In which another mouth must be fed
People buy cute things, even during recessions. If you had a machine which, with minimal investment, would churn out unique, interactive, cute things, on a regular basis, for years, you could build a tidy profit quickly.
Laverne was such a machine, breeding chihuahua puppies for a puppy mill for the first five years of her life. She lived in a cage and had little in the way of exercise or socialization. When she (or her sister Shirley -- the story's fuzzy) delivered a stillborn litter, the mill decided to approach professionals to euthanize them both. Said professionals said "no" to that, and suggested putting them up for adoption. ladymajor works in a vet hospital where there are weekly adoption events, and shortly thereafter we became the owners of our second dog.
Sadly, Laverne didn't learn some basic things that one assumes a five-year-old dog would know. Example 1: house training. She's done her duty in our carpeted home a few times in the past few weeks. Example 2: playing. She still doesn't recognize what it means when Punk (our older, larger, smarter, crankier dog) drops into a play bow and tries to chase her. Example 3: knowing her own name. It's better now, but for the first week or so, saying "Laverne" was roughly equivalent to saying "border patrol", "harmonica", or "kosher deli". I'm pretty sure Punk learned Laverne's name before she did.
Also, she's not very bright. Chihuahuas are hardly the apex of reasoned discourse, and Laverne hews close to the norm on that front. On the down side, this means she's harder to train (see above, re: poop under my desk). On the plus side, it means she's largely unscarred by the first five years of her life. Had she been a much smarter dog, she would be much more of a mess now. As it stands, she's just behind the class a bit.
And, really, there's not much intersection between the set of people who would be interested in adopting a cute, chubby, chihuahua, and the set of people who can competently deal with socializing and training an older dog. So we're probably one of the better households for her to land in.
So that's the news on our front. I'm sure ladymajor will provide pictures at some point. Suffice it to say, she's cute, chubby, bug-eyed, and has very pronounced nipples.
Laverne was such a machine, breeding chihuahua puppies for a puppy mill for the first five years of her life. She lived in a cage and had little in the way of exercise or socialization. When she (or her sister Shirley -- the story's fuzzy) delivered a stillborn litter, the mill decided to approach professionals to euthanize them both. Said professionals said "no" to that, and suggested putting them up for adoption. ladymajor works in a vet hospital where there are weekly adoption events, and shortly thereafter we became the owners of our second dog.
Sadly, Laverne didn't learn some basic things that one assumes a five-year-old dog would know. Example 1: house training. She's done her duty in our carpeted home a few times in the past few weeks. Example 2: playing. She still doesn't recognize what it means when Punk (our older, larger, smarter, crankier dog) drops into a play bow and tries to chase her. Example 3: knowing her own name. It's better now, but for the first week or so, saying "Laverne" was roughly equivalent to saying "border patrol", "harmonica", or "kosher deli". I'm pretty sure Punk learned Laverne's name before she did.
Also, she's not very bright. Chihuahuas are hardly the apex of reasoned discourse, and Laverne hews close to the norm on that front. On the down side, this means she's harder to train (see above, re: poop under my desk). On the plus side, it means she's largely unscarred by the first five years of her life. Had she been a much smarter dog, she would be much more of a mess now. As it stands, she's just behind the class a bit.
And, really, there's not much intersection between the set of people who would be interested in adopting a cute, chubby, chihuahua, and the set of people who can competently deal with socializing and training an older dog. So we're probably one of the better households for her to land in.
So that's the news on our front. I'm sure ladymajor will provide pictures at some point. Suffice it to say, she's cute, chubby, bug-eyed, and has very pronounced nipples.