the worst day of my life... saying goodbye to my soulmate.

there is so much to say about the hole that pancho has left in my life, but still days and weeks after his passing i can't find the strenghth to do it. he was my angel, my love, my rock, my companion, my teammate, and my best friend. i'm in tears right now, maybe i'll write more later. o dear god my panchito angel, how i miss you....

wtf...

i swear to god, if i hear "yo quiero taco bell" one more time, i'm gonna screeeem. i.am.not.a.friggin.chihuhuahua.

TAG!

I'm playing a game of tag with my friends, and because i was tagged by a bunch of cheeky monkeys, i must write up 7 fun facts about myself that you may not know already! then i go tag some other people to come to my page and read them, and they have to do the same thing! so here goes...

1. I loooooooove running off leash, just love it. whenever i get the chance to go to a fenced in yard or dog park, i go nuts. in mummy's younger and more dumb days, she used to let me run off lead in the woods behind our house, till one day, after years of being obedient, i decided to take off and go visit my yorkie girlfriend! just came in the doggie door and helped myself to her food dish! good thing that family knew where i lived!!

2. in my internal monologue i speak with a strong spanish accent. not just any, mind you, but a thick mexican accent. oh, and i refer to myself in the 3rd person, as in "the pancho does not desire to swim."

3. i love to bark. bark bark bark all day long!!! i guard the house against passerby- that's my job!

4. i still have thick scars on my belly from where my poor puppymill mother, who was too young and stressed out to be bred, attacked me. i almost died. i can't blame her, though. to live your life in a cage and be used as a breeding machine is no life for any creature, let alone a dog. the good side of this story is that we were all rescued, and found good homes. i hope she's doing as well as i am today...

5.i'm a terrible food scavenger, and mummy has to be super careful, because i'm the houdini of the dog world when it comes to climbing and escaping things. i also almost died when i got pancreatitis from eating two slices of pizza that were on a high table that mum thought was far enough away to be safe. wrong! three days in the hospital later, i was ok to be sent home, and hypervigilance prevails.

6. speaking of being a houdini, on the second day in my new home, when i was a mere 6 weeks old, my parents decided to leave me alone for 2 hours to go to a movie. they put me in a crate so that i would be safe, and left with sad hearts. 2 hours later, they arrive home to a locked crate with no tiny puppy inside!! no puppy anywhere! all of a sudden there was a little yap from upstairs, and sure enough, little panchito was there- i had climbed the stairs looking for my parents, and i couldn't even CLIMB stairs! it took me 2 months to learn how to duplicate that feat!

7. my full name on my papers is francisco lopez, and pancho is my nickname. pancho is short for francisco, but in spanish it also means hot dog!

my rescuers' manifesto!

i'm finding it hard to gather the strength to say what needs to be said right now... having fallen into rescue so suddenly, in such a short span of time it's become like breathing to me and has opened up my world to joy and happiness that i have never known. having seen so much pain, so much misery, so much despair, and then realising that the soul of a dog knows nothing but forgiveness and love towards humans, makes a person more forgiving, more accepting, more loving. each dog has touched me in ways immesurable, and no matter how difficult or challenging each individual rehabilitation might have been, the also brought so much joy along with them, and the joy of seeing that healed dog go to their forever home to live a happy life with their overjoyed family is a blessing beyond all blesings in this world.

a sad tail

well, mistress bella has found her forever home! she has gone away to long island with a very pretty young mama who intends to spoil her rotten and take her everywhere with her, and mum couldn't be happier, but she still misses her a lot. for a week we were without any foster and i was SOOOO BORED!!! i complained to mum all the time about how bored i was!!!! mum wishes she had a dog park nearby so that she could take me there to get some company, or at least some entertaninment other than walks around the block, because it just wasn't cutting it. oh well, now i'm not so bored because we have a new foster! his name is mickey, he's 7, and he's very nice, i like him well enough, but he seems sad to me. he cries a lot. lots of long, sad, mournful howls at 6 am. mummy says
that he was abandoned by his family after years of loving companionship just because he was uncomfortable with the grabby, grasping two year old grandchild. now that i don't understand. when i get cranky about stuff sometimes mum crates me or puts me in a different room. i may not like it, but i go along with it and it's all ok. i thought maybe they could have done that with mickey? but mum said sometimes people don't care too much, and it's very sad. it can be a sad world out there, which is one thing i've discovered if anything from all of the time that my mum has been fostering. life is tough out there for a dog.

Puppy Love!

Whew!
it's been a while since mum's written since she's been sooo busy, but now she's got more time on her hands , now that the puppies are gone... snifff...
puppies, you say???
yes, mum got placed with a mama dog nursing two tiny 2 week old pups that were taken from a siezure of a horrible back yard breeder, where they were living in squalid conditions. the mama girl was deathly thin and just so afraid of strangers, but she immediately trusted mum and was happy to have the first steady supply of food in her life! mum named her bella, because she's such a beauty, and bella means beauty in italian! the two little pups she named jinx and jax, because they were just little cute peanuts! they had the most adorable floppy ears! mum supplemented the nursing with formula because she was nervous that the pups weren't getting enough nutrition because mama was so thin, and plus it was good for her too to have the extra calories and calcium in an easy to digest form. she loved it! when she took mama dog to the vet to be spayed the vet said that she was only about 1 1/2, and that she had had at least 3 litters of pups!! 3 litters at 1 1/2 years of age!!! what a terrible breeder! thank dog that she was saved from that terrible life of being bred to death.
well, the puppies grew up, ike puppies always do, and at 12 weeks they were adopted out to a wonderful home- together! they got to stay together because they were just soooo bonded, and loved each other so much. mum still gets pictures of them in emails, and it makes her soo happy to see them- it brings tears to her eyes to know that they are so loved and adored. as for bella, she hasn't found the perfect home just yet, but we're working on it! any day now we'll find it, and she'll go to be the perfect companion for some very very lucky family. we'll miss her!

welcome to the doggie pharmacy!

so muffin has finally gone to her forever home...*sniff* we'll miss her cute little face and adorable limpy ways! we've got a new dog, spikey, who had a little bit of fear and cage agression from being in a terrible nyc shelter- and who can blame him! i'd be scared and mad too if they put me in that place!! so lo and behold, he came down with a terrible case of... KENNEL COUGH!!! mummy is soooo scared that i'm going to get it too, case she just realised my kennel cough innoculation (kinda like a flu shot) had expired, and so we're rushing in to get it tomorrow..the vet said it might be too late, but hopefully not with the way spikey is coughing and wheezing...poor thing!!! so i'm on prednisone for my watery eyes, and spikey is on antibiotics, cough suppressant, and ZANAX!!! who knew it was for dogs too?! he's just taking it until he gets over the adjustment period of moving away from his forever home and his girlfriend of five years, and hopefully won't need it forever...but boy do we get all them meds, or what?!

the bionic hound

so muffin is amazing... just a few short weeks after her surgery and she's off her pain meds and off like a rocket. literally. she's the springiest, bounciest, leapingest, yappingest pup i've ever seen! she's also the most popular. it seems my mum spends her days attatched at the hip to the computer because of all of the emails from people wanting to adopt this irritating, obnoxious little.... i mean, adorable, sweet little thing. mum OBVIOUSLY loves her to death. in fact, she just bought her a brand new bed home today...grrr. she told me it's because she's been stealing my sherpa bag, but i'm just T.O.'d that the bed's too small for me to steal from HER! already there are two applications that are approved to adopt for her, so she'll be going home soon!! i mean... *sniff* ...and after that, the next dog placed with us already has a home! so where does that leave me?? alone again?!?! maybe this little furball's not so bad after all....

it's not easy living with a bitch

so the first few days with muffin were fairly uneventful- she was very sleepy, very delicate, and very needy. she wouldn't let my mum out of her sight, and had to be carried around everywhere. she laid in MY sherpa bag while mummy carried her around the house like the queen of sheba!! well, i guess it's just the fact that she's had such extensive operations- her hip was broken in 3 places, her femur was snapped, and she was spayed at the same time all this was repaired. OUCHIE!!!! she has more medication than rush limbaugh! but it's ok, she's starting to get much better. she's already started to put weight on her leg when she walks, and to sit down in a normal sitting position. last night was her third night here, and she started to play with a toy! she was playing with a little plush squeaky bunny for over half an hour, doing mini bouts of fetch and chewing and worrying at it! papa said that when she's better he bets she'll be a real firecracker! but for now she's still a bit under the weather. which is good, cause it keeps her out of the pancho's hair!!

i'm lonely...so very lonely...

so scooter has gone to his new home!!! he found a wonderful family that just adore him and mummy is very, very happy! the pancho, however, is pissed! where'd my playmates go? now i'm all alone! and sooooo boooored....mum is going crazy cause i'm so fussy! we haven't had a gap in fosters in months, so now i'm used to the companionship. i am agetting a new foster in a few days, called muffin, a pretty little girl... yay! but she's got a terrible leg injury and will require crate rest most of the time =( now that's no fun! at least it'll be some company, tho...