Ruby and Emmy came to us from the shelter in 2001. “Why on Earth would we go looking for a dog when we had so many already?”, you might ask. Let me tell you….

Ruby- foreground
Emmy- behind

At that point we had Ajax, Chiquita, Fudge and Bebe and Yoda. We’d just lost “Tillie”, the first dog we got here when a friend decided it was time for us to get a next after “Tabitha”, our 13-old died. Tillie died of tick fever even though I got her into the vets immediately when I detected something amiss and she got a blood transfusion. When I found out they would use a healthy female from the shelter to donate blood for her transfusion, I decided that if Tillie didn’t make it, we’d adopt the shelter dog. So, that’s Ruby’s story. Emmy was her cell-mate at the shelter and Jill, the manager knew we were suckers and told us Emmy’s story. Emmy was found in the bottom of a dumpster barely clinging to life. The woman who found her couldn’t keep her. She was very friendly and got along with all the other dogs at the shelter, so she’d probably fit in very well with our crew.

Ruby is a real sweetheart, but she’s still afraid of some men after being abused by the guy who brought her to the shelter. She will often chase tennis balls but when she gets them, she’ll lie down and destroy them in about ten seconds. Sometimes she’ll continue chewing, but she’ll usually come back to one of us for some lovin’. She sits beautifully and looks up at us with those soulful eyes that kill me every time.

Emmy chases balls sometimes, but she loves to have something for us when we arrive home from wherever we’ve been. Sometimes it’s a plastic hamburger or hot dog, sometimes it’s a stick or a yucky mango pit. She doesn’t give it to us, it’s just to show us. She has inadvertently destroyed a couple of our stuffed animals and some of our flip flops have tooth marks in them. Oh well, they’re only things. Emmy is also a climber. Since she had to survive for a while around dumpsters, she learned to jump and climb. She was still pretty skinny when we first got her, but we figured, once she fattened up, she wouldn’t be able to climb. WRONG! She’s a pudgy girl now and still jumps the fence between yards a few times a day.

Mini under the pool deck

Mini looks like a little fawn. Okay, a fat little fawn. She was found running along the roadside in June of 2002 with a couple of other dogs. She was the only one that came close enough for me to pick her up. So she joined our gang, too.

Mini is the most unobtrusive of all our dogs. Sometimes we don’t see her because she’s happily chewing on a stick or something under the pool deck. But if one of the others gets close to her stick, she becomes “Cujo”. We can hear her growling and snarling like a big mean thing. She’s very smart and when we take her for a walks is great at heeling and sitting. When it’s time to give her the monthly dose of Revolution, she totally disappears…

More “fun with the kids” to come….