Hello friends! Welcome to Rough Life! This episode is dropping a day late. I know y'all
are just devastated about that, but we actually had a pretty rough storm come through yesterday,
and it knocked a massive tree in our neighbor's yard down into our yard. It destroyed our fence,
and it was just a huge mess. But anyways, y'all have told me before that you missed my story times,
so I figured I would use this episode to tell you how insane my life has been this last week.
Before we begin, let me remind y'all about the characters in my story. My husband's name is
Justin. He and I have a long-term foster who I refuse to acknowledge as a foster fail. His name
is Big Boy. He is pretty much on death's door. Every other week we're convinced he's dying,
and then the next week he's the healthiest one in our house. I'm also fostering Peanut Butter,
the used-to-be feral mama dog that you've heard me talk about. Okay, so I've had Peanut since
February. I was originally planning for her to go on transport in April, but that didn't happen,
and I noticed about two weeks ago Peanut started showing signs that she was going into heat.
I called our vet, got her scheduled to be spayed the next week, and I just went ahead and got Big Boy
scheduled to be neutered at the same time too. We had been putting off getting him neutered because
he is in heart failure, and our vets didn't think he was healthy enough to survive it, but he was
given the go ahead a few months ago. So me, as a veteran animal rescuer with every resource
available to me and unlimited, not really, funds to do whatever I need to do, found myself in the
exact same situation as the people I talk about on this podcast. Let me back up. Since March 1st,
I remember it because it was my mother's birthday and she was at my house for dinner.
We have been seeing this huge foxhound wandering around our neighborhood, and we live in a very
urban neighborhood, especially for the south. We have no strays, everyone's dogs are kept in the
house. It's very not southern. Anytime we got close to this dog though, he would take off running.
He always seemed to be going in the same direction, so we, our entire block, just assumed he had a
home and that he was getting out or, you know, something like that. He was very well fed, clean,
a healthy looking dog. As the weeks went on, we saw him more and more often, but he never even
came close enough for us to see if he was wearing a collar or not. He wouldn't even come up to Olly
to play, nothing like that. Cut to two weeks ago when Miss Peanut went into heat, and suddenly we
had a stalker. He was at our fence day and night. Fortunately, he was too big and too scared to dig
under our fence or jump over it into our yard. Unfortunately, he was so good looking, Sweet Pea
just could not help herself, and she would dig out literally multiple times a day. She's a good girl
though, and would immediately regret her decision and walk around the corner a lot and come to the
front door to be let in. The ultimate walk of shame. No matter what we did, how we filled in
the holes or barricaded the fence, that Hussey would get out. Okay, so now it's surgery day.
I forgot to mention that when I texted our vet to make the appointment, he asked me about taking
a dog for him too. It is a seven month old purebred albino Doberman who was brought in at the end of
February when he broke with Parvo. The owners told them to do whatever it took to save him because
they just loved him so much. And then they never came back for him, and they never paid their bill.
So for the last what, like two and a half months or so, this puppy has essentially been living in
solitary confinement. He was in a concrete run with no blankets, no bed, no toys, and only taken
outside a few times a day to go potty. And this is by no means a knock on the vet. They are not a
doggie daycare. This is not some luxury camp you board your dog at. In fact, this was a huge nuisance
to them because that was one less cage that they had opened to take in an actual medical emergency
because this guy just completely ghosted them. And I'm not sure of the whole legal process,
but it's something along the lines of they have to try so many different days and so many different
avenues of contacting the owner before they can legally take possession of the dog. So they wrote
him letters, they called, they texted, they left voicemails, and they didn't hear from him for two
months or however long. So they just surrendered him to me. I won't go into a ton of detail on the
Dilberman's personality. Suffice to say, he is a seven month old puppy that has had minimal human
interaction for the last two plus months. We named him doofus and honestly, that name might be too
smart for him. He is all legs and no brain. So Thursday, surgery day, I come home with a drugged
up peanut, a barely survived surgery big boy, and a wide open and wild doofus. We typically go for a
mile and a half walk with the dogs every day, but it was just all we could do to survive that day.
So we skipped our walk that day. Peanut was so sore, she didn't even get up and go potty until
that next day. And that next day. So the next day, Friday, when Justin gets home from work,
we leash everybody up and we start our walk. Immediately, I can sense we're being followed.
Every street we turn down, every potty break we stop and take, there's a sneaky little foxhound
creeping behind us. We were actually shocked how many people stopped and asked us if he was our dog.
And it made me laugh every time because we had four dogs with four leashes and collars on that we
were walking. But that fifth one about 30 feet behind us with no collar, no leash. Yeah, yeah,
he's with us too. We just don't like him as much as the others. But anyways, everyone we talked to
would say they've been trying to catch him for months. Someone even posted him on Facebook twice,
looking for the owners. One lady saw him almost get hit by a car two separate times.
It became abundantly clear that this baby was not going home if he even had one. So I needed a bait
dog. But not a bait dog used for fighting like you would normally hear me talk about. I tied
poor peanut up in our backyard and I left the gate wide open. And he took the bait hook, line,
and sinker. He was in the backyard before I even made the lap around the house. As soon as he saw
me close the gate, though, he took off running to the back of our property before he realized he
was fenced in. I just needed to get him in the backyard so that I could get close enough to scan
him for a microchip. Then I was going to open the gate and let him be on his way again. He had been
so feral that I knew this was going to be a huge challenge. So I had Justin come outside and helped
me. He walked on one side of the yard. Ollie walked on the other and I walked down the middle. I don't
know. I don't know how Ollie always knows what I'm doing and what I need help with, but he is
seriously my right hand man. It took all three of us a total of 30 seconds before we had a new BFF.
He followed me right in the house. He sat perfectly still while I scanned him for a microchip
and scanned him again and scanned him again because I just knew he had to have a chip somewhere.
No luck. I opened up the front door for him to leave and when I turned around he was curling up
in the dog bed. Hmm. That's not what I had planned, but it's fine. This is fine. All we had to do was
keep him away from Peanut. It was actually a breeze that evening because everyone was so tired.
All five dogs, Ollie, Peanut, Big Boy, Doofus and our new friend, Boyfriend, they all just found a
spot to sleep while we ate dinner and watched TV and honestly no one really moved. So around 1130
we started getting ready for bed. If we only knew what the night had in store for us. I am not a
rookie. Okay. Like I knew I needed to keep pee away from the unaltered males because even though
she was spate, she still smelled like she was in heat and I absolutely was not going to let them
hurt her incision. She just had major surgery and I treated her like a princess that whole weekend
aside from the whole big dog thing, but that was fine. So Ollie and Peanut slept in our bedroom
with us. Doofus, Big Boy and Boyfriend all knew how to use the doggy door and they had all been
chummy that whole afternoon. So we left them loose in the rest of the house for 90 minutes straight.
Doofus scratched outside our bedroom door crying to be let in. It was one of those things where
you're thinking any minute he's going to stop and go to sleep. Any minute for 90 minutes we thought
this any minute for 90 minutes. Finally, Justin said, I'm just going to bring him in here. He's
unaltered, but he's a dumb baby and he had no idea Peanut was even female, let alone in heat.
So he was fine to be around her. Finally, peace and quiet. I had just fallen asleep when I heard a
super loud fart and actually scared me awake. It was one of those things where you're like,
did I dream that? Or did I actually hear that? I woke Justin up and I asked him if he heard that
and he didn't know what I was talking about. I laid there for a few more minutes and everyone
was silent and still. So I assumed everything was fine. But I think in my heart of hearts though,
I knew. I knew what that was, but I was so exhausted. It was almost 3am by them and I just,
I didn't want to be right. Can you hear him barking? That's Doofus. That's Doofus barking
right now because I'm recording this and I'm not letting him in the room with me. Like,
he drives me so crazy. Okay, I put him outside. Maybe that'll help. Okay, so back to my story.
This is why I type it all out on Facebook. You don't see how many times I stop and start because
of all the dog interruptions. Okay, so it's now 3.45 and we're jolted awake when we heard fighting
going on in the rest of the house between big boy and boyfriend. And it's so awful getting
woken up like that from such a deep sleep because you don't have your wits about you yet. You're
just running into the darkness. You have no idea what's going on. Everyone's confused. Everyone's
running. And I don't know for sure that God loves me more than Justin. But it's moments like this
that make me think he might. So Justin jumps out of bed and he goes running to the door and he gets
there like a split second before me and he slides barefoot in a nice cold pile of diarrhea.
And he almost wipes out in the hallway. So now not only is there a pile of diarrhea on my nice
white carpet, there's diarrhea footprints thrown in the mix too. And I love that for me. I just love
it. Side note, obviously in the moment we had no idea what was going on and why the boys got in a
fight. But after checking the nanny cameras, I'm pretty sure what happened was boyfriend was sleeping
in big boy's bed, which is fine. Big boy's a great sharer, but he's also a known cuddler. And he will
climb on top of anyone to snuggle with them. I think he tried to do that with boyfriend. And I
think boyfriend, understandably, was like, who the heck are you and what the heck are you doing
trying to spoon me right now. And when he jumped up, I think it hurt big boy's incision because
remember he had just been neutered to. And I think he thought boyfriend was the one hurting him.
Basically, it was just a big misunderstanding. And they were already best friends by the time
Justin slid into the hallway. Okay, so it's 4am now. I've thrown everyone except the princess
in the backyard so we can clean everything up. I also decided it was just too stressful to keep
boyfriend in the house with us that night. Peanut had to be separate. Big boy was fragile.
Doofus was just wearing us out. It was just too much. So I opened our garage door and told him
he could just go home tonight and come back in the morning to visit. He went on his way and
walked into the front yard and I confidently closed the garage door and trotted back to bed.
How naive of me to think that I would be going back to sleep anytime soon. I'm not even sure I
got to the bed yet when I heard the most awful racket on our front door and honestly sounded
like a full grown man trying to break down the door. Again, I thought to myself, he'll stop
any minute, any minute he will stop. And he did. He stopped. He took a few steps back and he started
the loudest bang I have ever heard in my life. If you've ever heard a hound dog, you know they
don't bark. They don't even really howl. They scream. So for the sake of our neighbors, I brought
him back in. This time though, I told him he had to sleep in the garage. We left Doofus in the house
because he obviously needed to be able to get to the doggy door when he needed to. But we put a baby
gate up so that he couldn't get to our bedroom door. Satisfied and with squeaky clean feet,
Justin and I crawled back into bed. I don't even know what the time was then, but I know it was
after five o'clock and we had just fallen back to sleep. When Doofus started barking so loud for so
long, two sound machines didn't even drown him out. Literally with tears in my eyes, I rolled over
to Justin and said, we're just going to have to put him and boyfriend in crates in the garage.
So here we go again. Dogs in the backyard. Justin's in the front yard in his boxers,
getting the crate out of my car. I'm in the garage with the door open with no pants on,
setting up another crate. I know that our neighbors across the street have doorbell cameras, but I was
so past caring at that point. Finally, Doof and boyfriend are settled in their crates. Peanut and
Ollie are in our bedroom and Big Boy has the whole house to himself with all the dog beds.
The thing about Big Boy though is he may be in heart failure, but he loves everyone with his
whole heart and he loves them big. So when he heard his friends in the garage fighting for their
lives in those crates, he was bound and determined to wake me up to let me know so I could go save
them. After 30 minutes again of thinking any minute he's going to stop. I finally come to
my senses and realize no, no, there's no stopping. They never stopped. They've never stopped. Why do I
always think they will stop? I don't know. So I grab his bed, a bone, and I toss him in the garage
with them as mad and exhausted as I was. It really was sweet seeing Big Boy run in there to his friends
like, guys, I'm here. You're all right. I brought the human to save you. But it was almost six o'clock
by that point. And Justin and I had only had about 90 minutes of sleep the whole night. So there was
nothing sweet enough in the world to stop me from leaving them in there while I went back to bed.
So finally we got a straight solid five hours of sleep. We got up sometime around 10 30 or 11
and we went to free the captives. I had had a nanny camera on them the whole time that they were in
there and I checked on them several times when I would like wake up to roll over, you know. So you
can imagine my shock and horror when I walked into the garage to see do this had had explosive diarrhea
all over himself, all over his crate and all over the concrete floor. And remember he's albino,
like he is white as snow. And this diarrhea ain't so we could see everywhere on him. That was just
straight diarrhea. So I get it cleaned up while Justin is straightening things back up in our
war zone of a house from the night before. We have lunch and I find a foster to take doofus
that afternoon. I pack up all his stuff. I load him up and I drive an hour and a half to Mississippi.
While I'm gone, I figured it wouldn't hurt to leave boyfriend in the garage with the garage
door open so he could go home if he wanted to. So Justin went in to work on some stuff on his
computer and not long after I left, he came out of his office and he headed to the laundry room.
He was totally caught off guard when boyfriend crossed right in front of him in the hallway.
He said he could have sworn I told him I was leaving him outside but
nevertheless he opened the front door and boyfriend walked right out. So Justin went in the laundry
room to do a load of laundry. Because I married a man who does all of my laundry. How crazy is that?
A few minutes later, he walked back into the house and he thought he was hallucinating.
Boyfriend was standing in the kitchen right in front of him. He walked into our backyard and he
saw that the gate had been open. As a totally rational human being, he assumed one of the
neighbors saw boyfriend in our backyard earlier in the day and then when they saw him out in our
front yard, they just went ahead and put him in the backyard for us. Never mind the fact that that
would have meant that they left the gate open and somehow managed to grab this dog that still
wouldn't come to anyone other than me and Justin. No worries though. He closed and latched the gate,
put boyfriend in the front yard and went back in the house. Just as he was getting back to his
office, he heard the doggie door open and was in total disbelief when boyfriend came walking up
right behind him. He checked outside and the gate was open again. Because it was personal now,
he closed the gate, put boyfriend in the front yard and stood on the deck in our backyard to see
who this crazy person was that kept putting boyfriend in our backyard. Not two minutes later,
boyfriend walked up to the gate, nudged open the latch, pushed the gate open, walked up the
deck stairs, walked right past Justin and went in the doggie door to go lay down. Had Justin not
gotten that on video, I would have never even believed him. So needless to say, boyfriend stayed
in the house the rest of the time I was in Mississippi. So while I'm in Mississippi, this new foster
was actually just right by my mom's house. So I loaded Ollie and Peanut up with me to take them
for a walk in her woods, mostly to give Peanut a break from having to be separated from everyone,
but also so Ollie could have some fun. We dropped Doofus off and the family absolutely loved him.
I went to my mom's and we were having a nice walk in the woods. Life was grand. Things were looking
up again. That was until I got a text from the new foster family telling me that their little
Fru Fru dogs were terrified of this big old Doof. And she needed me to come pick him back up.
So that means I drove three hours round trip for nothing. So Justin and I were so confused when
I got home with the dog that I told him I was leaving with a foster and saw the dog that I had
left outside so it could go back home asleep on our couch. Justin said, so nobody's leaving tonight.
I said, nope. He said, so it's going to be just like last night. I said, yep.
And he said, I'm honestly a little scared to go to bed tonight. I said, ditto. Thankfully though,
we were a whole day wiser and things started off way better. We put everyone in crates in the garage.
Things were much smoother with much less diarrhea. And on Monday, I took boyfriend to his new foster.
Justin asked me where I was taking him and I said, I'm going to take him to the jail.
He said, I think it's weird you guys call it that. I was so confused. And I asked him, I said,
what do you want me to call it? And he said, the animal shelter. I said, you know, I'm talking
about the actual human jail, right? The inmates foster for us. Tell me you don't listen to my
podcast without telling me you don't listen to my podcast, Justin. I've talked on two separate
episodes about how the inmates foster for us and we love it. Anyway, that was all about a week ago.
We're still stuck with doofus, but things are going much smoother now. This episode was way
longer than I meant for it to be. I guess I had been blocking out how many traumatic events we
lived through during those first 24 hours. It's a rough life, but someone's got to do it.
Doofus.