My Girls

I adopted Fusion from the Brazos County Animal Shelter not long after moving to Texas. Unlike what you might hear about cats, she is very affectionate, even clingy at times. Maybe because she was raised by a nut (i.e. me), she also can act very weird at times, including randomly peeing on any clothing like material left lying on the floor, cleaning her own litter box if she decides I took too long, and licking the dogs. She will come to a whistle, her name, or the shaking of a cat food/treat bag. She also loves milk and the sounds of cans.

She likes to play with toilet paper rolls, any kind of string, twist ties, and those plastic rings that come off of milk jugs. Food wise, she does not like seafood flavored cat food or treats, but she does love raw or cooked shrimp, fish, steak, potatoes, muffins, biscuit, spaghetti, ice cream, and the occasional sip of tea. Yeah, I know....Her name is shout out to my geeky nature and career, being short for ColdFusion (the language I program in).

With her stocky build, half tail, and broader face, Blue mostly favors the Aussie side of her blood line. I got her from my brother, who got her from some some backyard breeder in the country who had bred two merles together. As a result, Blue was born deaf, but the woman didn't bother to tell my brother that. A week after he got her, he asked me to come look at her because she just wasn't learning anything. Took me less than ten minutes to realize she was deaf. Not being a dog lover in general (he got her for his girlfriend at the time), my brother didn't want her anymore. I knew he'd just dump her somewhere, so I took her home with me.

I gave her a new name, which of course refers to both her blue merle coloring and her gorgeous blue eyes. While she may be deaf, it certainly hasn't kept her from enjoying life or being an extremely friendly, happy dog. She is also highly intelligent. I trained her to respond to hand signals, but she also picks up on facial and body expressions. She isn't a fetcher, but she loves to gnaw on her kong and to wrestle. If you go running with her, she'll also make mild attempts at herding you ;-)

Yuki is is a border collie mix that I adopted her from S.A.F.E. House Rescue and Adoption in Spring, Texas after seeing her on Petfinder. She was supposed to be a 6 month old german shepherd mix, but that turned out not to be the case. Instead she was a sickly 3 month old border mix. She looks so much like Blue they could almost be sisters, except she has a leaner build and a regular border tail.

When I first adopted Yuki, she only got to stay with us for a day before I had to take her back due to an outbreak of parvo at the foster home she was in. Two weeks later, Yuki was declared clear and brought back home. She did have a bad lymph node infection, but that cleared up. She also broke a tendon in her knee, but it healed nicely as well. In February 2009, she was diagnosed with demodectic mange, and it took nearly a year to clear up, but she is finally a healthy, happy girl.

She successfully completed a level one obedience class, though due to my own lack of reinforcement she doesn't always obey on first command. She rides wonderfully in the car, just stretching out on the backseat until its time to get out.

Hershey was a Chihuahua/Rat Terrier mix that my mom first purchased in 1997 as a gift to herself. I helped her raise Hershey from puppyhood into a young dog. When I moved to Texas in 2001, my mom followed and brought Hershey with her. In August 2002, mom moved back to North Carolina, leaving Hershey behind, so she became my dog. She was a character who thought she was a big dog but loved the joys of being a spoiled little dog too. She knew many commands, but only did them if she felt like them.

In her fourteenth year, she began suffering from kidney failure, which caused her weight to drop drastically and caused her to experience dementia episodes. She had some good days, but they were decreasing. A month before her fifteenth birthday, I made the sorrowful decision to have her euthanized, before her condition got to the point that she no longer remembered her loved ones and the good days ended. Alan and I were there with her until she was gone.

Shasta was a border collie lab mix I adopted from a friend who had adopted her from A&M's vet school. At first she was very timid around loud noises and had a few interesting quirks from being a lab pet. Though she was a border mix, she was on the small side, weighing less than 30 lbs. She didn't like water, toys, or any of the other things most borders did, but she was a very sweet, loving girl, and we had a good four and a half years together.

When she was approximately thirteen years old, I had to have her put to sleep two days after Thanksgiving as she was suffering from congestive heart failure and no longer able to enjoy her life. I was there with her the whole time and held her as she passed on. I had her body cremated and they are now in a beautiful custom made urn in my living room.