Michelle and the Kid's Visit July 2009

We had a great visit with Michelle and the kids this weekend...time goes by too quickly! As usual we did a bunch of art work and made Grandpa birthday cards. We also played a lot of games...like Monopoly, Rummykub, Trouble, Yahtzee, and Uno!

We came up with our personal game strategies...

We did a little shopping...fun times in the car...with absolutely no fighting!

We went ice skating...

Then Stevens and Hundley took a spin on the merry-go-round...

We went out to lunch at Chappy's...(photo by Wells!)

Nancy and the kids set up the tent in the 98 degree heat...of course Trav was there to help!

We celebrated Grandpa's Birthday!

We posed for a few family photos...

We even learned a few things...

And before we knew it...it was time to say good-bye!

Don't Forget the Kitties

It all began with Maverick...aka Merv Perv. He was the coolest cat ever. He went through every major life change of my young adulthood with me...going off to college, living on my own for the first time, moving from South Carlina to Alabama, getting my first apartment living by myself, getting my first "real job', getting married, and buying our first house. He and Kitchen were very tight. From the time I decided he needed a companion to keep him company during my longs days at work, the two of them were inseparable. When Kitchen was a kitten and climbing all over him, I am sure that he wanted to kill me! After she matured and chilled out the two of them were great buddies. Her proper name did not start out as "Kitchen". It was actually Phoebe...Kitchen is just one of those things that evolved and stuck. Her records at the Vet's office even says "Kitchen". I remember my Nephew Wells thinking her name was so funny. He told me he was going to get a cat and name it either Bathroom, Dining room or Living room. Something told me it was time to introduce a new cat and I am glad we did it when we did. Kitchen was not accepting the new kitten Kiki...and took a long time to warm up. In true Maverick fashion he let that crazy kitten climb all over him without a word of protest. It was not long after we moved into our house that Marverick fell mysteriously sick. He died in the car with Jason on the way to the Vet. Losing this cat was very traumatic for both of us and I am sure for Kitchen as well because she loved him so much. He was the coolest cat you have ever seen. He was always in the room with us and loved for you to scratch him under his arms. He was most famous for doing what we called, "Mr. Smooshy Face". This is a video of our Merv Perv being coaxed into doing Mr. Smooshy Face.

Kiki is a character...she loves to chew on things...which is really irritating! I can't tell you how many times I have had to replace my computer mouse! We think she wishes she was a dog. She even drinks out of their water dish. She does not understand why those stupid dogs always get to go outside and she doesn't. Every once in a while she freaks out and goes on a loud meowing frenzy. She is not very affectionate except on her own terms. When she does want attention...there is no getting rid of her! She will torture you until you give in and pet her. She loves to play with the light from a pen light or laser light. We have to do it only when the dogs are outside because Livingston also likes it and he turns into a 75 pound puppy bounding around the room...someone could lose an eye!

Kitchen is getting older now...working on 14 years. She has lost a lot of muscle tone in her legs and has a hard time jumping. She has become exceedingly affectionate, which is not the way she has always been. It is a nice change...although she too can be relentless when she wants attention. She is a little devious too. She has figured out that our dog Cede will not walk past her. She will lay in the floor on the rug in the doorway into the Kitchen. Cede will cry and cry and that cat will not budge. I wonder if she will ever figure out that all she has to do is walk forward. Kitchen will just move out of the way! Anyway...we think Kitchen enjoys this a great deal! With having three dogs, we have to feed the cats up on a little table in our Kitchen. Since she can't jump up there anymore, we have to put her up there. Probably her biggest quirk is that she constantly wants new water. She even has a long drawn out "I want water" meow. It is funny!

The cats used to be the center of attention around here...the dogs have definitely taken the spotlight away from them. We do still love our kitties. They are unique and fun to have around. Hopefully one day they will forgive us for bringing dogs into their house!

It's Your Turn Now Wells

This is the third of my three favorite people. It is hard to believe that this young man will be 11 years old in September! Here are just a few of my favorite moments that I was lucky enough to catch on tape over the years:

Martha

Four Year Old Hundley Sings for Aunt Martney

I went to visit Michelle and Family a few weeks after Stevens was born back in March 2004. Hundley and I spent a lot of time together...real "girl bonding time". We were hanging out and talking one day and she wanted to sing a song for me. This video is part of that song. She was the cutest four year old girl ever!

On a side note, I am very happy to report that I have just learned how to clip separate videos into one video...LOOK OUT WORLD!

Martha

Mr. Stevens Speaks His Mind

These videos were taken in March of 2009 and I am so excited to be able to share this with people. This child is one of the funniest little dudes you will ever meet...of course I think this because he is my nephew and one of my three favorite people in the world! His mom has always said that he has tried to make her laugh since he was a little tiny baby. This is him honing his craft. Take it away Mr. Stevens!

Our Foster Hounds

After adopting Livingston, we decided to give fostering hounds for Basset Hound Rescue of Alabama a try. We have been very lucky to foster some great hounds in our work with BHRA. (http://www.bhra.org/) We missed each of them terribly when they left us, but knowing that we were part of their journey to their forever homes is very rewarding. Here is a little information about each one of these special hounds:

Caylee
Caylee was our first foster and she was the coolest little thing. She loved to play with toys and spent a lot of time gathering them up. In this picture she was sitting on the couch behind me...yes I was on the floor as usual. The toy box was on the floor next to me and I felt her reaching around me and grabbing stuff out. When I turned around this is what I found. She was gathering up her loot. She is a great dog that we get to see every now and then when her dad attends BHRA functions. She has a great home and we could not be more tickled for her!

Susie
We were enjoying fostering Calyee so much that we took in a second foster a week or two later. Her name was Susie. She was a hoot and boy did she love to play! She and Livingston ran around all the time and had the best time! She was adopted by a lady that we know named Sandra Campbell. She has a GREAT home with lots of brothers and sisters to play with!

Abby
Jason called her "Carl" because her "basset chatter" sounded like Carl in the moving Sling Blade, um hum. She was pretty...this is the first one Katie did not like. They even got into a fight on our back patio one morning while I was in the back of the house getting dressed. It is the only fight we have ever had here that started when we were not present. Since I was alone, it was very scary. We got through that one with just a few scratches. No big deal!

Holly
Poor little Holly. She had a rough life. When she came to live with us we discovered a cut on her neck when she was sleeping belly up in our wire crate. In this picture she has a big bandage wrapped around her neck that is hidden under her droopy skin. She was adopted by some people who met her at our BHRA Halloween picnic in Dothan. Unfortunately she ended up back at BHRA suffering from terrible wounds from what we think was a dog fight. She was nursed back to health but ended up on the losing end of a dog fight which finally took her life.

Molly
This was the coolest dog ever! She was a big ole girl with the best personality. I think we will always regret her as "the one that got away". We should have adopted this girl. Luckily she found a great home with a wonderful family!

Gertie
This dog latched herself to me immediately. She followed me everywhere I went and was right up under me every time I sat down. When I took her to her new dad, she did not want to go with him and it broke my heart to force her to stay. Of course, when he gave her a hamburger on the ride home he won her over forever...

Sylvie
We had Sylvie for a very short time, but she was a sweet girl! She went to a great home with kids and I am sure is the queen of her castle! She looked like a red and white basset...but she was technically classified as a tri color because of the one brown spot on her side.

Trudy
She was a sweet girl and got a great home up north in Pennsylvania, I believe. We called her "Houdini" because she was a brilliant escape artist. One day our dogs kept getting out of our fence. We thought that maybe some children in the neighborhood with nothing better to do were letting them out. Nope...it was Trudy! We finally got to see her in action. She would raise herself up on the fence, nudge the latch with her nose and they were OFF! It was mortifying and amazing all at the same time. Needless to say...we fixed it where she could not do THAT anymore!

Bailey
Bailey was our first "foster failure". She was a Basset mix and had a lot of issues. She tore up our furniture, had terrible separation anxiety, very fearful, fought with Katie and eventually we had to make the heartbreaking decision to put her to sleep. The final straw was when she just about took one of Katie's ears off. She was a very sweet dog who loved her people and we will always miss her.

Shanaenae
She was a very sweet girl and did not last long at our house before she was adopted!

Mercedes
This is our final Foster Failure...Steve! She is a now 11 year old diabetic basset. We just could not send her away to a new home again. We figured at her advanced age she deserved to stay in our house with us. She loves us, especially Jason, and she loves our dogs.

These are just a few neat photos...sort of a trip down memory lane...

Can you imagine coming home to this mess?

How 'bout this one? This is Trudy frantically running in
circles in the feathers from the pillow they had destroyed!

But there are good times too...like a bunch of snuggle buddies on a cold winter's night...

the crowd gathering at meal time...

buddies to pal around with...

and nap time photo ops! (again...guess where the people usually sit!)

If you have ever thought about getting involved in animal rescue...we highly recommend it! It is a lot of fun and very rewarding! We are not currently fostering because we are caring for two special needs hounds at the moment. Cede is Diabetic and Katie is Epileptic. We hope to be able to foster again one day. It truly is a lot of fun.

There is nothing better in the world than a crew of adoring bassets that look up to you!

Martha

The Three Bad Dogs

Because our pets are so very special to us, we thought it fitting for our first blog to be about our dogs...Katie, Livingston & Cede...aka Steve.

Katie was our first venture into the land of dogs. We had just lost a very special cat and I really thought that a dog was something that could bring a little happiness into our lives after such a loss. We had our sites set on the Basset Hound breed...and as luck would have it...a local pet store had two cute little baby Bassets for sale. We brought her home as a tiny little puppy in May of 2003. She was very sick with coccidia and almost died right after we brought her home...but our great Vet, Dr. Busby, saved her life with a blood transfusion. Soon she was a happy and healthy puppy. She was a HOOT and a handful! Little did I know that having a puppy was a little bit like having a newborn baby. Talk about sleep deprivation...I was up with her every night taking her out to potty two or three times. I had the unenviable task of cleaning up her stinky messes...and because I had NO idea of how to potty train a dog...there were a LOT of stinky messes!

She seemed to thoroughly enjoy tormenting our two cats Kitchen and Kiki. As she grew, we knew that she needed a playmate to help drain some of that energy. A web search helped us find the Basset Hound Rescue of Alabama (http://www.bhra.org/). I really did not have a clue about the world of Rescue...but I was soon to find out.

Since Katie was a "tri colored" basset...I had my heart set on a "red and white" male as her best friend. We found our Livingston listed on the BHRA website. This is actually the picture of him that we first saw. He was a young basset and we thought he might just be our boy. We called his foster parents, Jack and Leanne Bains, and talked to them about him. We submitted our application to adopt him and we set up a time to take Katie to meet Livingston. We was a very rambunctious fellow and the two of them ran around Jack's back yard like two chickens with their heads cut off. We were pretty set on adopting him, but we had to wait for approval from the Rescue and our home visit. Once we were approved I drove half way to Birmingham to meet Leanne and get our new family member. When he got into the back of my car I could not help but think, "What I am doing with this dog? My second dog? I'm a CAT person!" I was really very intimidated by the whole thing. A few minutes into our drive, this sweet face climbed up into the front seat next to me as if to say, "Lets go home, mom!" He was a blessing for Katie and for us. He finished potty training Katie and the two of them soon became like peas and carrots. I wish I had a picture of the day they absconded with a pair of my underwear and played tug of war with it in the back yard. They had the best time running around with it stretched out between them...one end in each of their mouths. Livingston's favorite thing in the whole world is howling. And buddy...he is GOOD at it! He has the loudest, most heartfelt howl you can imagine. He loves to get the girls going. As you can see...they are very spoiled and more often than not, they are sprawled out on the furniture and I am sitting on the floor. That is ok, though, Livingston rests his head on my shoulder and gives me kisses.

Our third Basset is Cede...aka Steve. She is a now 11 year old Basset who started out as a foster. She was just so sweet and we fell madly in love with her. Having been previously adopted and returned twice we decided that at her age she deserved her final "forever" home and we adopted her. We knew she loved us and our dogs and she'd be happy here for the rest of her life. Livingston took to her right away...but that is just his personality. Katie, on the other hand...in true Katie form, took a little bit longer to come around. Now she has found a wonderful begging pal. She actually lets Steve do most of the work, while she just runs around in circles like a freak!

So there you have it...the three that are affectionately referred to as "The Bad Dogs". Life is great with these three around as they are always doing something funny.

The funny thing is that this self proclaimed "Cat Person" has gone very far into the world of dogs...not only do I have three dogs of my own...but I am a Trustee with the Basset Hound Rescue of Alabama! We have fostered many homeless hounds and it is a great way to spend your free time. I highly recommend getting into the world of dog rescue...it is very rewarding.

Martha