I love animals! I've had dreams about being on a farm surrounded by so many sweethearts, happy to see me and giving me love.
I'm currently dog-sitting a long haired chihuahua named Gizmo. He is in my lap. He inspired me to make this so I could learn more about YOUR pets and what they do while you are relaxin'. Feel free to share stories! I honestly love hearing about sweet babies. :)
This my Gizmo.
He's a Catahoula Leopard dog/Australian Shepard.
He is HIGH energy an a "wooer". He howls all the time when he's excited or is trying to tell me something.
In fact my ringtone is all my dogs howling together. He's also a sneezer when he gets excited.
Gizmo has longer hair and 7 different colors in his coat.
He can jump a 6 ft. fence from a sitting position. He also can climb trees and has gotten stuck in a tree before.
That was so much fun getting him down.
He once jumped off a second story porch over a 3 ft. railing. I ran down the stairs expecting to find the worst.
Instead I found him peeing on a tree. Nothing phases this kid.
He loves frisbee and playing ball. He'd go all day if could.
I'm still amazed that Gizmo didn't hurt himself.
shareI can't believe there were no broken bones!
shareMy heart sank!
I had a deck on top of a 3 season porch. I had the patio door open upstairs then realized he was gone.
I went to the porch and he wasn't there. He must have heard something and just jumped into the darkness.
You can imagine what went through my mind.
I ran down the stairs and of course it was dark. I yelled his name then I heard a noise.
There he was peeing on a tree. He finished then came over to me wagging his tail.
I felt horrible and he got spoiled more than usual after that.
That kid has legs of steel.
He's 10 now and still runs and jumps like he was a puppy
I wish I could do that!
Let's see...is that 70 in human years? I hope I can still do crazy things when I'm that old.
share"In fact my ringtone is all my dogs howling together. He's also a sneezer when he gets excited. "
😂 How I love your ringtone is all 4 pups howling in unison!!
My girl was an excitement sneezer too. With her it was a combo of happiness and excitement. So cute!
Gizmo is quite the athlete! Amazing he could launch off 2 stories and be just fine. Superdog!
I get a lot of looks if it goes off if I'm in public.
Most people think it's a pack of wild dogs!
Which isn't too far from the truth.
You're girl was a sweetheart!!!!
It is adorable when they sneeze. Gizmo always does it.
Sometimes if they're really amped up they all do it at the same time.
I don't know how super he his.
He may have some impulse control issues!
We're working through it.
I can only imagine the looks you get! 😂 @ that image, and of all of them sneezing at the same time!
Whenever girly did it, I always responded with "Aw, SNIFfy!" Then she'd wag her tail and look at me like she was happy I'd understood. Or that she'd made me smile. One or the other. Probably both!
Er, yeah, it does sound like he might have an impulse control, or 6! You've done such a great job with him. When you think where he started, running off for 8 days and finally coming back covered in ticks and something very, very stinky! Did it smell like he'd rolled in decomposing something? I'm sure you'd have recognised it if he'd met up with skunks.
It made you smile and it still does. She's always with you.Nothing will ever change that.
Actually Tazer was the one who ran away and yes he smelt of death and yuck.
Gizmo still is a little high strung but he's a totally different dog now than he once was.
Er, uh, I think I've got something in my eye. Excuse me a minute.
I am glad I've gotten to the point where I can think about our time together and smile. I do sometimes still get weepy, but it's much better.
Oh right, Gizmo is the trampoline dog! 😂 ... I think? Or did I mix them up again?
lol.
Tazer is the trampoline dog not Gizmo.
How can you not keep up with my 4 dogs?
What's wrong with you?
Sometimes I wonder about you. 😂 😂
I wanna party with Gizmo! I love that your ringtone is all of your dogs howling, thats adorable!
shareGizmo is a wild man!
He would outlast anybody. There’s just no stop in that kid.
A true party animal.
Sounds like it! I would like to hear him howl and woo, that would be awesome :)
shareIt’s awesome for about 10 seconds. Then it’s annoying!
He’ll howl when he wants attention. Then you give him some love.
If it’s not enough he’ll start howling again.
I’ll tell him, “that’s enough now” then he’ll go lay down and pout.
My brother has a dog named Gizmo!
shareYour brother seem like a pretty smart guy.
Mostly cuz he thinks like me!
It seems to be a popular name.
When my Gizmo was a pup he had a white stripe down his back.
When he got excited it stood straight up and looked like Stripe from Gremlins.
I wasn't going to name him Stripe so now he's Gizmo.
I'm allergic to animal hair, but I once had a canary that I had to free because it kept me awake at night. Also had a turtle when I was a kid, and a bunny and a chicken.
shareI love bunnies :) I wish I had a family of them, their babies are so LITTLE. Turtles used to find their way on the road after a huge rain by my childhood home. I had a turtle every year for several years. I named them all Fred. Dunno why I did that.
shareHi! Our furry friend is a gorgeous black and white cat. We adopted him a little over a year ago when he was 9 months old. He was a big boy then. He's a big boy now! Not fat... just big. I don't think he realizes just how big he is because he thinks he's still a baby. He is! He thinks that he can fit into the smallest spaces. He keeps us on our toes because he has so much energy. He'll fly around the house early in the morning. You have to keep out of his way when he's in racing mode. He is a lover boy too. He loves to be cuddled and petted and brushed. He likes to be close to his people. At the moment, he happens to be sitting up here on my desk watching the letters appear as I type them. He is fascinated by the computer!
I'm sure that his name will make you smile.... It's Charlie....
Charlie is a great name for a pet - especially a cat or dog. My opinion, of course!
shareI always associated it with a happy go lucky person. Definitely the perfect handle for a pet.
shareI'll never forget my brother's dog, who was named Charley. He was such a lover boy. Sadly, in his later years he developed a bladder problem, which was challenging to say the least. But what a sweetheart Charlie was.
shareThat is the downside of having pets.... having to say goodbye.
We have had 3 wonderful cats in the years my husband and I have been married.
The first was Katie. My son begged to have her from our nieghbor's litter of kittens. She was the runt. She came to stay for 17 years!
She finally died of old age. You could say that we all grew up with her. It was very hard letting go.
Fast forward a few years later, and we adopted Winky, She was two years old and life hadn't been easy for her. She'd had a couple of operations on her jaw and her eye. She'd also had several homes.She came to us as MisFit
She was a timid little girl, but I fell in love with her. My husband renamed her Winky because she winked a lot.... the eye.
We loved her for 8 years. She became ill very rapidly and died of kidney failier.
We said our goodbyes and decided that we still had a lot of love to give another little kittie, so we adopted Charlie a week later.
The upside is that we all benefit when we take in an animal. They not only get food and shelter... they get a home with people who will love them and we people? We get so much more. I can handle the pain for having had them in our lives.
By the way, both my girl's ashes are on a shelf here in my office under their pictures.
I love big lovable cats :) Even better that his name is Charlie! I smiled the entire time I read your post.
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Are you still sitting with Gizmo? Are you considering adopting your very own little best friend? You should! Would your Charlie like that?
He went back home yesterday afternoon. I've thought about it! Never adopted a pet before. I can imagine walking into the animal shelter, looking at all those sweet faces and saying.. I want every single one of them! Charlie wouldn't mind at all :) Dogs LOVE my Charlie. They always want to snuggle against his chest or thigh.
shareOh! You two should go for it!
I volunteer at our shelter and I know how you feel about wanting to take them all home with you. I get those tugs at my heartstrings too. It's always a happy day to see them go home with someone.
I'm about to head out the door and get over to the shelter now. Have a great day!
Same to you! :)
shareLove this thread! Thanks, TheWaitress :)
Your Gizmo (on loan, anyway) sounds adorable. How long will you have him?
I lost my girl last October. It was unexpected and premature. A real heartbreaker for me.
She was an Australian cattle dog, lab, and some kind of nordic dog mix. Probably husky. She was a rescue. 5-6 years old when I got her, and a wreck from having lived in a stable home all her life until her elderly people lost their home and had to give her up. Then she was bounced around from their vet's, to several shelters before landing in the rescue where I volunteered. Worst case of separation anxiety I'd ever seen! But who could blame her, after what she'd been through?
Anyway, we had 4 short but very happy years together. She got over her separation anxiety and was a very happy girl! She loooved her daily walks on the beach, running around, eating seaweed and horse poop! At first I stopped her from eating the horse poop, but then read lots of dogs love it, and it's actually good for them, unless the horse has recently been wormed. All I asked was NO KISSES for several hours after she'd eaten that snack!
Oh my! Horse poop you say? You learn something new everyday! 😄
shareIt was news to me too, but thanks to Google, I learned it was A Thing! Come to think of it, when I had dogs before, I never lived anywhere where they had access to the doggy health food known as horse poop.
I wonder if cow poop is equally attractive? Deer poop? Any herbivore's poop?
She was so funny. She thought of horses as giant, scary candy-dispensing machines! A cattle dog, terrified by horses 🙄
You're welcome! :)
I got to keep him until Monday afternoon. He's spoiled rotten and so cute when he sees you after you've been gone for a little bit. He would whine until you walked into the room he was in, he wouldn't come find you. \
So very sorry to hear about the loss of your girl. What was her name?
It sounds like you did give her some amazing years though! Hahaha, I don't blame you on waiting for kisses. I would have loved to see her walk and play on the beach.
I'm glad you had him for a few days :). Ha ha, I wonder why he wouldn't come find you? "I've MISSED you! Now YOU must come to ME!" :D
Thank you. She had lots of names. I called her Girly Girl, My Little Petunia, Boo, Booboo, and others I can't think of at the moment. Officially her name was Sandy, but mostly I called her Girly or Boo.
It gave me such pleasure to see her running on the beach! She'd never seen a beach until I took her in. When she was especially happy she'd wag her tail in a big circle, like a helicopter! I loved that.
I'm like you, a life-long and confirmed animal lover :)
He would just sit on the armrest of the couch and wait for me to walk into the tv room, once he saw me he would start to whine and shake, wag his entire body almost. It was adorable!
I had three dogs a year ago and I had so many nicknames for them! I love knowing that you did that. I would have loved the helicopter tail wag too, sounds wonderful and so cute :D
Nice to meet another animal lover!
Aw + 😂
I can picture it. So cute!
Isn't it funny how we come up with all of these nicknames for our animals? They just come out, seemingly from nowhere! Different for each critter. What were some of your nicknames for your 3 pups? You would have loved her helicopter tail. Wish I'd gotten a video of that.
Yes, always a real pleasure to meet another animal lover!!
Yes, these names just developed over time. I had Wooderson - who was a fiest mix. He did something Charlie and I call - rip and run. Born to be outside and raise hell. His names were sweet boy, woody, wooderson caputo, talkin' bout and several others. Then about a year into having Wooderson, this customer at the store I work in was buying so many cans of dog food one night, probably 30 cans. I finally said, you've got a hungry dog! She said, I have 7 pups, want one? I know my eyes lit up and I said yes without thinking.
A few days later I got Conor - he was a bulldog/boxer mix. The SWEETEST dog I've ever had. I always get misty eyed when I think about how tough he would get if he thought I was in danger. His name turned into Conor Baby and then it changed to CB for short. I also called him sweet baby sometimes when he was sitting in his chair and I'd rub his little wrinkly head. So for a little bit, it was just those two boys.
We had neighbor dogs that would roam around with them but ONE DAY someone dropped off a tiny little mutt, he followed Woody into the woods where we just happened to be and we named him Rickety Cricket. He had mange pretty bad and was skinny. He got probably his first bath, a healthy dose of mange cream and a hefty bowl of food. The next morning we went outside and they were all sleeping close ( of course my heart melted) and we started to sing for them. We said Rickety Cricks Rickety Cricks! and he danced!! Oh it was lovely.
I rambled on but I loved my boys! We had a lot of good memories with them :)
My sister and I had three rabbits. I still dream about them sometimes. I also dream about hugging cute little animals. Then I wake up and there aren't any!😢
shareWell, get over to that Dream Thread! We must analyze this! And QUICK!
shareI bet they were cute!!
shareThey really were, although they didn't really get along.😢 My sister's rabbit would sit next to the couch every night and let herself be petted by my dad. And my own rabbit would go up the stairs in the morning, go to my room and jump on my bed. And pee all over it!😂
shareBUNS! 😍
I was thinking aw, what a sweet story, until you got to the last bit about bunny peeing all over your bed 😂
We own a Hungarian Vizsla dog named Tess, who we let in the house when it's cold sometimes. She sits by the fire and loves to roll around on the floor. Sometimes we can't let her in, because she's rolled in a dead carcass that she's found somewhere on the farm.
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