My New Years Wish

 

About a year and a half ago John and I purchased a vintage canned ham camper. I grew up camping and have always loved spending time off the grid, but John, a native New Yorker, prefers vacations spent in hotel rooms. As it turns out, a camper was the perfect compromise for us. I get my fill of hiking trails and campfires, while he doesn’t have to sleep on the ground. Win/Win

Shortly after our first excursion, John and I started talking about hitting the road for good when our retirement rolls around. An introverted life, roaming wherever our desires take us, on our own schedule, sounds perfect for both of us.

There’s just one hitch in our plan… (See what I did there?)

Because of my terrible blogging habits, you may not have been introduced to Bronx yet. After Jack’s heart failed earlier this year, it didn’t take us long to realize that our family wasn’t complete without a big block-head dog in it.

Enter Bronx…

She has big, derpy ears, and wears a heart on her shoulder. She has a scary bark if you don’t know her, but also an enthusiastic jump for joy, that lifts her three feet off the ground, when she sees someone she loves. She tenderly cares for my daughter’s hamster when it’s out of the cage, and has no idea why the kitty won’t be her friend. She’s a sixty pound lapdog who knows she is loved, and returns that love one hundred-fold.

In short, she is the second most amazing dog you’ll ever meet. The first most amazing was her predecessor.

Now back to our dilemma…

Bronx is technically a mixed breed dog. Some people would label her a Pit Bull Mix, which I wouldn’t disagree with, but that’s also kind of unfair. Without DNA testing, we have no idea what her lineage is. Sure, she could have some APBT in her, but she also looks remarkably similar to a Dalmatian/Boxer mix. She has no papers or pedigree, she’s just a block head.

I look Irish, but I’m not. It’s human nature that we want to label things, and put them neatly in boxes, but sometimes things just aren’t what they look like.

Now all over the US there are places that have BSL (Breed Specific Legislation) or BDL (Breed Discriminatory Legislation). Some states, cities, towns, parks, and campgrounds won’t allow me to travel through or stop there just because of how my dog looks. This isn’t just unfair to my dog, who may or may not be what she looks like, but all of the pure bred restricted breeds who are good dogs in spite of what their appearance implies. Like Jack. He was a papered APBT, and he was a good boy, going his whole life without snapping and biting someone’s face off. There’s no such thing as a bad breed, just bad owners and a select few bad dogs.

So lets think about this. If I were restricted from being in a place because I look Irish, would that be fair? Even if I were Irish, we wouldn’t stand for that type of discrimination. It’s not about how you look, it’s about how you act. My dog deserves to be put on even footing with every other domesticated canine living in the US today. She’s not a wild animal waiting to pounce. She’s just a dog.

And sometimes she’s a coffee table.

John and I have to be careful when planning trips. We make sure we research where we’re going and what dog laws are in place. We avoid places where we’re not welcome, and we’ve already had to cancel plans to attend rallies for a vintage trailer group we belong to called Tin Can Tourists, because they’re held at campgrounds that have breed restrictions in place. Frankly it stinks. We’re being excluded because of something that only a tiny percentage of the population of dogs and dog owners are responsible for. And by tiny, I mean about .001%. Think about that…

So today, as I was reading a blog written by a full time RV’er, looking at the photos of her and her dogs hiking together, and dreaming about the day when that will be me; it occurred to me that it may not ever be me.

My life will never be complete again without a block head by my side. So until our society learns that a dog is just a dog, and a person with red hair isn’t always Irish, my retirement dreams aren’t realistic. My hope for the future is that they will be, before it’s too late for Bronx and all the good dogs like her. Before it’s too late for me.

Hugs,

The Post I Didn’t Want To Write

Jack had it rough from the start… Born with the dubious distinction of being his own uncle (yes, his half-brother was also his father), he was the runt of the litter, and had to be bottle fed to survive.

He didn’t let a little thing like having the odds stacked against him get in the way of his survival though. He knew there were important things waiting for him in life, couches he needed to hold down so they wouldn’t run away. And somewhere, there was a family out there waiting for him, though they didn’t know it yet, a family who knew nothing about pit bulls, or even dogs for that matter, who needed to have their lives changed irreversibly…

 

“I think we should get a dog” I told John.

John was not unaware of my love for animals, and over the years we’d always had the staple cat(s) living with us, along with guinea pigs, snakes, hamsters, hedgehogs, etc, but this statement still caused him to raise an eyebrow. I had never expressed any interest in having a dog before that day. In fact, I had always thought of myself as a cat person. Something had been nibbling at the back of my brain for quite some time though, a feeling that my life was missing something.

“You don’t know anything about dogs” he told me, eyebrow still raised. “I watch Victoria Stillwell on TV” I replied, “How hard can it be?”

He looked at me for a moment, shook his head, and went back to whatever it was he was doing at the time. He didn’t say no, but he hadn’t said yes either.  It was time for some strategy on my part. Over the next few months I went to work on Operation Canine Reciprocal Acquisition and Partner Persuasion, or O-CRAPP.

So what was my plan to convince John I was capable of taking care of a dog? Easy, I trained the cat to do doggie tricks. I taught MacDuff to sit on command, beg, stand on his hind legs, and also to dance by turning three circles on cue. I did it using the positivity method of dog training, and of course it worked. Why wouldn’t it? It’s not like cats are a different species or anything, right?

Still, John was not so eager to jump on my band-wagon. I had to break down his resistance even further, and so I began sending him pictures of available dogs. It didn’t matter what breed they were, if they were cute and helpless looking their picture landed in his in-box. I took Tiana to play with puppies at the pet store, and sent him pictures of the event so he could see how happy she looked with a little bundle of fluff. In short, I wore him down until he was putty in my hands. Now it was just a matter of finding the dog that was meant to be ours.

 

They called him moo-moo. They thought his markings made him look like a cow. Personally, I didn’t see it. What I did see though, was that there was something not quite right about him. John saw it too. He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “He walks a little sideways.” “So does your daughter!” I hissed back, and before you knew it, he was leashed up and riding on my lap in our car. We knew he wasn’t quite right, so he needed a family that wasn’t quite right either; we would love him no matter what. Little did we know that it would become our mantra. Vet: “Your dog is not quite right.” Us: “We know, but we love him anyway.”

 

“I am going to KILL that damn dog!” I yelled as John walked in the door. “He ATE my dining room chair!” I pointed to the adolescent dog sleeping peacefully on the couch, totally oblivious to my screaming. “That wood is a half inch thick!” I continued to rant, “How did he manage to chew THROUGH it in the thirty seconds I had my back turned?!?!?” John stood silently at the door, work bag still in hand, a bemused smirk on his face. I eyed him with a scowl, if he dared laugh at me, I was gonna punch him!

Training Jack, as he was now called, had been a test of my patience. He spent the first few months in our home either leashed directly to my belt, or tethered to a piece of nearby furniture so I could keep an eye on him. Because if he wasn’t eating something in the house, he was peeing on it. He kept me chasing after him so much, that I felt like I was running in an exhausted stupor, barely able to care for my kids because I was so intent on keeping the dog out of trouble.

Most days I wasn’t even sure I liked him, let alone loved him, but then a funny thing happened…

Well, not funny in a ha ha way, but a curious kind of funny.

Among the many physical ailments Jack was born with, one of the more noticeable was a deformed spine. It didn’t hamper his mobility to any large extent, but he didn’t run much, and he was never terribly agile. One morning, as he was going out to the bathroom, he fell down our front steps and injured himself. He didn’t show it at first, except for a torn up ear, but he had wrenched his back pretty badly. About a day later he began to show us he was hurt, when anytime he was touched he screamed in pain.

It was the first time, of several, that I was majorly concerned for him and his well being. I curled up next to him on the floor, and I cried. I realized at that moment in time, that he had become so much more than a four legged piranha intent on destroying every article of furniture I owned. He was a furry child. Sure, he would never grow up and go to college, would never be able to care for me as I grew old and infirm, but on the flip side he would never ask me for money for a prom dress or wreck my car either. From that moment on he was, without a doubt, my baby, and it was my job to protect him.

So that’s how it was, and everyone knew where they stood. Jack eventually stopped gnawing on all I held dear as he grew older, but his health continued to plague him. He was prone to all sorts of infections; ear, eye, sinus, and yeast. In another heart wrenching emergency run to the vet, he was diagnosed with pancreatitis that was brought on by eating an entire pigs ear in thirty seconds or less. He only had one visible testicle, a condition which caused me to nearly faint when I saw the estimate to get him neutered (apparently they have to go exploring in the abdomen for the other one), but in the end it didn’t matter because each time we’d schedule the surgery he would either get sick or hurt himself and it would have to be postponed until he was healthy.

It never happened…

During the summer of 2012, Jack began fainting every time he stood up. We rushed him to the emergency vet’s, and eventually he was diagnosed with a heart condition. Expense wasn’t even discussed, we just threw enough money at the vets to start sizable college funds for all of their children, and told them to fix our dog. Medications were ordered, and we were told to cross our fingers and pray, which we did.

I performed CPR on him one beautiful warm August morning. I begged him not to leave me while my kids looked on in horror, and he didn’t. Maybe he heard me and knew I wasn’t ready to let go yet, or maybe he was worried that the couch would run off if he wasn’t around to hold it down.

I had six more months with my beautiful boy before his heart gave out on him for good. Each day was a blessing, and while I was hopeful that the medication could stabilize his heart, a voice inside of me kept telling me to prepare for the worst. In my gut I knew that Jack’s shining star was meant to burn bright, not long.

I was with him for as long as they allowed me to be, practically pushing me out the door because I wanted to see it through to the end. I kissed him over and over as he fell asleep in my arms, whispering I love you, I love you, I love you, as I did.

If you had told me four years ago that a pitbull would come into my life and change me forever, I would have laughed at you. The truth of it is though, his absence has left me shattered. An empty crate, an empty collar, a pitbull shaped hole in my heart. I wonder if I could have done more for him, if I should have done things differently, despite the vet’s reassurance that we did more than anyone ever expected of us.  There was something not quite right about that dog, but we loved him anyway.

He changed my life, he changed many of our friends and families perceptions of pitbulls. He was a good dog, who never bit off anyone’s face, and looking back through the many, many pictures I have of him, he was a happy, silly dog most of the time.

When I picked up his remains from the vet’s office a few weeks later, they gave me a ceramic tile with his paw print on it. I took it home, and after shedding a few tears over it, I scanned it into the computer and cleaned it up. I then asked John to help me do one more thing for my dog. I didn’t even have to launch a secondary movement of O-CRAPP, he agreed with a simple nod and a couple of phone calls…

 

I miss you Poopy dog, but it turns out that you’re not the end of the story. You opened up my heart to the fact that without a dog it wasn’t completely full, and you opened my eyes to the plight of millions of good dogs out there just like you. I think that might have been the important thing you survived against the odds for, and I’m so very glad you did. Do all the things you dreamed about but couldn’t do here on earth while you wait for me. Run, jump, play! I’ll be with you before you know it, and we’ll play a game of fetch.

I’ll love you forever…

Jack: Then and Now

 

It seems a little strange to be making a post like this when we’ve only had him for about four months, but the changes in my dog have been so dramatic in that time, that it’s most certainly called for.

Remember this picture from when I first introduced him to you?

 

Here he is now, with Jenna (who has grown a little, but not a lot) for size comparison.

My teeny little puppy is now bigger than my seven year old!

Or, how about this picture of him sleeping on Alexi…

Now, a more recent one of him trying to sleep on Alexi…

Yes, my dog has transmogrified into a moose.  A moose who thinks he owns the couch, and since he now weighs over fifty pounds, it’s a little hard to disagree with him.

He’s still the same happy, loving puppy we brought home a few months ago though, just a lot bigger and a little better behaved.  He knows all of the basic obedience commands, and actually listens to them most of the time now.  Even when he’s excited he will sit if you tell him to sit.  His butt may only touch the ground for ten seconds, but the important thing is that it does touch it.

We’re now working on the training that he just did not have the impulse control to master a few months ago, things like wait (stay), leave it, and drop it.  He’s doing well so far (he’s a really smart idiot, remember?), and once he has it all mastered he’s going to be an awesome dog.  He’s just so funny and cute, it would be impossible not to love him.

He’s become really attached to Jenna, in fact I believe that, under the right circumstances, he would die to protect her.  Say, if a bear attacked while they were out on a walk in the middle of the city.  Because, you know, that happens all the time around here.  If a person attacked however, he would probably just wag his tail and lick the attacker’s ankles.

In the mornings, Jenna uses him as a pillow (or vice versa) and they watch TV together.  When she gets up to start getting ready for school, he cries in hopes that his pitiful-ness will make her feel sorry for him and bring her back to the couch.  It rarely works though, because I’m a mean mommy and insist that the puppy will survive without her.

He cries a lot actually.  I think it’s a trade off because he doesn’t bark.  At all!  He can bark, he just doesn’t.  I could probably count the times I’ve heard him do it on one hand and have fingers left over.  So instead of barking, he whines to get your attention.  That’s fine with me, the crying is easier on the ears, and no trouble to ignore when the situation calls for it.

Now I’m sure you’ve heard people defending pit bulls by saying that they’re not people aggressive, just animal aggressive.  It’s partly true, they’re not people aggressive at all.  Shelter workers will tell you that most of the pits who come in from horribly abusive situations are still quite loving towards people, as evidenced with the Michael Vick dogs.  I would go so far as to say that they’re not really all that aggressive toward other animals either though.

Most types of terriers can be aggressive towards other animals, as their breed was refined to help control pests and other animals on farms.  Yet I recently read a study (I’d link it but unfortunately I didn’t bookmark it) that tested for aggression in known breeds of dogs.  While pits were found to be more animal aggressive than some other breeds, they were not among the breeds to be found the most animal aggressive.  There were a handful of breeds that ranked above them.

So really it comes down to a nature verses nurture thing.  If you socialize them from a young age, you’re not going to have any problems in the future.  Since we have so many animals in the house, we’ve been working with Jack to desensitize him to the presence of animals, even ones as small as a hamster.

While he gets excited when he sees the other animals, we’ve never seen any form of aggression in him.  My main worry at this point, is not that he’ll attack another animal, but will get too excited and hurt one by playing too rough.  He has no idea how big and strong he is right now, so we’re working with him on that too.  Every few days one of us will get a grip on Jacks collar, while someone else will bring one of the other pets to him (cat, guinea pig, hamster, no one is exempt from suffering through Jack training).  If he sits calmly, we bring the animal closer for him to greet, if he gets up, or gets excited, we take it away.  He’s learned really quickly that the best way to be able to check out the other members of the family, is to be calm and relaxed.  Now his furry siblings usually end up getting a lick or two at the end of the training session, much to their dismay (puppy slobber, ewww).

Eventually this training will trickle down, and he’ll understand that when we meet other dogs on our walks, or at the vets office, he should approach calmly, and he’ll get to greet and maybe even play.  He’s still just a puppy though, and sometimes it’s hard for him to repress his excitement.  It will improve with age, especially since he has the training to back it up.

I honestly feel that training is the key with any dog, no matter if they’re a Chihuahua, or a Great Dane.  If you want to have a happy dog, and a relaxed home environment, spend fifteen minutes a day on positive reinforcement based training.  You’ll be amazed at what your dog can do, and how much easier it makes life.

 

 

As you can see from the pictures, Jack is starting to look less like a plain terrier, and more and more like a pit bull terrier.  It doesn’t bother me at all, I think he’s still awfully cute with his floppy ears and permanent smile.  As his chest and head start to broaden though, I’m noticing more and more that it’s bothering other people.

And that just stinks.

For one, it just makes Jack’s day when he gets to meet someone new.  He LOVES people, and wants to make friends with everyone he meets.  When people go out of their way to avoid him, he’s missing out on socializing opportunities and the training that goes with them.  The more people he gets to meet and greet, the more he’s able to learn the proper way to behave around people.  If you don’t give these animals a chance to learn how to act in the presence of a stranger, then you’re just adding to the problem.

I’m not saying you should approach every pit you see running around without caution, but if the owner is there controlling the dog on a leash, then it’s typically safe to approach.  And if you think that the ankle biter you passed a block down is safer to walk past than a pit bull, you’re insane.  Any dog has the potential for aggression, and a Shih Tzu’s teeth will make you bleed just as fast as my Pit Bull’s will.  The difference is that I have my dog under control when we’re out walking; Owners of small, “harmless” dogs, don’t always take the care they should.

Just use some discretion and common sense, that’s all I ask.  If a dog looks well behaved, and is accompanied by a human who looks well behaved as well, then chances are good that the dog poses no threat, no matter how big and strong they might be.

Jenna is totally baffled when she sees a grownup cross the street to avoid walking too close to Jack when we’re out.  How can anyone be afraid of a happy dog, wagging his tail, and being loved by a seven year old?  How scary is a dog that serves time as a couch pillow every morning?

He’s not, and I hope that in her lifetime the stigma goes away, that people start to get it, because I think she’s going to be a life-long pit bull lover too.  Until then though, I made her a shirt to wear:

She loves it!

Now doesn’t he look vicious?

Hugs,

Rounding out the Collection

This blog is in dire need of a fluff post! 

It just so happens that I have something, or someone, that I neglected to post a couple of months ago.  So let the cute begin!

This is Capt. Jack Carter, or it was him two months ago when he was living with a different family.  He’s quite a bit…  um… larger… now.

Jack is an American Pit Bull Terrier.  Now I see that look on your face, and you can just wipe it off your mug right now!  Do you believe everything the media tells you?  You know I don’t, as evidenced by my last handful of posts, so let’s have a little history lesson, shall we?

Pit Bulls are descended from a now non-existent bull dog and terrier cross.  They are the first and oldest American dog breed.  Because of their muscular build and high desire to please their owners, they were the original working dog in America.  The first and most decorated canine war hero was a pit bull; Sergeant Stubby, pictured to the right.  Helen Keller had a pit bull as her canine companion, and Mary Tyler Moore uses a pit bull as a diabetic hypoglycemic alert dog.  The dog Petey, from Our Gang and Little Rascals, was also a pit Bull.

And not a single one of those kids had their faces bitten off!  Licked off maybe, but that’s a different kind of torture.

The truth is that Pit Bulls were bred for non-aggression towards people because the originators of the breed knew that they would have to work closely with their human handlers.  Pit Bulls, on average, score over 85% on Canine Temperament tests; higher than Collies, Chihuahuas, Spaniels, Dachshunds, Sheppards, Schnauzers, and even Golden Retrievers, which are considered the ultimate family dogs, and that’s just a sampling. 

Pit Bulls are good dogs with a bad reputation because their strength and desire to please has appealed to some of the lower elements of the human population.  DNA doesn’t make a dog dangerous, the idiot holding the leash does.  Since I proclaimed yesterday that I am in fact NOT an idiot, then my kid’s faces should be pretty safe.  :)

So now that we’ve cleared that up, let me introduce you to Jack.  The smartest idiot I have ever met.

Yes, he is a really smart dog.  Within a day he had the “sit” command mastered.  Within two weeks he knew “stay.”  Unfortunately his intelligence doesn’t extend to potty training because after two months he’s still peeing on my floor.  I will admit that he’s getting better though, now instead of peeing on the floor thirty times a day and once or twice outside, those numbers have reversed and he goes outside more than in.  Also, now after he pees on the floor he goes and sits by the door to let you know that he’s not a complete moron, and that he knows where he was supposed to do it.

He’s a work in progress.

Of course the kids love him.  They love him so much in fact that no matter how many times we tell them he’s not allowed on the furniture he still manages to find a way up there.  As evidenced here:

Here:

And here:

Ok, maybe one of them listens:

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all though, is this:

I was told specifically not to post that picture on facebook.  However, he said nothing about my blog.  :D

John, the resident animal ambivalent (not hater, he just doesn’t care one way or another), actually likes the dog.  Now you’d be hard pressed to get him to admit it, but I see the signs.  For instance, when he comes home from work he says hi to the dog before I get my kiss.  He also can be found on the floor playing with him at least once a day, and who gave him steak from the dinner table?  Not me or the kids, but for some reason he sits next to John’s chair when we eat dinner now.

So back to that whole “smartest idiot” thing.  I know it seems like a contradiction, but if you’ve ever spent any time with a pit bull, I’m sure you know what I mean (I understand that they all pretty much fall into this category).  He picks up training commands really fast, and retains them after the training session is over.  Twenty minutes on the floor with a clicker and a bag of treats, and he can learn just about anything.

When it comes to common sense stuff though…  Not so much.

For instance, yesterday Alexi and I watched for quite a long time(laughing hysterically I might add) while the cat outsmarted him over and over again.

MacDuff (the cat) was perched on the stairs, about three steps up, watching Jack warily, while Jack tried to entice him to play.  You see while Jack really wants to play with Duff, the cat is not so thrilled with the prospect of wrestling with a forty pound puppy dog.  So knowing that the dog won’t go upstairs (the evil bathtub is up there and Jack likes to stay as far away from it as possible), MacDuff likes to sit just out of reach and taunt him. 

Every couple of minutes, Duff got tired of watching Jack do his pogo stick impression, and would go up the stairs to the landing and hide just out of sight.  The dog, apparently believing our stairs form some sort of impossible Escher-esque loop, would immediately go to the basement stairs, and wait for him to return.

While Jack was standing there waiting patiently for Duff to complete his teleportation from the second story to the basement, the cat would sneak back down the stairs and smack him with a paw on the back of the head.  Then he’d jump gracefully back to his perch on the third step, just out of reach again.

They did this at least twenty times and the dog never caught on.

So you see, he’s not a brain trust, but he’s also not a total wash either.  He’s just the smartest idiot I know.

For the most part though, this is what he does during the day…

and this:

and a little bit of this:

Which is fine with me, in fact a lot of days I wish he’d do it even more.  Especially on the days when he decides that it’s too cold or wet to go outside to go potty, the days he thinks that toes were made to be yummy puppy treats, and the days when he discovers the treasures inside the garbage cans.  Because once he gets trouble on the brain, it’s pretty hard to make him forget it.  If there’s a warm lap around though, it beats out any distraction that would otherwise divert him from his nap.

Overall, he’s an awesome, silly, cuddly dog that we all love, and he fits right into our crazy, dysfunctional family.

Now our collection of weirdness that society shuns is totally complete!

Hugs,

Animal Updates

I’ve got a lot of different animal news and decided to cram it all into one post. Some of it’s happy, some is sad, some is painful and splattered with blood.

So go get a cup of coffee, or your favorite beverage, and settle in. :)

I’ll start out with the sad news and get it out of the way. Jenna’s sweet mouse Jerri passed away unexpectedly a little over a week ago. She was happily running on her wheel one night when we went to bed, and the next morning she was gone. We have no idea what happened.

Jenna was understandably upset, partly because it was so unexpected. With tiny pets like mice, gerbils, and hamsters, they often get sick or injured and pass on before you even know there’s a problem.

Dealing with death is part of being a pet owner, and a portion of my role in teaching my kids responsible pet ownership is showing them how to balance their grief with the joy and love they received from their animal.

So John and I consoled Jenna, packed Jerri’s body lovingly in a box, and Jenna picked a place in the yard to inter her remains.

After the initial shock and grief wore off, we asked Jenna what she would like to do. She decided that yes, she wanted another pet, but not another mouse since no one would be able to replace her baby Jerri. We did some researching, then took a trip to the pet store where Jenna decided to adopt a male teddy bear hamster.

His name is Sunny.

She’s had him for about a week now, and she’s been really good at taking him out every day and working to hand tame him. He’s a little skittish, but one of the girls at the pet store had a soft spot for him and had already worked with him quite a bit. So he’s not as bitey as you’d expect a young hamster to be. He nibbles on fingertips occasionally, just to see if you’ll react, but if you remain calm and undeterred he settles down pretty quickly.

Jenna is completely head over heels in love with him, and while she still misses Jerri, Sunny has helped take some of the sting out of her loss.

Speaking of hamsters, Bullet is still doing well, he’s fat and happy as long as you don’t try to pick him up.

Every once in awhile I let him out to roam the house in his hamster ball, which he likes, but he’s happiest in his tank. I would love to be able to pick him up and cuddle him, but it’s just not going to happen. He’s still a lot of fun to watch though! He often comes out during the day to play, and I’ll sit on the floor by his tank and talk to him while he scurries around. He’s not afraid to take treats from my hand, and will let me pet him in his tank and long as I let him keep his four on the floor.

This is the only new picture I have of Zathras…

It’s pretty terrible because John took it with his cell phone when I was staying with Tiana at the hospital in May. He sent it to me in the middle of the night to let me know my baby missed me.

Both Tiana and Jenna had been telling their classes about our hedgie, so as an end of the year treat I took him in so the girls could show him off.

He was surprisingly well behaved! I was a little worried about how well he’d do with all of the kids touching him, but he did an outstanding job! He let everyone give him a pet, and only put his quills up once when a shadow startled him. He got a little over stimulated with the kindergartners, and was looking for a dark place to hide. All in all he exhibited model behavior though, no huffing, no balling up, he was just a good boy and gave the kids a great experience.

I’m so proud of my baby boy!

That’s about it in mammalian news, now it’s on to the reptiles. All of you squeamish sorts can turn back now. :D

So onto the Boas!

I had them out for a photo session on a sunny day, but alas they did not turn out well. I’m going to have to figure out the trick for taking pictures of these guys. I know there’s a way to capture their sparkly rainbows, but I haven’t figured it out yet.

Here’s the best of the lot:

That’s Nena, the female, and I have a story to tell you about her!

I was writing up this story in my head last night as I was falling asleep, and I realized that I need to preface it with a disclaimer (and yes Melinda, I thought of this before you commented on my facebook status. lol).

Animals aren’t mean. Humans are sometimes mean, but not animals. Animals just do their thing, they have instincts and behaviors that are coded into their genetic makeup, which ensure their survival. Often you will hear people talk about a mean or aggressive dog, but the truth of the matter is a dog gets that way because of something a human did to them, or didn’t do for them. Aggressive dogs are typically fearful because at some point they were neglected or abused. They are never just mean for the hell of it.

Animals always act the way they do for a reason, and if we humans get hurt in the process of handling them it’s usually through some fault of our own. I mean think about it, how many times have you heard a narrator on Animal Planet say “and here we see the lion killing a gazelle because it’s an a**hole.” Never, right? It just doesn’t happen. Lions kill and eat gazelles in order to survive. If you own a lion, and it tries to eat you, no one is going to say the lion is evil, it’s just acting like a lion is supposed to act.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, I’m sure you know where this is going. lol

The boas are aggressive eaters. They strike, they strike fast, and they will strike at anything that moves when they’re in feeding mode. Feeding mode starts when I put them in the feeding bin. They have yet to strike, or bite, at me when I’m getting them out of their containers or handling them. They know as soon as their bellies hit the bin though, food is coming. Then the aggression pops to the surface.

I know they’re like this. I’ve fed them a few times, and dodged a couple of feeding strikes, so I know how they are when they want food. Does that make me any less of an idiot? No, it does not. LOL

For some reason my feeding tongs have disappeared. They get run through the dishwasher after each feeding session to disinfect them, and they usually end up on top of the microwave when they’re clean, but for some reason they were no where to be found last night. I have a backup pair, but they had migrated to the basement for some reason and John was off in search of them.

Well, I had already taken Nena out and put her in the feeding bin to be weighed when I realized that the tongs were MIA. She was getting restless, so I figured I’d just do what I’d done with the corns a few times and dangle the mouse by it’s tail for her.

Error in Judgment #1: Mistaking a Boa for a Corn Snake.

So I dangled the mouse above her head a couple of times and she went to grab it. I let go of the tail as soon as she smacked into the mouse, but she didn’t grab on, and the mouse fell to the bottom of the feeding container.

None of my snakes will eat a food item that’s just laying dead on the bottom of the container. so she retreated to the other side of the container and glowered at me.

Error in Judgment #2: Believing that I’m faster than a Boa

I thought, “Hey, I can just reach in there and get it, she’s on the other side and even if she does strike I’ve dodged her before.”

So I reached in only to learn that I am in fact NOT faster than a Peruvian Rainbow Boa. She tagged me, right on the knuckle of my left index finger.

My hand was moving faster than my brain and I realized she was on the move, but not that she’d bitten me, so I tried to dodge her.

Error in Judgment #3: Not taking my punishment like a man

When I pulled my hand back, she came with, tearing open the bite on my knuckle and landing on the floor outside of the feeding container when she finally let go. Now I had a pissed off boa loose on my floor. Lovely!

Error in Judgment #4: Thinking I could pick up one pissed off Boa and put her back in her container without paying the price.

I grabbed her before she could get away, saw her turn towards me with her jaw opened wide, and knew I had it coming. She bit me full out on my hand and I took it without flinching this time. Ok, maybe I flinched a bit when she started to chew, but I didn’t try and shake her off or dislodge her. If she hadn’t let go on her own in a timely manner I’d have taken her to the sink and doused her in cold water. That will usually do the trick.

She did let go though, after about a minute, and curled up on my palm like she was ashamed of what she’d done. I felt bad for her, it was totally and completely my fault. She was off her food for the night though, and no amount of coaxing would get her to strike again. I’ll try to feed her once more in a couple of days. Hopefully she’ll have forgotten the whole miserable incident by then.

Ready for my battle wounds?

I have a bruise there today. I think she might have left a tooth inside me, but I can’t find it no matter how much I dig.

Top side of the knuckle wound.

And lastly, the chew mark which looks the worst but really didn’t hurt that bad.

I have 6 small holes from her top jaw, and 4 from her bottom.

Hopefully I’ve learned a valuable lesson that I won’t soon forget! lol

Last, but not least… This is now, officially, my first year as a corn snake breeder! I’m pretty nervous but so far the snakes have done well in spite of me. I actually wasn’t going to breed this year, I didn’t feel like I was ready yet, and I didn’t know if the females would be up to size, and I wanted to do some more research… Are you getting the feeling that I was never going to be ready? lol

Kauket took the decision away from me though. She started getting cranky, and then refused a meal (which she NEVER does). So I talked to Chad and he told me how to check her for egg follicles. Sure enough, my baby girl had become a woman. Then Amaunet got in on the act, and decided that if little sister was old enough to get a man, so was she. I told them that as long as they were willing to share, we could work something out.

Yea I know… EWWWWW

Kek is still too small to breed, though he should be up to size next year.

Isn’t he pretty though? That picture does not do his color justice! he’s all pinks and lavenders. I think when Chad saw him he was a little jealous that he gave him away! :D

Here’s him just hanging out (Get it? Hanging out?!?! I kill me!).

So he was out of the gene pool this year for breeding, though I know that he and Kauket are going to make gorgeous babies. So Chad loaned me a male that he wasn’t using for breeding this year.

Chad doesn’t name his snakes, so we’ve dubbed him StudMuffin. I told Chad that from here on out he must refer to him as StudMuffin, and only StudMuffin.

Yes, I know. I need psychological help! John and the kids tell me that on a regular basis.

So Muffin was willing and eager to get started. He was a newbie though, so he had a couple of false starts. After about an hour or more of him chasing Kauket around the tank he finally figured which end was up and got the job done.

This is a still from a video I took for Chad, hence the quality. It shows the moment of lockdown. I would have taken a real picture, but with it being their first time and all I didn’t want to completely freak them out.

Now I know that some of the normals who read my blog probably think this is a little weird. I’m sure it smacks of parents observing the bride and groom on their wedding night. Trust me when I tell you that corn porn is all the rage on the forums where I hang out. Yes, I fully admit that we’re a “special” bunch of people, but that doesn’t mean we’re gross or anything. I promise to make the one explicit picture I have to show you small, that way only the most curious among you will be able to see anything when you click on the pic. lol

Here are the two lovesnakes cuddling in the afterglow. Aren’t they pretty together?

Now, Chad can correct me if I’m wrong here, but I believe that Kauket is a motley, het hypo, possible het lavender. Muffin is a hypo, possible het lavender and possible het motley. If they both prove out we should get:

• 37.5% Hypo Hatchlings
• 37.5% Hypo Motley Hatchlings
• 12.5% Hypo Lavender Hatchlings
• 12.5% Hypo Lavender Motley Hatchlings

That last one is the trifecta. That’s what we’re shooting for!

After Muffin had a day or two of rest, we popped him in with Amaunet. He’d had some practice this time around, and it didn’t take him nearly as long to figure out what he was doing.

Here’s the explicit picture below. Don’t click on it unless you REALLY want to see what it looks like when snakes do their thing. You’ve been warned, don’t say I didn’t tell you!

Now this pairing is just going to give us normal corn snakes (what a corn snake would look like if you came across it in the wild), unless of course Amaunet has some hidden genes we’re not aware of. Normals aren’t too sought out among the breeding community (though these ones will have a ton of hidden hets), but they’re still very pretty snakes, with all of the personality of a captive bred corn, and are great for first time owners and/or people who don’t care about all of the fancy colors and patterns. Most of the pet stores in my area don’t sell normals and only have more expensive morphs available. So I’ll be selling the babies from this pairing to the local stores for credit, and they’ll be able to offer some cheaper alternatives in their reptile departments.

Now even though their babies won’t be higher end morphs, don’t those two look pretty together? I love the contrast of the two of them… So beautiful!

Anyway… Chad’s boy did his thing and now my girls are very preggers (or gravid for my snake friends). Both of them are starting to cloud up with their pre-lay shed, and we should expect eggs about 12 days after that.

Once the eggs are laid, the girls job will be done and mine will start. They have to be incubated at a certain temperature and humidity for about 60 days. Then they will start to pip and we’ll see little snakey noses pushing through the shells. I’ll be sure to keep you updated with pics as we go along!

Have a great day!