My life with K9's

As most of you know I live with my old man and a pack of six canines. Now, four of those canines are actually mine and they are all less than 8 pounds each. In my personal pack there's Ally, 5 lb Pekapoo, 7 years old; Wiley, 5 lb Chihuahua (rescue), ~9 years old; Deni, 3.5 lb Maltese, 6 years old; Tina, 7 lb Chihuahua (rescue), 6 years old. The two remaining canines are both my grand pups...Charley, 10 lb Shih Tzu, 2½ years old and Ricky, ~40 lb Texas Heeler (aka Australian Cattle Dog/Australian Shepard mix), ~2 years old.

Ally

Ally is the queen bee of the pack. Even though she's one of the smallest everyone else let's her have her way. She is a bit of a bitch...literally as in moody. She can be chilled out and in a second can spin around to snap at someone because they looked at her the wrong way.

Deni

Deni is my baby. As small as she is, if she is on the bed high above everyone else she becomes second in command. There's no competition for alpha position with Ally, but Deni comes into her own when she can look down on the others. She protects the bed like it's her own personal turf! Too funny to see this little off white (can't keep her clean) dog bouncing around with a high pitched bark going. It is a cute little bark! She even howls and sounds like Chewbacca sometimes. I'd love to get her trained as a psychiatric therapy dog eventually.

Tina

Tina is a rescue we got in 2006 and was only supposed to be a temporary arrangement, but we ended up taking her with us on our 2006 western states/British Columbia tour and fell in love with her. She is the most submissive of all the K9s and is a definite licker. She does have a tendency to get a little chunky but at least she is a Chihuahua that is relatively calm about getting her nails trimmed.

Wiley (AKA Ted)

Wiley is our newest rescue who came to us by way of our son who found him wandering the streets in the area he lived. He kept him for a week or so and then asked us to keep him until he could find a place to live that accepted pets. That was back in December 2008. Wiley is now totally attached to me and will not be moving out should the son ever want him back. The major problem with Wiley coming into the house is that he was a marker...thus with the marking the other little dogs tend to follow suit so their previous housebreaking was somewhat undone but mostly rectified with the addition of a small doggie door in 2010. Ah...he is a Chihuahua who hates having his nails clipped!

Charley

Charley is our daughter's dog. She got him in 2009 while she was living here in town but ended up moving to Albuquerque later that summer. Since she had no real living arrangements set up he came to stay with us when he was about 6 months old. He is the sweetest, most loving, yet non-clingy dog! I actually dread the day that he'll actually move to live with his mommy.

Ricky at 11 months

As you can see, I'm pretty much a small dog person...Ricky, the son's dog, has thrown a glitch in that little dog lifestyle. He lived with us for about six or so months at the end of 2010 and into 2011. He came back to live with us this time in October after his dad moved to Tempe, AZ. I know the son knows that we would never relegate any pets to the shelter, so he's probably a permanent member of the household now. He's much calmer than he was the first time he lived here but the little dogs are wary of him because he's so big, yet they bully him at the same time. I have to admit that things are much better now that we've put a doggie door in for Ricky. He's finally learned to go in and out of the door all by himself after two days of trying to get him to learn. However, he still wakes me up in the early morning to go out...even though all I have to do is walk into the hallway and say "outside" to which he just goes through the door! Hmmm. He still has his puppy days and is great fun to watch when he plays with his toys and tosses them or shakes them so hard that he whacks himself in the face...over and over and over. One negative is that most of the little dogs are afraid to go outside while he's out there so their housebroken-ness is not quite so effective...again. Surprisingly he's not much of a runner...he's only able to go about 3-4 miles before he starts to give up.

Since the son moved to Arizona, traveling is a bit difficult since we have so many dogs. When he lived locally we'd have him (or the daughter when she was in town) come and check/feed the pack. Now we can manage an overnighter but are a bit wary of leaving for more than 24 hours. Perhaps with both sized doggie doors and some feeding dishes with timers we may be able to stretch out a full/long weekend. The cost of boarding 6 dogs really is a bit prohibitive!

These K9 kids are my stress relief and can usually make me smile even when I'm in a bad mood. No matter what, even with the mess, the dog hair all over (and I do mean all over) the place, the noise and the occasional chaos these canines are family and are safe with us no matter what. Really, I'd give up stuff before I let anything happen to them. Hopefully, they stay happy and healthy and we all have a long life together. The average life span of the small dogs is about 16 years...for Ricky about 12-14 years. I don't see any new canine family members being added to the family in the future...I think this is it. I think it's enough! lol!