decided that Pipsqueak and Shelly were both girls.

After a while, I had to agree with him. There were too many eggs, more than one bird could lay. For some reason or another, two girl birds fell in love, and their hormones got them both to start laying eggs at the same time.

I was wondering how all those eggs could come out of those little, bitty birds. Pipsqueak’s eggs were so big that four of them were about as big as his body. (as you can see, we never got used to Pipsqueak being a girl)

Soon, Pipsqueak and Shelly both were happily sitting on eggs. Of course, they were never going to hatch, but they were happy, so we let them keep the eggs. 

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So, an hour ago, I noticed that Pipsqueak had died some time during the night. I called my hubby and he came home from work. Because God put him in a job that is just around the corner, he was home in just a couple of minutes. He buried Pipsqueak for me, held my hand while I cried my eyes out, and then went back to work.

So now, I am dealing with my sadness by writing an obituary of Pipsqueak.

I counted the eggs – there are 14 eggs between the two of them. I suppose Pipsqueak’s little body couldn’t handle it.

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Pipsqueak was a feisty little guy. He never did get totally tame. He would let me pick him up, but he would bite me each time. But, once I had Pipsqueak in my hand, he liked to snuggle. Several times a week, I would spend quality time with Pipsqueak, trying to tame him.

Pipsqueak loved getting wrapped up in a paper towel like a burrito, with just his little head sticking out. Once he was in that little burrito, he would nibble on the paper towel and close his little eyes while I petted his little head with my thumb.

If I was in the middle of something, like laying here in my Lazy Boy chair typing, I would sometimes put him, burrito and all, down my shirt. For some reason, the little guy just loved being down my shirt. I would peak down at him and he would just be in his burrito nibbling the paper towel. He could walk right out of that burrito if he wanted, but he didn’t want to.

But, once out of his burrito, he was a feisty little guy. He never would get on my finger, I just always had to carry him in my hand against my chest after I took him out of his cage.

I enjoyed spending time with Pipsqueak. He was a fun, yet feisty, member of our family.

Good bye, Pipsqueak. We will miss you very much.

X 

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