Puzzle tore her leg open the other day. We don't know how she did it - but it was really serious. No blood, but the skin was peeled back exposing her muscle tissue beneath.
These are a few shots of her wound after the vet stitched her up.
Thor used to travel the country with me. He enjoyed the open road for the most part, leaving a trail of his DNA traces in most states. Grudgingly Thor put up with the long hours on the road. Always in tune with his environment, he could feel the tranny kick down and hear the signal indicator clicking as we approached a rest area or truck stop.. even from a dead sleep he would bolt up and be ready to explore new territory.
Thor left Swift Transportation back in early 2006 and today he is in tune with his environment just as before but now that environment doesn't change from day to day. Most of his time now is spent guarding the Vortex against all manner of creatures... The deer & wild turkeys that roam the acreage looking for food. The feral cats that wander aimlessly almost seeking death.. the lizards, most of which no longer have tails due to Thor's diligence. And let us not forget the meat bees that constantly toy with him... yes he chases and snaps at them too.
But perhaps the creature that he loathes the most... the one whom he watches through the slits in the fence... the annoying presence that causes a low guttural growl to rise from deep within... hackles up, eyes locked on target - unblinking... His true adversary - The Land Lady!!! He despises her and takes every opportunity to let her know how he feels.
What did she do to him to provoke this response? Nothing really.. he simply just does not like her. Dogs are a great judge of character and I value Thor's judgment.
New puppies are here. There are 7 pups in the litter. Mother's name is Picnic and she is so devoted to these babies! Pups are less than a week old and spend most of the time nursing.
I believe they do. I believe every living thing has a soul. I spoke of the River of Blood that flows from this place, this Vortex, in my last podcast. It's bad. We have a graveyard here. It's full of dead dogs. Not just creepy, but also not necessary.
I added AJ's corpse to the landfill here yesterday. Originally the landlady was just going to let the vet dispose of his body. I told her that was unacceptable. They had killed him and dumped his body into a huge freezer out back of the veterinary clinic. This freezer is full of dead, frozen dogs. She grudgingly agreed to retrieve AJ's body for a proper burial. I went with her to get him. He was at the bottom and they had to remove several other bodies to reach him. He was frozen solid, inside a black plastic garbage bag.
We got him home and I began to dig a grave for him. The ground is so dry and hard packed here that it took most of the day. I had to bring a 5 gallon bucket full of water and dump it into the hole, let it soak for awhile and then dig a little further. I repeated this process about 10 times (50+ gallons of water). Finally in the early afternoon the grave was deep enough to place AJ into it.
I said goodbye to my friend and began filling the grave in with the dirt I had just removed. Originally I had told the landlady that I expected her to be present and watch as I placed him into his grave and covered him. She avoided answering me and naturally did not come out when I asked her to.
She brought him into the world, she ordered his death and then was unwilling to look at the result of her actions. None of this sits well with me. As for AJ, I did all that I could do for him. I believe, as I stated, that dogs do in fact have a soul. I believe AJ's soul is now at rest.
And now I watch and wait for the next victim to fall before her God like dementia..
The latest addition to Doberland is a new puppy named Puzzle. She is around 3 months old and is my landlady's new personal dog which she wants to take to the show ring...
She's so cute. Puzzle is most definately a thinking dog. Smart & quizzical, she's into everything.. with a devious purpose. I am delighted to have her join us here and will continue putting up video of her progress.
I am going to try to import my other Dobie videos from my other YouTube page onto the "GrindKing" page to consolidate them. However I don't want to just remove the old page because they have been there for some time and have a few comments and stuff like that. Maybe I will just make a playlist linking to them.
That's not really his name... He doesn't have a name yet. I call him Binky. He likes that.
He's just over 2 months old & got his first ear wraps today. Shy at first but once he has his cup of coffee he's all over the place. Very affectionate, likes to give little kisses.
Binky is purebred and will eventually become a show dog after he gets a bit older. I shot some video and will post it later once I go through it.
Well I put Bree into the ground today. The vet had her stored in a freezer and we went to pick her up. This freezer was a full of corpses.. The adult dogs were in thick black plastic bags, but there were puppies in there too and they were in clear plastic bags. It was like something out of Hellraiser as I gazed into that frozen pile of shapes. Faces stared back at me.. tiny faces with clear plastic pulled tight over them, frost coated their eyelids and lips.. everything was stiff and rock hard.. a ghastly collage of frozen death preserved in my mind forever.
We brought her home and I buried her next to Shapshot, another of her personal dobes that was taken by cancer late last year. Snapshot was only three years old.. Bree was six, or would have turned six in April. She was the mother of Snapshot. The cancer must have been passed to her pups. Between my father and these dogs I've had about as much as I can stand of this fucking disease.
I had the chance to bond with Bree when I took her to Carson City, NV for a breeding almost two years ago. She was delightful the entire time and I fell in love with her. She got to see some things that most of the dogs here at the rescue don't get the chance to. I was glad to give her that brief escape from the routine that was her life here.
Bree used to talk to me and the landlady would scoff and pretend I was just another of those 'simple-minded' pet owners who treat these animals as though they could actually have feelings for humans. To her it was all strictly instinct and routine or training. These are basically the only things that determine a dog's behavior as far as she's concerned. Nevertheless, Bree would talk to me. She talked to me all the time as a matter of fact. Not with words. She spoke to me with gestures and body language mostly but there was something a bit deeper than that. I can't really explain it but it was there as real and solid as the ground we stood on.
I'm not saying that she carried on conversations with me. I'm just saying that we were able to communicate far beyond the Sit, Stay, Off and Down commands. Is it really that absurd? I don't think so, she's not the only dog that speaks to me, most of them do but she seemed to do it more frequently and I was able to understand her more easily than with some of the others.
Snapshot was another of my favorites here. She was so cool. Snapshot had this vulture-like stare that she would do to you. She dropped her head just slightly and her eyes got real dark and spooky.. Her ears went flat, not against her head but straight out to the sides.. She would do it from across the yard or sometimes when you walked past her in her outside run. Once she'd locked onto you with that stare she kept it until you got tired and walked away. She never broke the gaze.
Snapshot was a spaz. If you could harness the energy within her you could power a reactor with it. She used to do this one thing that I will never forget.. Each night when I would bring the dogs in from their runs they would get excited and come tearing up the ramp into the house and blaze a trail all the way to their crates. Snapshot went one step further.. She would run around the yard passing each of the other dog runs and bark at a few of them as she built up momentum. On her second pass she was going at full speed and would then come flying up the ramp so fucking hard and fast that she literally came off the ground and ran along the wall for about 2 seconds. No shit, it was like that scene in The Matrix where Trinity goes all slo-motion and runs across the room and the up the wall.
I miss Snapshot so much, and I will miss Bree equally as much. They were both unique personalities that touched my heart and brought a smile to my face. I hope they are at peace now and I am proud to have been a part of their lives.
Last evening I had two separate pups to do ear wraps on. One Great Dane pup and one Doberman pup.
The Dane who's name was Diva and she was so sweet. She was very friendly but wasn't too sure about having humans poking around in her ears while holding her muzzle.. the other pup was named Brody and he was a bit more reserved than Diva. His ears had been wrapped recently but the owners wanted us to do the wraps for them so they could learn how to do it themselves. Brody's ears were wanting to lean inward and touch over the top of his head. Both pups also had 'pockets' where the ears meet the skull. It's like a sag or dip in the cartilage that we use cotton balls to support until the cartilage hardens enough to support it's own weight. The wraps stay on for a few days before they should be removed. The ears need anywhere from a few hours to a whole day to air out and then they need to be wrapped again. This goes on until such time as the ears stay standing on their own. Each time the wraps are removed the ears will stand a bit longer before crashing. So with some dogs it just takes longer than others.
As far as the pups are concerned it's just a minor inconvenience. You'd think they would be very uncomfortable with the tape and all the cotton shoved into their little ears. However they generally run around for about 5 minutes shaking their heads and then don't seem to care anymore.
The main thing is to keep the ears dry while they're wrapped. If they get wet then that could cause an infection. Also when we wrap a whole litter we have to change them more frequently since the pups use each others ears as chew toys.. kinda funny though.
Here's a story worthy of passing along.. Originally reported on the website Daily India, I'm not sure how long the article will be available so I've copied it below as well.
Perambur (Tamil Nadu), Dec.5: A pet dog here averted a probable tragedy on Tuesday by killing a seven feet cobra in a fierce battle when the latter was trying to sneak inside the house while its owners were away.
The hour long battle that took place at the house's small lawn attracted several onlookers including neighbours and passers by.
It was a fight to the finish for both--the snake and Doberman. Both were reluctant to give up. As the Cobra remained on vigil with its raised hood, the Doberman was looking for the right moment to attack the venomous trespasser of the house.
While the cobra kept hissing time to time or hiding behind the plants to dodge, the Doberman kept barking and shifting standing position to have a better angle to attack from.
Ultimately, the furious Doberman attacked and caught hold of the cobra by his teeth. The pet was brutal in attack, as it kept smashing the snake on the floor until the latter was torn apart into many pieces and died.
Meanwhile, the dog's owner was all praise for his pet after watching the incident through news channels on television.
"Actually, I received a phone call from my neighbour Rajase telling me how my dog had had a miraculous escape from a cobra. Not just that the dog survived but also killed the cobra at the end in a clever manner. I came to know after watching the clips on different television channels how my dog had done it cleverly," said Puzhandi, owner of the dog.
The dog-cobra fight has become the talk of the town and Doberman has achieved a celebrity status.
The King cobra feeds almost entirely on other snakes, even venomous ones, although it sometimes preys on small rodents and birds. It attacks humans only if provoked or in other extreme circumstances that threaten its survival.
Doberman Pinschers are, in general, a gentle, loyal, loving, and highly intelligent breed. Although there is variation in temperament, a typical pet Doberman attacks only if it has been mistreated or believes that it, its property, or its family are in danger.
An adult Doberman is 24-28 inches tall with a life span of 8-12 years. Doberman is a domestic breed of dog known to be intelligent, loyal and alert.
My landlady is doing a breeding. She hooked up with a lady who owns a stud dog and she came over yesterday just before I was leaving for work. Her stud dog is a beautiful red dobe named 'Daktari'.
I love that name! She owns another dobe named Aruca. This woman knows how to name these creatures. It's so bland and boring to get these dogs into rescue and they have names like Toby, Rex, Brody, Daisy.. whatever.. My landlady re-names them sometimes but her whole angle is just not in line with the noble stature of these animals. Instead she tries to come up with simple friendly names for them such as Clint, Felix, Reba.. But when it comes to her pups she really pushes the buyers to name them something creative that will tie in with her kennel name. Sometimes I think it works out well, other times - most times it's just ridiculous.
For example, recently one of her pups was purchased by a guy who has some kind of lumberjack business. He ended up registering the dog as 'Danjo's Jack-Of-All-Trades' call name is A.J. which is nice. That one worked good, but often it just gets out of control and there's all of these convoluted, long-ass, 17 word names for these dogs and it just makes me laugh.
The whole kennel/AKC registered name thing is a bit overdone and in many cases just plain stupid as far as I'm concerned.. but that's the breeder/show mentality working on overtime there. I dunno.. it's just my opinion but I think these dogs should all have names that reflect nobility or at least something creative. The Norse Mythology names such as Zeus, Apollo, Thor.. are good. My landlady hates those names, but they're poweful and majestic names, not like Felix or Newbie.. Yes she actually named one of the rescue dobermans 'Newbie'.......ugh..Anyway, this Daktari is the son of Agador who is the number 1 national champion doberman if you follow any of that stuff. Either way he has good blood lines but I had to stop and laugh when I started thinking about it because it just sounds like something out of fucking Lord of the Rings doesn't it?
And then there's Aruca... omg, but I absolutely love those names!!
I had a rough day yesterday due to the fact I was up all night in the emergency room at a veterinary clinic about 35 miles from where I live. I finally got back at 4 am then I had to go to work at 6 am. I didn't even try to sleep cuz I knew if I did I wouldn't hear the alarm go off.
There's a rescue dog here named Zeus who's been here for a few months. For the most part he's a happy, healthy red dobe with cropped ears. I'd say he's around 4 or 5 years old. Anyway, the night before last I came in and was helping the landlady rotate the dogs outside to pee and whatever else they do out there. She told me to have a look at Zeus and check out his right rear leg. I was shocked when I saw it. The leg was about 4 times the size of the other three and his foot was swollen to the size of a baseball or small orange. There was an open sore on his elbow just below the hock that was wet but not dripping blood.
I asked her if she was going to take him to the vet. She said that there was no emergency clinics open at this hour. The closest one was 35 miles away. She's on a fixed income and didn't want to spend the gas on a 'rescue' dog. Not that she didn't think it was serious but she was gonna wait until morning and take him to her vet in town here.
We have had several arguments in the past because I tend to disagree with her philosophy in regard to these dogs. To me, this dog needed to see a vet immediately. I understand that an emergency visit is gonna cost more than an office call and on top of that the clinic is far away so there's the gas to consider. However, if you're gonna run a rescue and care for these dogs then that just comes with the territory from time to time.
I get very emotionally attached to all of these dogs here. I know that they will be leaving eventually and that's fine but while they are here I bond with them. She's not like that. She's distant with them. Yes she cares about them but she just doesn't bond with them very much. To her it's just a business and she is more preoccupied with her online legislative activities. She tends to make excuses for not spending more quality time with them than she does. She treats her personal dogs the same way.
In a nutshell, she has the 'breeder' or 'dog show' mentality. She's lost sight of what it is to own and bond with a pet. I also understand that with this many dogs it's difficult to give them each a lot of personal attention. My biggest argument is that she could give them more than she does. She chooses to spend the time online instead. To give her credit where it's due though, I know she cares about them and she's glad that I'm here to give the attention she 'doesn't have time to give them'.
Ok, I'm getting off on a tangent here.. Anyway, Zeus had a problem and she was gonna wait until morning to deal with it so I finished up and headed over to my trailer to go to bed. About 10 minutes go by and she calls me to say that we need to take him to the emergency clinic because he's been licking the sore and now it's bleeding all over the place and he was panting heavily as well. I got my things together and went over to help.
I had to carry Zeus to the van and he just melted into my arms as I scooped him up. He knew I was helping him. Zeus is not a small dog. He was heavy but I managed and got him into the van. We headed out and about a half hour later we pulled up to the the clinic. I went to the sliding door and scooped him up again. They buzzed us in and told us to wait in room 5 which we did.
After a few minutes a woman came in and looked at him, took his temperature and told us the doc would be here shortly. Oh yeah, we had to weigh him as well.. 75 pounds. So finally the doc comes in and he's this yound guy with glasses and kinda bushy hair. He looks him over and squeezes the leg in a couple of spots. Blood is all over the floor in here and it's still coming out of the sore. He says that it's an infection and he wanted to give Zeus a shot of morphine for the pain. After that he cleaned it and wrapped it and made up a prescription for him. Three different drugs.
All of this took quite some time but finally we got out of there and headed back. When we got home, we put Zeus in the kitchen and he fell asleep stoned on morphine. Poor guy. Well that was around 4 am and I headed once again to my trailer but decided to stay up until my ride came at 5:45 am at which point I went to work feeling like shit.
When my landlady picked me up at 3 pm she told me that her vet had said it was without a doubt either a spider or snake bite. He's gonna be fine but it's gonna get worse before it gets better. Now I'm disturbed thinking of Brown Recluses, Black Widows and Rattlesnakes...
Oh well, at least he's doing better and in the end as I told her I think she did the right thing.
That's not really his name... He doesn't have a name yet. I call him Binky. He likes that.
Between my father and these dogs I've had about as much as I can stand of this fucking disease.
Last evening I had two separate pups to do ear wraps on. One Great Dane pup and one Doberman pup.
The wraps stay on for a few days before they should be removed. The ears need anywhere from a few hours to a whole day to air out and then they need to be wrapped again. This goes on until such time as the ears stay standing on their own. Each time the wraps are removed the ears will stand a bit longer before crashing. So with some dogs it just takes longer than others.
My landlady is doing a breeding. She hooked up with a lady who owns a stud dog and she came over yesterday just before I was leaving for work. Her stud dog is a beautiful red dobe named 'Daktari'.
The whole kennel/AKC registered name thing is a bit overdone and in many cases just plain stupid as far as I'm concerned.. but that's the breeder/show mentality working on overtime there. I dunno.. it's just my opinion but I think these dogs should all have names that reflect nobility or at least something creative. The Norse Mythology names such as Zeus, Apollo, Thor.. are good. My landlady hates those names, but they're poweful and majestic names, not like Felix or Newbie.. Yes she actually named one of the rescue dobermans 'Newbie'.......ugh..Anyway, this Daktari is the son of Agador who is the number 1 national champion doberman if you follow any of that stuff. Either way he has good blood lines but I had to stop and laugh when I started thinking about it because it just sounds like something out of fucking Lord of the Rings doesn't it?
