Happy pet stories

Parent Cafe
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<p>We’ve all shared the grief of lost pet friends lately, and my dog actually did something cute this weekend, so I decided to start a thread where I could read cute, happy, moving pet stories. Anyone game?</p>

<p>My dog is a Jack Russell. He’s mean, nasty and sarcastic. He sneers and will only deign to pay attention to his people when being fed tasty morsels like pound cake or steak. He’s also prone to fat. Looks a little like a white pig. Yesterday it was 100 degrees here, so my husband put on the lawn sprinkler in the side of the yard for the dog to drink from and then threw a ball for him to fetch. Everytime the dog got the ball, no matter where it came, he ran through the sprinkler on the way back to my husband. It was hilarious. This nasty dog prancing and leaping (!) through the sprinker. Looked like something out of a movie.</p>

<p>Next?</p>

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<p>I LIKE this thread. </p>

<p>OK…maybe not so funny but weird. Our old yellow lab is addicted to daily long walks. And DH and I are usually able to indulge him. Last week, he worked himself into a bit of a frenzy after missing his walk the day before (it was too hot!). And on THIS day, my DH was out on business most of the day so it wasn’t looking good yet again. He knows that we both need to be around for this ritual. So a few minutes before DH came home…he made his way to our Living Room window which looks out front (he never goes there) and starting whining up a storm. When my H turned the corner onto our cul de sac…he started barking wildly and going into one of his “pre-walk” panic attacks. Then raced over to the back door to greet him. It’s like he KNEW he was coming home before he made that turn (no tips from me!). He did this once before. I think dogs have some kind of radar system we just don’t get!</p>

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<p>^ mine does as well. You aren’t alone :P</p>

<p>Well, lets see… My dog is very spooky. For example you could clink a glass and she’d run like a bat out of hell. SHe’s a little toy poodle, if that helps. Anyway the other night she was eating her dinner (she has her own special diet and we have to make sure she eats) and my grandma coughed… guess what happened… She took off. No idea why she’s so spooky all of a suddon, however, it gets kinda old :confused: Mind you this is a dog that will take on other dogs and not have a problem, but that noise really bugs her.</p>

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<p>This is about a deceased pet, but we were in Canada at historical trading post site this weekend and the person in the store asked if we had any furs to trade. D2 said that we should have skinned our recently (much loved) deceased guinea pig and traded it in as a South American exotic. (Same D who thinks we should have stuffed him and put him on the new plant stand Grandma bought, mentioned on another thread).</p>

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<p>Your family has the same sense of humor as mine, intparent!</p>

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<p>My dog likes to “bury” his chewies in the furniture behind pillows or in laundry baskets. Because it gets a little wet as he searches the house to find the perfect spot, it is stuck to whatever piece of laundry it touched when he buried it. It’s a lovely habit.</p>

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<p>Growing up my family had an extremely energetic and nutty Irish Setter. One summer day my father was sitting on the neighbor’s porch down the street, visiting. The dog heard Dad’s voice and pushed his way through a screen onto the the porch roof. My dad thankfully heard him and managed to coax him back inside but not without some anxious moments as the dog looked down at Dad from a story above. </p>

<p>Same dog. Dad’s sitting in a lawn chair with the leash loosely tethered to the chair. Dad gets up, dog follows. Crashing noise of lawn chair spooks idiot Setter who proceeds to run. The clanging chair noise gets even louder. Dog spends 20 minutes running “away” from the noise until he dives under a VW Beetle where he’s safe. </p>

<p>I now own a very placid, mellow Labrador who knows how to count. When he returns from his walks he gets 2 small biscuits that I break in half to total 4. H gives him 2 large biscuits. Dog looks at him- where are the other two? </p>

<p>Ah yes. Wonder who trained who there.</p>

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<p>When I was a kid growing up in the south, we had the best dog ever. One day my mother was working in the yard, and had us kids in a play pen out on the lawn. The dog was tagging along after my mother. The dog suddenly barked, charged the play pen and jumped in. She was snarling and growling and attacking. My mother thought the dog hadd gone crazy, so she grabbed some lawn equipment, a hoe or whatever, to protect us from our suddenly insane dog. She ran to the play pen, and by the time she got there, the dog was still growling, but at a now dead rattlesnake. Great dog. She died when I was 12, and she’s still one of my best memories of childhood.</p>

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<p>One of my standard poodles has hip dysplasia and despite being only six and a half, can get so sore that all she wants to do is lie down in the sun. Two weeks ago I finally started her on Rimadyl (dog Advil).</p>

<p>Saturday it all came together and suddenly I had a puppy again. She literally bounced up and down in front of me at our agility class, levitating from ground level to face level, over and over and over again. Before we could start the course, I wanted her to sit, and she threw herself into the sit with such speed and enthusiasm that everyone started laughing. I took one step, told her she could start the course, and she just flew over the obstacles, doing a short loop with complete abandon and wild applause from our classmates, who had seen her drag through the course reluctantly just a few weeks before.</p>

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<p>dmd77, do you compete in agility, or just take classes?</p>

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<p>We used to live in a house on a city block, and we had a very sweet 100 lb. Gordon Setter who spent a fair amount of time in our fenced back yard. One Halloween night we heard a child screaming on the sidewalk in front of our house. I went out, and the dog had gotten out and had his huge black head in this kid’s bag of candy. The kid was holding on with all his might (he was NOT giving up his candy, not even to this massive dog) and shrieking. I dragged the dog away, and we helped the kid pick up his spilled candy and gave him a bunch more from our stash before he went on his way. No damage to the dog or the kid (except maybe nightmares…).</p>

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<p>Jingle, I compete in agility, take classes, and take private lessons. In short, yes, I’m obsessed.</p>

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<p>We got our first dog when I was 12. He was a mutt, medium sized, and looked like a black lab. When he was a puppy he jumped up onto the webbed lawn chair in the back yard and fell through. He was sitting with his bottom underneath the chair and his head poking through the mesh above the chair. It was adorable. He also had a very hard tail that he loved to wag. When my older brother came home from college he got so excited that his wagging tail broke the glass in the bookcase.</p>

<p>My dog now is just cute and loving all the time. He does bark at the UPS guy when he goes by because he’ll give him biscuits when he stops. When he just drives by the dog gets ticked because he wants a biscuit.</p>

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<p>Our puppy is a 4 month old English Spring Spaniel. On Sunday, we took him to his first Fourth of July Parade to watch our youngest who was a participant. As we walked down the parade route to find a spot, he was falling behind and DH was tugging on his leash. When DH looked back, he saw that puppy was “pooping” in front of a police officer who promptly looked at my DH and asked, “Are you going to pick it up?”</p>

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<p>Sabaray, love your setter stories! My sister had one, a beautiful dog, but dumb as dirt. When she was little, she used to sleep under the coffee table. When she woke up, she would stand and walk out from under. When she got too big to do that, she would lay there and cry until someone either dragged her out or picked the table up off her. She mananged to get under there, but never figured out how to get out. Dumb as dirt!</p>

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<p>Last weekend, my wife and I were away for a large party in honor of my parents, and, as usual when we go away, our dog was staying at home, but spending significant time with a dog-walker we have used for years.</p>

<p>On Saturday night, just as the party was starting, the dog walker called me to tell me that my dog had escaped from the fenced back yard of a house where they (and a bunch of other dogs) had been hanging out. She had been looking for the dog for 20 minutes, and couldn’t find her. This was in a neighborhood about 6 miles from our house, where the dog was basically unfamiliar with the area. I kind of pushed it out of my mind for the party, but got very upset when it was over and I checked my texts and found that the dog was still missing.</p>

<p>We left for the long drive home at 5:30 Sunday morning. (I had to drop my wife off where she works en route; she had a work crisis going on and a 1:00 pm meeting to prepare for and attend.) I got back to my area about 12:30 pm, and spent most of the afternoon and evening covering the area around where my dog had vanished, along with the dog walker, and also making and copying lost-dog flyers to post and hand-out. By the time it got dark, I was crying every 15 minutes or so. The dog had been missing for 27 hours, and I was wondering if I would ever see her again. Every time I came home, I hoped she would have shown up there; every time I checked the voice mail, I hoped it was a message about her. But nothing.</p>

<p>Monday. Before and after work, more looking, more hoping, more flyer posting. Did online lost-dog registrations, and faxed flyers to vets and police in the area. Cried periodically during the day. Was completely depressed Monday night, couldn’t talk to anyone about it without starting to cry.</p>

<p>Tuesday. Online registrations produced e-mails inviting me to pay hundreds of dollars for premium services of dubious value. Went out at 5 am to post more flyers, look in a different neighborhood. </p>

<p>In the middle of the afternoon (and the middle of a business meeting), I got a call from a letter carrier. She had just seen one of the flyers, and she was pretty certain that she had seen my dog the previous afternoon, Monday, in an area only about half a mile from where she had escaped, but one which neither I nor the dog walker had seriously canvassed. (We had spent a lot of time a couple of hundred yards away, on two different sides, but for various reasons had not hit that particular neighborhood.) As soon as I could, I left work and went to where the letter carrier had seen the dog the day before. At that point, it was about 72 hours exactly from when she had vanished. I started calling her. She came! It took about 15 minutes, and I had moved a couple of blocks from where I started, but there she was racing towards me (and then I was racing towards her) from the direction I had come. We were both overjoyed.</p>

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<p>JHS, I am so glad that story had a happy ending! I don’t know what I would do if my pal went missing. </p>

<p>Fishymom, “Dumb as dirt” is an apt descriptor for the Irish Setter. I’ll have to remember that next time I am possessed by the urge to own one.</p>

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<p>JHS, so glad you found your dog. If you don’t have a tag on her with your phone number, you should definitely get one. Our dog ran through our invisible fence on Friday night and couldn’t be found. I have both my home # and my cell # on his tag. Some one called the next morning to say they found him.</p>

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<p>JHS, since this was a happy story thread, I knew the ending would be a good one! To add to BUandBC82’s advice, make sure the phone numbers on the tags include the area code. A friend of ours lost their dog in a city 2 hrs from their home and the people who found her tried to call but kept getting a wrong number because there was no area code. Luckily, they saw the posters.</p>

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<p>When I was in HS our family had a Westie. This dog was very competitive with my younger brother, he was about 8 or 9 at the time of this story. This dog was on some type of medication and would not take it. My mom would put it on her food to no avail. My brother grabbed up a Halloween mask and charged the food dish and the little dog raced over and ate all of her food including the medication. This became the normal way to get her to take her medicine, the Halloween mask lived on a hook in the pantry and none of us thought anything about it until my grandparents came to visit. After watching their reaction to the whole scene we realized just how funny it appeared.</p>