#rat terrier

Boop!

So excited for breakfast, I’m trembling!

Do I look cute in my fleece? It’s practical AND cute! Who says bundling up can’t be fashionable?

Oh, last night Sam was so happy to have me home but it’s like he couldn’t trust I was really there unless he could also see Chris. He kept waking me up and going to Chris and crying until I went with him to see Chris. And then we’d sleep a bit and then he’d start pacing so I went back to my room so Chris’ didn’t get woken and that would last for ten minutes and he’d get up and cry until we went back.

I just got done talking a bath and Sam insisted on being in the tub. He likes to sit by the drain and doze in the hot water and I mostly just wanted to soak for as long as possible. He no longer has such a broken porcelain skin texture now. He got a massage and shampoo. He keeps trying to get me to play but then doesn’t want to leave my sight to actually play fetch

Porcelain neck. He looks so dumb. It’s basically like a blown coat but it’s all millimeters long furs and skin.

I would just wake up to see him sleep staring at me. I think my favorite was his face in my sweater pocket,

Oh that’s adorable. These photos somehow have such an ethereal vibe

Reunited and it feels so good!!

You can hear him scream cry because he finally got to see me.

Sam just doesn’t understand why Chris isn’t happy. He worked so hard to drag Chris’ heavy work sweater to the opposite side of the buulding. That’s where Sam did the special new service he’s offering . They’re custom water bed. With just a small monthly fee he can keep on the preventative maintenance (it’s putting it into his waterbowl.

Met up with @the-adventures-of-dave yesterday and it was quite fun. Mostly stayed masked or distanced and we are both vaccinated. We finally got to do our Galaxy Day, just a year later!

I got to pet Kepler a bunch and she got Sam to do some tricks!

The first half of the video is the way Sam insisted on sitting in the car and the second is Sam doing tricks!

Happy gotcha day Sam!!! Four years ago I flew round trip to Nashville airport to pick up this tiny hairless puppy. I was a swirling mix of anxiety and excitement, terrified that I was duped and he was just a shaved rat terrier puppy. This pup immediately won me over so completely and it seems like I won him over as well. Even by the time we got to Edmonton airport in Nisku he wasn’t willing to let me out of his sight. He cried the entire time I was in the washroom and immediately snuggled back into my arms. That night he slept under the blanket snuggled in between my chest and my arm as the little spoon. He now prefers to sleep with my legs as a pseudo bolster bed and will forcibly move my legs so he can get snuggled with his head on my knee. There have been a ton of ups and downs but he’s a sometimes frustrating but always adored little guy. Cheers to four amazing years, pup.

He now has a fancy dress shirt

And a dino hoodie

He can catch a tossed kibble

Apparently he looks like a little kid who has just been picked up from school and is pouring now because mom said we can’t get McDonald’s on the way hone

Kisses from Sam

Statue dog

This is Sam and my brother’s routine when he leaves. It’s such a cute goodbye kiss.

Pictures from Poppy’s 6th birthday a few days ago on March 27, 2022. Took her to play at the dog park, which she had all to herself, took her to Reber Ranch (a huge pet store with lots more to offer besides a normal one) and let her pick out some birthday treats. Then went through Starbucks drive through, told them it was her birthday, and they made her a pupachino and wrote “Happy B-Day ♡” on the cup! She looks so happy, it warms my heart to see Poppy having a great time. She deserves a wonderful birthday celebration!

Today is Poppy’s 6th birthday and her fifth year with me as her owner. If you’d like to read the story I wrote four years ago in 2018 about how Poppy was rescued feel free to continue reading below.

Note: If you don’t like brutally honest stories or stories about triumphs, troubles, and rescue dogs don’t read this.

Today is my dog Poppy’s 2nd birthday (6th birthday as of 2022) and the 1 year celebration of me adopting her (5 year celebration of adopting her as of 2022). The first picture is a picture of what she looked like the day I got her when she had been abused and malnourished. The second photo is a picture of what she looked like in February of 2020 at her Petco Positive Dog Training Level 1 graduation , happy and healthy. Here is her full rescue story below.

A year ago (5 years ago) I never thought I would be able to write a story so honest and pure. I especially never thought I would be the one to get to experience life with the sweetest living creature on Earth.

March 27, 2017 was the day that I met a real life angel that changed my life forever. My little doe, Poppy.

My day started like any other day at the time, I was doing my day to day things and for some reason something told me to go downtown to the Westlake area even though I rarely went down there. After spending some time in the area I went into Ross to get a hat for my partner at the time. As I was in the store P saw a group of men walking around with two dogs. One of the dogs they were treating normally, and the other dog they were walking around going up to random people aged 18-30’s asking if they would trade the dog for meth or heroin. That dog was Poppy.

Poppy was obviously uncomfortable, afraid, and didn’t want to walk with them. When they would pull on her leash it was a tug-o-war. They would pull and she would stand in place, shaking profusely with fear, refusing to move, and trying to pull in the other direction while they would yell at, kick, beat, and drag her across the concrete to get her to move. They approached P asking if he had anything to trade, he told them we didn’t have either of those drugs but that we really wanted the dog and that we had some weed that someone had given us that he would be willing to trade if they were interested. They said they would think about it, and then they went to look for someone else with an offer closer to what they were looking for. Ten minutes later they came back and told him they had no luck trading her, they accepted his offer, P gave them the half smoked joint and they gave us the dog, said her name was Sierra, and then took off before he could ask anything else about her. I came outside and said I was ready to leave but told him he should probably return the dog to his friend because I assumed he was watching a friends dog for them. P then told me that he made a life choice without me and that he got me a dog so I wouldn’t be as depressed anymore. I literally thought he was joking. I crouched down to the dog’s level and saw just how horribly abused she was. Her eyes were blood shot and filled with panic. Her ribs were protruding out. Her fur was dull in color and missing patches of it. She was covered in fleas (which I didn’t notice until a few days later when I got her medication to treat them.). She couldn’t walk properly because she wouldn’t do anything but shiver non-stop. She didn’t like other dogs. She was afraid of all people. She was afraid of water. She was afraid of her own reflection when I put her in front of a mirror. She didn’t know how to play with toys or play with other dogs because she was abused to the point where she was afraid of other dogs and she didn’t know how. She was afraid of people kissing her forehead. When I would reach my hand out to pet her she would flinch and think I was going to hit her. She wouldn’t eat dog food because her old abusers didn’t buy it for her, instead she would only eat scraps of human foods like burgers and pizza, which were the same foods that would give her diarrhea and stomach issues because that’s all they fed her. They also didn’t want to pick up after her when she used the bathroom, so to scare her out of going they would rub her face/nose in her own feces everytime she would go as a way to “punish” her. It created such a fear of her using the bathroom that even after I got her away from them she would hold it for long periods of time and when she couldn’t hold it any longer and she would finally decide to go she would go squat in the grass, with her legs shaking, and look up at me with this terrified look on her face that said “Is…is…this ok?” It killed me inside to see a dog so afraid of the world. I had to get her a new harness right away because the one she came with was covered with blood because it was too tight on her and it was digging into her skin from her abusers pulling on her leash and dragging her around so much. I decided that in order to help her she needed love, change, and a new start, starting with her name, so before we even left the spot we got her at we changed her name to Poppy. We then went to go wait for our bus back to Capitol Hill. When we got on the bus Poppy started shaking harder than before and she looked full of panic. I picked up her fragile little body, took off my favorite hoodie at the time, wrapped her up in it and held her like a baby, petting her little deer head. She then looked up at me with a scared and exhausted look that said “Please don’t hurt me, I’ve already been though so much…” I then held her closer and told her “I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. I’ll love and care for you forever, I promise.” I have kept that promise to her since that day.

The point in my life I was at when I found Poppy often makes me question if she saved me more than I saved her. I was homeless, sleeping on the streets, and head under water deep in an IV heroin addiction. Just about every vein on my body was destroyed and I was shooting up in my neck every day to keep my withdrawals at bay. I was so miserable with my life, myself, and I felt like I had nothing to live for since my life revolved completely around the addiction that was destroying me. I just wanted to die because it felt like the only way to get out of addiction permanently. When I got Poppy she gave me something to live for and something to care about enough to put before my addiction. When I was on that bus with her after getting her I took the bus back to the drug den of a squat house I was living in at the time, grabbed all my belongings when I got there, and left because I knew it wouldn’t be a safe environment for Poppy to be in. Then I set out for where ever the world would take my little family of three next.

I then went to the store and got her everything she needed. Different types of food, a new harness, treats, hair brush, a sweater so she wouldn’t shiver so much with her missing fur patches and all, etc. I soon learned that she wouldn’t eat any dog food that I put in front of her and I was scared that she would starve. So I took her to Mud Bay and told them about the problem. They gave me this chicken powder to sprinkle on top of any dog food I wanted her to eat and it made everything I wanted her to eat taste like chicken. After getting the chicken powder and using it on her food she started eating dog food for the first time. She had some major stomach problems, so I had to pick all natural dog foods, read labels carefully, have planned meal times for her, and make sure she didn’t ground score any human foods off the ground. During this time of change she was throwing up and having diarrhea often since her body was getting use to the dog foods instead of human foods. The second day I had her she threw up all over my sleeping bag before bed, she got scared that I would “punish” her like her old abusers did, so she slid out of her harness, and she went tearing off down the street. I ran after her yelling her name trying to stop her, but she was too fast for me to catch her. Thankfully there was a person walking in the opposite direction that she was running in so they collided and the person picked her up and handed her back to me. I put her harness back on her, went to the pizza shop across the street to get some napkins to clean off the sleeping bag, cleaned it up, gave her some water to get the throw up taste out of her mouth, and then I cuddled her to sleep. Ever since the day I got her I was determined to help her recover and become the happy and healthy dog I knew she could be. P and I started taking her to the dog park on the hill so that she could learn how to socialize with other dogs. She’s was me 24/7 walking around Seattle, so she had to learn to break out of her shell and get use to people around her real quick. In the beginning things didn’t go so well. Because she was so disheveled looking from her abusers and lack of care previously people made a lot of rude comments about me “not taking care of the dog” and a lot of comments about how “ugly” people thought she was. I decided to keep the yarn knit sweater on her until her fur grew back and the whether got warmer and she got healthier so people wouldn’t comment on her fur and weight so much. She naturally has huge Dumbo ears, but because she was so underweight they looked even more disproportionate to her body at the time and people constantly made fun of them. This one guy came up to us, pointed at her and started yelling “Wow, what an ugly dog, just look at those ears! They’re so big! Look at those ears! Hahaha.” I noticed Poppy looked as if she was shrinking with fear. She was hunching her back, cowering, and shaking with her head down looking up at me with a sad look on her face. I told the guy to stop making fun of her and he still continued to do it, so I walked away. Reactions like this towards Poppy were a pretty regular occurrence at the time unfortunately. So I decided to walk away from any person who put her down, and only surrounded her with people who uplifted her and showed her love. I also started singing her songs about her/with her name in them. Two of the songs are actually about her ears. One goes “Pop-a-roo, Pop-a-roo, your ears they go flop-a-rooooo!” Another song talks about how the only thing bigger than her ears is her heart. I noticed she would lay on my lap relaxed with a little smirk on her face when I would sing her the songs about her.

I took her everywhere with me through out my day to day activities and soon enough she started to come out of her shell and she became more comfortable with people. She learned to read people well. If she likes someone she goes up to them, puts her front paws on their thigh, stretchs her body upward on their leg standing on her hind legs trying to say hello and make a new friend. If she doesn’t like someone she tries lunging at them doing her angry “boo woo woo” bark (it’s a work in progress). She only does that to people that give off a bad vibe. I trust her judgment of people more than everyone. She’s very protective of me and does everything she can to keep me safe just like I do for her. One time I was walking her in an alley way behind a restaurant and she started barking and trying to pull the leash in the opposite direction, less than two minutes later a shooting happened in that alley way. She warned me that something wasn’t right and she saved me from a bad situation.

Over time she grew a little bigger, stronger, and healthier. Her fur started growing back and gaining color to it and her ribs weren’t sticking out anymore. Her eyes looked a bright and healthy honey brown color. She got use to her meal plans, started eating healthy, normal portions, and got on stomach medication that she takes regularly to help with the stomach sensitivity and diarrhea. It took two rounds of flea medication and two hours a day hand picking fleas off of her until the medication started working and killed all the fleas off of her. The area where her old harness that dug into her skin was at healed up and she doesn’t have blood or scabbed up skin there anymore. She gained the weight she needed to and as of January 2018 she weights 25 pounds, a healthy weight for a medium sized dog on the smaller end of the medium spectrum (28 pounds as of 2021). She loves forehead kisses now instead of shaking in fear any time I try to give her one. Instead of shaking with fear thinking I’m going to hit her anytime I raise my hand above her head to pet her she knows I’m just petting her and trying to show her love. In the last year she has had many accomplishments for a dog that came from abuse only a year ago. Her picture made it on the front page online of Capitol Hill Dogs website. She won a Christmas contest at a pet store and as a reward got a gift card to the pet store and her picture in their Christmas flier modeling their puppy Christmas sweaters. She rescued two newborn pit bull puppies that didn’t even have their eyes open yet out of a dumpster around Thanksgiving in 2017 (they both have a good home with a loving owner in California now) because she was able to smell them in there and howl and scratch at the dumpster until I looked inside of it. She was in an article in a world wide known newspaper, The Guardian, in 2018. She came second in a Halloween costume contest in 2019. She graduated level 1 of her training classes in 2020, and started level 2 in 2020. She made it in The World’s Most Interesting Pet’s Coloring Book, the adult and the children’s version in 2021. As well as other activities I can’t think off of the top of my head. Unfortunately she only has a handful of dogs that she’s good friends with and she still struggles with lunging at dogs that walk by her on the sidewalk. She’s also still afraid of her own feces because her abusers use to shove her face in it (as of 2021 she no longer does this). To this day the second she’s done pooping she runs away from it right after she’s done and won’t step near it afterwards. She’s gotten much better at playing with toys, but she’s not super fond of them, she’s more of a food girl lol (as of 2021 she does have a favorite toy called “purple dog”, a purple loofa dog stuffie that she carries around home with her that she licks and cuddles, and as of 2022 she loves her “blue dog” too) Those some of those things are still a work in progress for her that I try to work on with her every day.

I don’t know when her actual birthday is, but since today is the day I adopted her a year ago (5 years ago) I decided today is going to be the day that we celebrate her 2nd (6th) birthday.

My little doe, may you run the park freely today and make lots of friends, may you pick out toys and treats that bring you joy, may everyone you come into contact with treat you like the angel that you are. I’m more than proud of your accomplishments, you have come so far in the last year (5 years). I can’t wait to spend the rest of our lives together and watch you learn and grow. Thank you for teaching me more about patience, unconditional love, and myself. Even more so, thank you for saving me from a self-destructive lifestyle and for giving me something to live for and something to love. And to my higher power, thank you for sending me a guardian angel that I can see before my eyes. Here’s to our first year (5th year) together and to many more years to come. I love you always my Little Doe.