Thursday, August 14, 2008

New "family" members

I know it irritates my mom to no end when pets are referred to as family -such as "I'm Fido's mom"- hence the quotation marks. But, I wasn't quite sure how else to introduce these two, so that'll have to do. Sorry mom.

This is trouble...I mean Tucker. He's a little Heinz 57 - although looks mostly lab-ish. I can't decide if there's some German Shorthair Pointer in there somewhere or not. His developing (bad) habit of standing just out of reach when I want him to go in his kennel is making me think yes. He was found living with his sister at a farmsite and was being fed there, but after his sister disappeared, the people feeding him decided he needed to find a real home. One of the girls that works part time at the vet clinic also does rescue, so she took him, brought him to the clinic and he had to come home with me. I'm hoping to get Mallory more comfortable around dogs - she's a little bit nervous when they get right up to her - but this little tigger sure isn't doing much to help. He seems to realize she is about his size and wants to play whenever she walks around the yard.


This is Mallory's favorite new addition, OJ (as in juice, not Simpson). He has a similar story to Tucker, except my enabler was one of the pharmacists I used to work with at Hy-Vee. He and another cat were being fed by her neighbor, but OJ was so tame he was hanging out in their yards, even though their house cats were not in the least impressed. He is a really nice cat, and now that his boy parts have been removed, I'm hoping he'll stick around. The other cats are slowly getting used to him (not that I care - they're all fairly wild barn cats anyway) but OJ and Tucker actually get along quite well. I think OJ is a little dumb - he doesn't seem to realize that he's supposed to be scared of a dog. And for Tucker's part, cats are only fun to chase when they run. (I'm half hoping he'll continue chasing the stupid black cats that just eat my food but won't let us pet them, how bad am I?)