Who Let The Dogs Out?

 A picture of my baby girl with her first dog. She was 10 years old and we had her sit down on the couch and close her eyes, then we placed the most adorable Basset Hound puppy in her lap. She burst into tears and said, "I didn't know you loved me this much!"

We had family pets all throughout her life, but this dog, that she named Abby, was all hers. She has always loved animals, sometimes having trouble making them bend to her will. Misty, the Siamese cat was not strong willed and ended up wearing Barbie clothes as a kitten, She was always a small cat, maybe the clothes stunted her growth? 

She went on to birth many kittens. One male kitten yellow and white, was culled from the litter by Adrienne. He did not possess the gentle nature of Misty. He was named Southy. No one knows why she decided to call him that. She was about 4 then and owned the nick-name "mouth of the south". She was like a news broadcaster of family events to unsuspecting audiences. If you needed(?) to know what color our underwear was, she would tell you.

In any event, Southy disdained the efforts of Adrienne to make him wear clothes and walk upright. Many scratches and tears occured until one day Southy must have had enough and ..... went south? Never saw him again.

So, today, she has 4 dogs and is not a big fan of cats. Her dogs are all spoiled. She makes their food and now they will not eat kibble. Bruno is not her dog, but her son's and receives all the special treatment of her dogs. He has clothes, Max has shoes, and you already saw Birdie's bikini. Gemma, the pit bull mix has had her DNA prfile done, but I have not seen her wearing clothes.

Gemma is the alpha for now. Bruno is not full grown, Max is an old man and Birdie is happy to play with her protector. Here she plays tug of war with little Birdie.

Max is happy to just watch all the activity. Formerly known as "the puppy called Max", featured in my book "Letters To Gavin" in the last chapter that seems like yesterday, but was so very long ago.

Enter Eddie, my sweet, adorable Charming Eddie.

Eddie has never been confrontational, but he took an instant dislike to Gemma. Maybe because she was so much bigger than him and barked at him through the glass door, who knows? My dogs had to sleep inside with us due to some very strange HOA rules in Adrienne's neighborhood.

We were allowed to park the RV in her driveway and plug it in, but not allowed to sleep in it. So, we slept in the guest room with our dogs and a giant pee pad on the floor. They behaved nicely enough, except for barking at the other dogs. 

Upon entering the front door, you find yourself in the pool area that is screened in. All the rooms that surround the pool have sliders that open to the pool. So both groups of dogs were staring at each other and barking. This made entering and exiting challenging for the humans. Not a problem for the females who were smart enough to go to another room and close the door to the dogs before opening a slider. Even my son-in-law mastered the entering and exiting. HeWho did not.

Toni Louise had tired of barking at her relatives and had retreated to the guest room and under the bed. Eddie and Bo were in the pool area with me when HeWho is notoriously oblivious to his surroundings, opened the door and .....

Who let the dogs out? It was HeWho. Gemma immediately had Eddie by the neck and down. Eddie was yelping in pain and I jumped right in to get my baby. My son-in-law pulled Gemma off and Eddie proceeded to run around the pool, being chased by all the dogs, including Mr. BoJangles.

I finally caught him after he had pooped all around the pool as he ran, having had the poop scared out of him. No blood, no swelling that I could find. The next day his neck was a little sore when I pulled on his leash. Scared me. But, since I know that Gemma could have easily killed him and didn't, she was forgiven. She was just protecting her territory. 

I was in hopes that since she had taken Eddie down a notch, he would back off. The very next day, he ran to the glass door and barked and growled his fool head off at Gemma. A happy ending to what could have been a tragedy. HeWho did not escape a good scolding from his daughter, who then felt bad for yelling at her Dad. Her Mom assured her that she should not feel bad at all!