Chuckie, I'm in here!

Chuck woke up about 1:45 last night needing to go out, this isn't too unusual so once I cleared the fog from my brain and realized that he wasn't going to stop the incessant yipping I dragged by ass out of bed and let him outside. He came back in a few minutes later, I gave him a cookie and all seemed well.

Ten minutes later he started again and before I realized what I was doing I hollered at him to GO TO BED. Have to say Jenna didn't really appreciate that, oops. It did wake her up enough that she got up to let him out again (sometimes he forgets he went outside to go and just wanders around).

Sadly this didn't end the Chuckie yipping, he started up again about 20 minutes after Jenna let him in. This time I thought maybe he was in some pain from his arthritis so I got up gave him some aspirin and some hip rubs (aren't I so nice - it was f'in 2:30 in the morning by then). He seemed to calm down so I went back to bed. As soon as I got comfy he started one more time. This time I finally realized what was going on. Chuckie gets lost. If I am in any particular room he tries so follow me but sometimes he doesn't notice and when he realizes that he is alone he starts yipping and freaking out so I have to holler for him and let him know where I am. So for the last trip out of bed last night I went into the kitchen (where Chuckie was on a nice comfy bed already), urged him to get up and follow me to the living room. Then I had him lay down in the living room bed where he usually sleeps. He did a couple of groans and tail thumps and then happily went to sleep for the rest of the night.

We do love the doofy old man but I swear he only has two brain cells and they haven't met each other in a while.

lolcats ....

I didn't make them, but the pic below got on the lolcats vote page a couple of times

Our new Cirque du Soleil act

Cat balancing on head of dog wearing knitted hat

does this modeling gig come with cookies?

well, it isn't a pic of Chuck

but it does impact his life. Harley and the new kitten Amos have decided that they love each other.


"ACK! There is something stuck to my butt!"

Who'd a thunk it? Chuck is fond of the holidays

Merry F'in Christmas!

Start laughing now

Chuck seems to be having some pee issues. The issues being that he can't hold it or forgets to go, or is stubborn old man. So - start giggling now, he gets to wear a belly band.


I ordered an extra large - in blue flame

This has got to be easier than cleaning up pee from the kitchen floor every couple of days. Hopefully it will make Harley happier. When we come home she slinks around all ashamed. I wonder if it is her doing the pee'ing? Perhaps we also need the girl version, the doggy diaper.

This is all so gross. Why do I like dogs? Chuck spent his walk this morning eating all the cat poop in the neighborhood (we live next door to the crazy cat lady who feeds all the ferals). I really wish he would have just peed.

*&$#!@* Time Change

So the old dog doesn't understand the time change thing. He has a schedule and he wants us to stick to it. I think this is actually Jenna's rant more than mine. He bugs her in the morning (before I drag my sorry ass out of bed) when she is back in her little house doing her own thing. She loves her little bit of time to herself in the morning and Chuck keeps wanting breakfast, wanting in, wanting out .....

He has also taken to waking up in the middle of the night, which inevitably pisses off one of us or most probably both of us. He just chirps his squeaky bark until someone gets up at 3:30 am and then watches him wander around the backyard while he forgets why he wanted to go out there.

I'm not sure how to fix this one - more walks probably. Keep the old guy too exhausted to move! 2.5 blocks should work. That will take, oh, about 40 minutes.

Last week I took both dogs out for a morning walk and as we got around the block I saw our neighbor jogging towards us. By the time we got to the end of that block (the long part!) he came around again. Both dogs did their business on the short part so he caught up one more time, and then by the time we got home he was walking up onto his porch. We were little speed demons! (and who just jogs around the block 4 times anyway? branch out see what is one street over!)

Happy Bee, Mad Bee, Squished Bee

So Jenna and I had a party for Halloween and I dressed up as a killer bee (add some camo pants and a gun to a bee costume and it is a killer bee!), Jenna was a killer bee keeper. The next day I had fun dressing the pets up in the bee costume.

Chuckie boy worked the costume as a squashed bee - I would hate to see the window he ran into.







Diesel was feeling the Killer Bee - I was a bit afraid of him for a while after this ...

Sweet Harley girl was my Happy Bee - don't you just want to kiss her?

Chuck trying to catch my attention

He is pretty sure that I can't hear him!

Change of subject - SNAKES

My regular time-wasting, I don't feel like working, I should be doing something else chatboard seems to be down today so you all get to see the new babies.

Old-man Chuck doesn't live alone - in fact even if we leave out the humans he communes with 3 other mammals, 10 neighborhood chickens (worthy of their own post someday), and as of Sunday, 11 reptiles.

Earlier this year we introduced Roxie, this lovely female Amazon Tree Boa

To Jack, our handsome male

We watched Roxie get fatter and fatter but we weren't certain that she was gravid. We are a bit unsure of her age and we weren't sure that we kept her warm enough, so although we both were secrectly waiting for babies to be born neither of us really spoke about it.

On Sunday Jenna came home from a friends and went to spray the snakes (they need to be misted a couple of times a day) and started yelling "hurry, come back here!!! hurry hurry hurry!!!" I am not sure where she thought they were going to go but I did HURRY to see what was going one. We had baby ATBs! Only 2 were alive but they look great. I think the original idea was to sell them but I can't see Jenna parting with them. We need to come up with names for the new babies.

I think Chuck may have been debarked

He have noticed that he has a tiny little squeak of a bark when he wants back in the house, or a cookie or something and we had never heard him actually bark until last night. I accidently locked Jenna out in the backyard (she was in the little studio house in the back) and when she knocked to come in the old man got freaked and started barking. Only it wasn't a bark, it was a series of high pitched squeaky, puppyish noises.

I feel bad for him, his bark doesn't really match his body. He doesn't seem to notice though, as long as he gets meals and snacks he remains a happy boy.

dogs are weird

Settling in

Well we had a rough week with more pooping and some garbage strewing but things seemed to have settled down. I took both dogs into Pet Food Express for baths last weekend and managed to wash and dry them both in under 30 minutes. It was a pretty magical feat and my arms were a bit wobbly afterwards. Mostly because Chuck decided that he was too old for the steps. I had to heave 90 lbs of stinky lab up into the tub and then leave 90 lbs of wet stinky lab out of the tub. Combine that with Harley who thinks bathwater is battery acid and it made for a full body workout in 30 minutes. I should probably do that 3 times a week and count it as my exercise plan.

For your viewing pleasure - new pics of the Charlie Man.

Can I get a little help? It's kind of bright in here.

thanks, that is much better. Nice knitting, this pattern looks great
I am a walrus, goo goo j'goob

I have had labs before - you would think I would know this stuff .....

When we got Chuck he was eating a senior Nutro food and meat wasn't listed until about ingredient #3 - that didn't really work for me. If I wasn't so lazy and had some space for a freezer I would raw feel my animals or I would strap a knife on my thigh and rummage through the woods but until that I reach that point my pets get a pretty high quality (ie EXPENSIVE) kibble. So I did a bit of research and decided to switch Chuck over to a Canidae Senior formula, not the best food but it is pretty good and I like the supplements that it has.

All that being said - Chucks old bag of food had some holes and the new bag was too small to mix the two together in so his food has been in a big black trash bag until I get something else figured out. Last night I am in the office and I hear this weird licky, plasticy, chrunchy noise - I go out to investigate and I see Chuck oh so innocently eating his kibble out of a hole that he poked in the bag. He is so naughty! I am used to Harley who rarely will even swipe food from a plate left overnight on the coffee table. This guy will eat anything he can get to. His food, and the biscuits are now secure and I did a quick survey of the kitchen looking for anthing else that he could possible ingest to create more poop havok on my life. Lets all cross our fingers and hope I found everything. I needed to name this blog Chronicles of Poop!

I was severely punished for eating at Burger King today

I did a bit of shopping after work today and when I was done I was STARVING and nipped into BK before heading home. I felt a bit guilty, I am supposed to be restricting my caloric intake but I figured I would take the dogs for a nice walk and it would all even out.

Oh no - no evening out happened. I was punished. I was informed in no uncertain terms that I would never eat at BK again. BK will forever be linked to the horror that was my kitchen when I arrived home.

See this cute dog?

Well today he decided to rummage around in a box and eat almost THREE POUNDS of dog biscuits. I guess they didn't set so well in his stomach. I came home to piles and puddles and paw prints of poo all over my kitchen. It was a bit overwhelming. On the floor, the dog bed, the oven ....

He is still having a few problems

Oh, to be deaf

At about 12:30 last night I realized that the happiest creature in my household was the old dog. It was hot, he had his dinner late, he never got a proper walk - so it wasn't a particularly good day for him but he was content to lie in front of the fan and snooze while the rest of us were on edge and yelling or muttering.

The old dog is blissfully deaf. The rest of us suffered through hours and hours of neighborhood firework displays and handguns shooting off. We discovered that Harley has a particular bark for each type of fireworks. The little whizzing bottle rockets only warranted a growly rumble but the huge booming WHERE THE HELL DID THEY BUY THOSE THINGS fireworks resulted in a full-on hair up barrage of alarm barking.

Next year we all get Xanax.

Charlie can run!

I think we love him, maybe, sorta

So the poop issues were solved by morning walks! Yeah for that! and yesterday Jenna turned to me in the kitchen as she was encouraging Chuck to hop up the back steps and said "I think I am starting to love him". It led to a nice discussion about he is just a doofy old man who just wants a few pats and to play ball for five minutes a day.

Unfortunately the old man decided to wander to the garage and stick his head into the bag of cat food a few minutes after that conversation. Since he followed up on that with lots of stinky "mmm, that cat food was yummy" farts we may be back to square one in the Learning to Love Chuck game.

POOP

So far all of our Charlie issues are about poop. The poo in the garage was not a one-time incident. I cleaned up some poo again last night and Jenna discovered a pile I must have missed this morning.

I am mostly blaming myself - I haven't been taking him for a morning walk. I abhor getting up in the morning so it is a bit of a challenge for me but since he doesn't seem to go in the backyard in the morning a walk it will be. Dragging my sleepy, lazy ass out of bed has to be easier that cleaning up dog poo in the house, right?

This morning the crabby old lady down the street who jealously guards the sanctity of her strip of crab grass between the sidewalk the street chewed us out again. This is the fourth time, the first three times Harley was just sniffing around. This time I forgot where we were (two dogs are harder to keep track of than one - and it was MORNING) and Harley was actually taking a dump. I think the lady about had a stroke. After this mornings encounter I don't think we will be inviting each other over for BBQs!

Revelations

So I have learned two new things about Charlie. One good, one not so good.

Good news first - Charlie is only 12! Russell must have told me wrong or I misunderstood but I read through his vet records and his birth date is listed as 2/1995. That gives me hope that he will be around a bit longer. He has pretty advanced arthritis though, I think I will take him into the vet to see what kind of treatment options we have and get him eating a better food and some glucosimine supplements.

Bad news - and you will be glad that there is no picture with this post. Charlie has the runs ... Why do I have pets? And no I didn't find out on a walk, or by picking poo up in the back yard - he managed to get into the garage today and dig up a hanging planter box (which like most of my pots had dead plants in it). As I was thinking about how to clean that up I noticed some nastiness all over the stuff sack that has sleeping bags in it waiting to be put away since our last trip. And then I saw nastiness somewhere else, and he managed to tip the broom over and poo all over that also. It was quite a clean-up job. I am really hoping that the sleeping bag I used to love survives this little challenge.

UGH!! BLECH!!!

Everybody sit for a cookie!

Charlie knows the sit for a cookie routine, and Harley knows the routine. The neighbors dog, Luna, who I am watching for the weekend was a bit confused by it.

Waiting for Charlie

In about four hours a large, deaf, old dog is going to join our household. In a supreme example of how much of a softy I really am we are taking in a FOURTEEN year old lab. I am still not sure we are making the right decision for us but I know we are making the right decision for Charlie.

My fear is that I am going to fall in love with him and he will break my heart, but that didn't seem reason enough for us to say no. I have spent the morning tidying the house and loving on Harley. Wouldn't want the new dog to see how messy we really are!

I thought a blog would be a nice way to chronicle the challenges and experiences of adopting a senior dog. I don't really expect him to be with us for very long but I do expect that he will make a large impact on our lives.