The Story of Us or Why We're Thankful Every Day

First I want to thank Minna Krebs and Frankie Furter for starting this wonderful event. What with all the doings it's going to take a few days to catch up with everydoggy and kitty's stories but we look forward to it lots and lots. Now, onto ours.

It's my blog and I'm a dog so we'll do the doggies first, but there are also two kitties living here. In fact, they were here first, so we're including everyone in this post. Upon thinking it over, it's really only fair. But I'm first. 'Cause it's mainly my blog.

Me, Lola
I was surrendered, along with my last ever puppy and Puppy Daddy, to NYC Animal Care and Control in January of 2009 at about age 6. Or so they claim.  Is that a fine how do you do, or what? Take the best years of my life and then it's all "Thanks, bye!"  We were pulled right out of there by the wonderful Sean Casey Animal Rescue, located in Brooklyn, NY. Puppy had to be weaned and Puppy Daddy had to be neutered. Once that was accomplished they were adopted and then there was only me, Lola. I had to recover from birthing and nursing and then be spayed and then, of course, recover from that, so I wasn't available for adoption for a while.

Meanwhile, out in the wilds of Long Island, where the Dim Sum is not as good as in Brookyn, my future forever family was without a doggie for the first time in like forever. They'd been down to just one doggie and that was Alpha Mom's Shar Pei mix. He went to the Rainbow Bridge at age 15 in the Fall of '09. What was keeping them from finding a new doggie was that at the time there were three kitties and the oldest one was very, very sick. He'd had surgery for cancer, but the prognosis was that it wasn't all that successful and he had one paw on the Bridge. No one wanted to give him new challenges at that point in his life. But Blog Mom is just one of those Windows Shoppers, always poking around online and she was looking at Petfinder when she came across....no, not me. Violet. Violet was another Shar Pei who was at Sean Casey at the time. She was a beautiful leggy blonde of about two and a half. I won't lie. She was gorgeous. Blog Mom showed Alpha Mom and they both decided that they needed to go see how this amazing Pei would be with kitties. Here is a video of Violet and my good friend Mr. Casey. I do have to admit, it doesn't do her beauty justice.



Well, the Moms headed to Brooklyn the very next day and met Violet, who was everything her Petfinder listing claimed and more. BUT, Mr. Casey also told them about me, Lola. They met both of us and took us both for test walks. Blog Mom just could not make up her mind what to do. Luckily for me, Alpha Mom was more decisive. She thought that I, Lola, would be the right doggie for them. How right she was, too. Now, don't worry about Violet. She got adopted within mere days of that meeting and I moved out to Long Island, where they have big backyards but are short on sidewalks in some areas, seems to me. I met the rest of my new family, most especially Daddy, and settled right into my new home. My family thinks they are the luckiest people in the world to have found, me, Lola. It's worked out awfully well all around, don't you think?

My Little Brother, Franklin

Here's the part is about you, Franklin.

 Life was good being the center of the universe at my new, most perfect forever home. No one could really get over what a perfect dog and wonderful companion I was - and am, I might add. Still, Blog Mom worried that I missed the companionship of other doggies. She'd see me talking to my through-the-fence neighbors and wonder if I missed having another Shar Pei in the house, since I'd always been part of a multi-Pei pack. From where I sit and stay it's a trade-off. Being the only doggie can get a little lonesome once in a while but there are lots of perks to the situation, too. Still, Blog Mom couldn't keep away from Petfinder, although she and Alpha Mom talked themselves out of every doggie they considered for a long time. They did call on one but were told absolutely no kitties for that one, no way, no how. Sadly, that guy is still up for adoption months later.

Last July, however, Blog Mom saw one Shar Pei listed at our local town shelter and for some reason she couldn't talk herself out of this one. Why, I couldn't tell you. He was a most unpreopossessing Pei  in his photos and in pawson. He was too young. They were looking for a doggie who was around four years old, give or take and Franklin was under two and way too hyper. He was skinny and gangly and looked as if he'd been made up of spare parts from at least two different types of Shar Pei.  He hadn't had treatment for his Entropion eye problems when he was a puppy and it had become so advanced that the surgery he got at the shelter made his eyes....well...just not good looking. He was so much not what they were looking for that of course we adopted him the day we met him.

He had been surrendered too, like me. His family said they were forced to move and couldn't take the dog with them. He, like me, had been at the shelter for several months and he was so very happy to have a forever home again. I had to teach him about dog beds and playing with other doggies. Only in the last week or so has  he finally come to understand that if he gets up on the furniture, no one really minds. It took some time to undo his training in that area, but he finally gets it. He adores me, of course, and he loves the family and it really didn't take him long to settle right in and become a part of the pack. One thing that was interesting right away about Franklin is that he's a bit of a marker. Take him to the groomer, the vet, the pet supply place and he is very likely to lift his leg once. Then you tell him no and he usually gets that. But never once, even the first day, in this house. It's like he knew right away that this was his home.

 Kitties!

They say that you don't choose your kitty. Your kitty choose you. That was certainly true in the case of Happy and Simone. They were both here before I arrived. Simone is the most senior pet in the household. Stevie, the sick kitty went to the bridge a few months after I arrived. Simone is the tortie in the photo and is about 12 or so. Simone started out life living with other relatives, including a doggy and another kitty. They had to move in here for a while, also long before I arrived on the scene. Simone, for reasons best known to herself, but possibly including the bulldog she lived with, decided that she preferred our family and when her family moved on she made an independent decision to stay here. Not up for negotiation, either.

Happy, the gray guy in the background was abandoned when tenants in the house next door moved away. He was sooo upset, I'm told. He wouldn't come in the house for the longest time. He was scared to death of the other animals. My humans fed him in the garage, but other neighborhood cats would come and eat his food and he was getting awfully skinny. Finally the family insisted that he move inside the house and he just had to get used to it. He certainly put the weight back on. That was several years ago. No one really knows how old Happy is either, but probably around seven or so. He's a very nice kitty, but a big scaredy cat and not too bright. We don't mention that in front of him, of course.

Now, I'm sure you realize that it's against the kitty code to be thankful. They'd get drummed out of....something...if they expressed gratitude, but I think they're both pretty happy to be part of our family. Except they'd both like to be rid of Franklin, but you have to take the good with the bad sometimes. Not that Franklin is bad, exactly, but he has not accepted that they're not going to play with him. Actually, Simone does kind of play with him in a claws out, hissing and yowling kind of way.

That concludes the condensed version of the story of all the four leggers currently residing at Chez Lola. We hope you enjoyed and now we are going to try to get out there and learn more about your homecoming stories.