The Saga of Stupidface.

After establishing that Stupidface is indeed a Walker Coon Hound. I began on a Internet based journey of discovery. Mainly I discovered that that Walkers can travel up to 50 miles in one night. Stupidface could be from anywhere. Although why the owners would not have been calling all the vets offices in that radius and leaving a note, I have to wonder.

They probably dislike Stupidface as much as I do.

On some level I feel bad for her. She got lost, whether this was a deliberate thing on the part of the owners or not, she found somewhere that she wanted to stay, only to find that the new people have to keep her crated on the porch all the time or else she will go after their animals.

On the other hand she was so hyper it hurt to watch her.

Scott's overtures to keep her died when we realized that she is impossible to walk. She wants to be on that scent and nothing NOTHING will stop her. Not you, not the leash, not yelling or pleading, nothing. Scott had to carry her out the woods the last time he took her in and since then we only walked her in the fields.

I also learned that you need a six to eight foot tall fence in order to keep one in your yard. So ha ha that will never happen in a million years.

Luckily, we managed to get through to the local animal shelter who said they would take her. Unfortunately this is after she chewed through one of my leashes. As soon as they said they would take her Scott threw the phone down and ran out to the truck while I grabbed the one remaining leash and got Stupidface. We didn't even wait for her to get in the truck, instead Scott picked her up and tossed her into the cab.

We wanted to get her down there before they changed their minds.

While Scott was gone I began on the days tasks, cleaning the chicken coup and washing out the dog crate where we had Stupidface until I heard the sound of the truck pulling back into the drive. I peered around the corner of the shed, fearing that I was about to see her white and tan head poking up above the seat.

But she was gone.

Gone. Gone I tell you. After a week of barking and baying and yelling and chewing and peeing on things Miss I-have-never-been-trained was gone forever.

So once again silence reins on my little farm, except for the crowing of the roosters and the wind in the grasses.

So peaceful.

So dogless.

Jack Ran Away and I Picked up a Stray.

So the other day I woke up the sound of all my metal porch furniture being drug across the porch. I hadn't been feeling well the night before so I had taken some over the counter cold medicine that had put me out as effectively as if I had been tranquilized as part of a study on adult human females. So of course my first thought upon waking out of my drugged stupor was that I had died and was in hell for my sins.

Hell sounded a lot like a steel cable hitting porch furniture.

So I put on whatever clothes were closest to me and blearily wandered to the porch to find what looked like a full size pure breed coon hound had broken loose from someone's yard dragging 15 feet of cable tie that she had proceeded to wrap around my front porch. At the slight on me she launched into a happy people dance and proceed to dump a chair and a table into the lawn.

I should also mention that I was leaving for a three day business trip the next day and really really didn't want to dump this problem on the farm sitter.

What followed was hours of talking to the neighbors, calling the vets, driving the dog around in the truck in the hopes somebody recognized her, putting a sign on the mailbox, and even having two people show up to look at her and take down my number. I should also point to those of you who are chanting call animal control I will point out that I did. Except they never did pick up their damn phone. And they are only open two hours a day. And they only keep dogs for 48 hours before sending them to that big kennel in the sky because they lack any real kennels.

Yeah.

So it pretty much became the farm sitters problem. Except in the middle of worky time I get a call saying that my dog, Jack, you know, the dog I got to “replace” Razzle my first ever dog after she died from a snake bite, you know the dog I was hoping that would fill that dog shaped hole in my heart and give me many great years to look forward, yeah that dog, well it turns out he had slipped off his lead and taken off on a magical journey with the new new dog.

The new dog who, from this moment on, shall be known as Stupidface Fuckbrain.

So Stupidface comes back, but Jack doesn't. Now as you may recall, Jack is a somewhat traumatized dog, from what we suspect was abuse followed by tow years in a kennel with only limited human interaction. He is not going to come up to people. If he doesn't find his own way home and start begging to come inside, then he is not coming home.

Period.

I would like to gloss over the next bit, which involved a lot of trails for everybody, including farm sitter who nearly bust a lung climbing around the fucking mountains trying to find Jack, the brief sighting of Jack Scott got while taking Stupidface Fuckbrain out for a walk because we had to keep her kenneled in Jack's kennel to protect the chickens, my desperate attempts wandering around the forest calling for a dog that I was not sure loved me enough to return to me, Scott's desire to keep Stupidface Fuckbrain, WHO HAS STOLEN MY DOGS PLACE, and the fact I am writing this when I should be sleeping because I am on the road again and far from home and wondering where my sweet little doggy boy is now.

So to recap, my car is still in the shop, we are still traveling in a rental car that is starting to smell less new car smell and more stale food and sweat smell, I am still waiting for the septic system to be approved (if it even will be or we will be stuck with the less desirable system), this the time of year I am gone the most because this is when the work is, and now my dog has run off to be replaced by a dog that thinks my cats and chickens are chew toys.

Um. So I may be under just a little stress right now.

Just a little.

Maybe a tad.

You know. Tiny bit.

AUGGGHHHHHH.

Dogs.

So my dog Razzle died. She was bit by a snake. It was awful.

We will miss you, little girl.

 So much for going quietly in her sleep.

Well, Holly's coping methods are kinda limited, so I went out and got another dog.

Meet Jack.

The pumpkin king?

I swear if anything happens to this dog I am going to stand outside and pump rounds at the sky to get back at the cold uncaring universe. Asshole random events.*

We basically went back to the same lady we got Razzle from and picked out another dog. She also remembered Razzle and expressed her sympathizes. Which was somehow both touching and also the most sad thing ever.

We decided that we wanted a dog about Razzle's size so that we could use the crate and carrier we already had.

What? I'm being practical people.

So we wandered around the kennels looking at dogs. There was the normal hyper but none to bright dogs, the attention whores and the laziest dog I have ever seen. It was a fat yellow beagle lab mix that went to sleep while we were looking at it. We looked at all the dogs in the size that we wanted.

Jack stood out because she described him as lazy. He liked to get up, run for about a minute, and then he was done. Perfect. Also, he was the just the right size.

When we said we wanted to see him the dog lady went in to get him. He acted extremely confused.

“What? Me? The lead? Go OUTSIDE? What? Really?”

Even the other dog that was with him seemed confused. After pulling him out with her she explained that Jack had been there for two years and that nobody ever asked to see him.

Which pretty much meant I had to adopt him on the spot.

Apparently, he had been adopted by one family briefly but they had returned him because the father had wanted a dog to go jogging with him, and Jack does not jog. He had reported that Jack would get about halfway along the route and then want to go home and lay around on the floor.

Hey I like sitting on my ass too! It's like it was meant to be.

It also turns out that he had been there so long that he was free.

So we filled out the paper work and took him home.

I have to state here that many people have said 'remember your new dog won't be Razzle.” And I can tell you straight up that he is not Razzle. Because he spent the whole car trip back sitting calmly on the seat. (we didn't bring the carrier although we had our doggy seat belt rig in.) He didn't try to get in the front seat, he didn't throw up, he didn't try to shove his nose out the window. If I hadn't been looking back periodically to check on him I never would have known there was a dog there at all.

He also walks on the lead correctly. Hey, I can walk the dog without it trying to pull my arm out of my socket! That's wonderful.

However, unlike Razzle, Jack appears to spending his first weeks with us by being terrified of everything. Scott gave him a bath when we got home, and now he treats Scott like he is a demon from the ancient world that has come to sacrifice him on the terrible alter of “Bath.”

He slinks around the house, trying to fit himself into small safe places. He even crawled under the bed. Hell, the cat had problems getting under the bed.

I'll be sitting in the kitchen and I'll see a head slowly creeping around the corner. I say “Hi jack watcha doin?” Head disappears. Head reappears a moment later. Repeat until I leave the kitchen. I'm still disciplining him, as it appears he has had almost no training whatsoever although it does appear that he is housebroken. If I ask him to sit I get a blank look. If I ask him to lay down I get an even blanker look.

I can almost here the wind sailing between his ears.

He's not Razzle. He's Jack.

But I needed something to plug the terrible gaping dog shaped hole in my life.

So I just plugged another dog in my life.

Seems to be working.**

Aww.

*Being an atheist really limits my ability to blame everything on God/Satan.

** My logic is that I won't see the half full food dish as oh my god Razzle is dead and she is never going to eat that food again *sob* and instead I look at it and go, oh it's Jack's dish, that's okay then.