So I thought I would do a little blog about what pets I actually own so when I talk or mention them you will know who I am going on about. Should have done this at the start of this blog really!
So first we have Darkley. He is my 2 year old goofball! I rescued him from Border collie trust in Birmingham in May 2010. He had only been with them a few weeks and had only just been okay-ed for rehoming. They had gotten him in from Ireland where he had been found a stray (they think) at about 5 months old. On his paperwork it said he was shy and had no interest in toys. Couldn’t be further from the truth, sounds like he really hated kennels! He is a collie cross and is a big lad now. He likes to think he is everyone’s best friend and is a huge cuddle monster. He is a very excitable pup though which was probably one of the reasons he was in kennels so long. I am so used to it by now though that I just see it as him being him, he is a lot different in the home though. We have been doing agility now for about five months which he absolutely loves. Give Darkley a few tunnels and an A frame you have a happy dog!
Two weeks ago I adopted Holly. They estimate she is around one year old and is a collie cross (think she is very lurcher like!) Another Irish pup brought over by Dogs trust. When she arrived she was constantly sitting in a puddle of pee and they could not work out why. They did test after test and finally they sent her to the small animal hospital in London where they discovered there was something wrong internally with her and operated on it. The peeing magically stopped in the next few days until she was spayed. The peeing started again and they changed up her medication and so far it seems to have worked! She is still on it now with the hope we will be able to wean her off it in the future. She was described as a live wire and nervous girl, which is true. She loves to play with Darkley and bounce about all over the garden with their toys. She does however sleep just as much as Darkley and I do. She tries her hardest to stay awake and usually falls asleep sitting up and jerks her head up as she wakes herself back up! Her shyness is going slowly and a polite little pup is showing through. She is a cheeky thing though and still has a lot of puppy-ness about her!
Now too the birds! Louie is my grumpy cockatiel who is around 17 years old. My grandparents went out to buy me a canary and arrived home with a tiny 13 week old Louie! He loved my granddad so so much and would be the friendliest bird around him, the rest of us get the grumpy hissy bird! He doesn’t really like to come out his cage these days and his happy to snooze the days away. He chit chats to you and will tell the dogs off if they come too close to him! He is getting on now and I cherish every day I get with him.
I also have a tiny white canary called Casper. While in a pet shop back in February 2010 my mum heard this beautiful singing from the other side of the shop. As we went over to investigate the singing stopped but I noticed that amongst all the canaries there was a dazzling white canary. As we walked back off the singing started again and we asked the shop keeper which bird it was, turns out it was the white little canary. My mum had been going through a rough patch and I was still away at university so I thought a happy little singing feathered friend would be prefect for her seeing as she was very much in love with the little guy already. So with my credit card in hand I got my little finchy friend! Every day he brightens up the house with his cheeps and chirps, he is the happiest little guy. Through bad breeding he got a huge cyst on his wing where one of his feathers grows inwards (like an ingrown hair for humans!) it gets infected easily. The vet told me that if it got to the point that he could not fly that the “humane” thing would be to put him to sleep. It got to that stage but I refused to give up he was still singing, eating and hopping about happily. I gave him warm regular baths and exercised him more and finally a new feather pushed through and the lump broke off! Casper can now easily fly about and land in my mums pot plants again. There is still a small little lump there that isn’t infected and the feather will grow back each year and cause issues no doubt. However none of this bothers him at all! He has started to copy the noises Louie makes so if and when I have to say goodbye to Louie, Casper will be here to sing about Louie loud and proud!
Right the next two come as a troublesome pair. So back in January of this year my mum got very ill again and I was running about all over the place trying to keep things ticking over. My mum wanted to thank me for everything and a tiny green budgie appeared! We named him buddy and he is a mouthy little thing who doesn’t mind people but would rather not be near us humans! He looked so lonely in his cage and would try and talk to Casper through the bars, so I got an even greener Buzz the budgie! Another budgie that pretty much dislikes me and every other human but is best friends now with Buddy. They bicker, chat and chase each other about the cage all day and seem to be in their own budgie world! It is so fun to watch them climb upside down and hop about like mad.
I have a little lizard gang also who is led by Mojo. Mojo is a rankins dragon and is about 19 months old now and I really did not think she would be here with us still. I got her from a store that was well known for breeding nice reptiles, apart from Mojo it seems. Soon after getting her, Mojo sunk in to a depressive state. She sat in the same spot all day and would not eat or drink. I tried everything I could think of to get her to eat. I tried putting her in different places, different foods from different places and took her to vet after vet. I kept on asking anyone and everyone I could about her and nothing worked. The manager at the local pets at home was a bearded dragon breeder and had given me great advice with her vivarium lighting and with her in general. He told me to bring her in the store so he could take a look. Firstly he was shocked at her size and he then had a look as told me she was a she! He then placed her in with the other baby dragons and she just sat there under the light refusing food as normal. Mojo does not like her tank as hot as most dragons so after a while she opened her mouth to cool herself down, so the manager rested a worm on her lip and gulp it was gone! So she is hungry and she does want to eat so why isn’t she? He wiggled the worm in front of her again and she again ignored it. One of the other lizards walked past her and she did not flinch.. as if she did not know the lizard was there. Finally it clicked and we worked out she couldn’t see any of it! So we got her to open her mouth again and put a worm in it and gulp gone! She did it with worm after worm! They said she must have been incubated at the wrong temperature which is why her eyesight has gone and why she is still as small as she was when she was born. I have learnt since then she can see shadows, so I keep everything in the same place in her vivarium so she can work her way around it easily. She is not living the full life she could be but she is getting along okay and is cheeky as anything- her favourite thing to do is to scratch the glass and annoy the pups! I am just glad we worked out what was wrong with her in time.
Drizzle
I have 4 leopard geckos now as one passed away about a month ago. It must have been something internal that suddenly made her go downhill and pass on. She was such a brave and good natured gecko who I miss dearly. Her vivarium sister was Yoshia, who is shy and tiny! Never been one to like to be handled really but she is a sweet little thing. My other three I rescued as they were dumped at the local pet store in an ice cream tub. The male is a giant yellow inbred monster but is the sweetest of them all. We called him drizzle (lemon drizzle for the yellowness!) and he always comes out to say hello when you speak to him. He loves his chin tickled too! Then there is rain (she is purple…purple rain!) Who has lost her tail at some point and has a weird regrowth, which does not bother her at all! She is laid back and likes to wait at the food bowl when I am putting new food in, the little piggy! Then the youngest one is Thunder (because she had a temper!) her markings make her look SO moody! When I got them she had not been handled at all so she was a moody girl who took a bite out of my finger a few times. She is now much better but I still have to watch my fingers if I have been touching their food!
I have 3 tanks full of guppies and each has a loach in there too (bones, booth and tango!) That pretty much ends the list of my animal family! It sounds like a lot but it really does not feel like it. They blend in to my life and my day to day going on and it would be weirder id they weren’t here really. They all have their quirks and I love that about them all!!
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