If we were meant to save her life and heal her so that she would eventually go on to make another family’s lives complete, then it was well worth it. For us, it feels as if a tremendous weight has been lifted. It wasn’t fair for her to have to live the constrained life we forced upon her, and for us, besides the burden of one more mouth to feed, there was constant anxiety and guilt for not providing the right home for her. One less dog means that the next time we move, it will be easier to find a good place to live and we can afford to downsize even further to pay off bills.

Along with Maggie went her ‘party collars’ (of course) and jacket, but also Mojo’s superman costume, Lilly’s bunny ears, and assorted other toys and items that we had in our memento box. We hadn’t been sure what to do with these items, and it raises our spirits to know that Maggie and her new human siblings will enjoy them together.

So here’s a toast to a wonderful new life for Maggie, and the beginning of a new path for us which we hope will eventually lead to us being debt free and owning a home of our own!

I should clarify here that I fully realize that the position we are in is entirely of our own making, and that I don’t really blame the animals themselves at all; they didn’t ask to be here and no one twisted our arms to take them. Granted, they are all rescues, and for some of them, our intervention was the only other choice other than euthanasia, but it was still a choice we made to take on each one — and we’re the ones responsible for the results. It’s just that after spending our entire adult lives sacrificing financial stability, better places to live, most of our waking moments at home, and (at least it seems this way sometimes) our mental well-being, caring for an endless string of damaged and needy animals, I think we’ve reached a point where we are just really burned out. And we’re trying to determine how best to cope with it…

I honestly wonder, sometimes, if we somehow make them crazy. Mojo was a nightmare. We just passed the second anniversary of his death and I still haven’t been able to find the strength within me to try and tell his story. It came to the point where we just had to move on, and not think about it at all, in order to heal. Olive is neurotic, in a perfect world we’d find her a home where she could have more attention and be away from Winter’s tormenting, but perfect homes for ten year old cats are not exactly overflowing out there. Winter brings us a lot of happiness, but it also causes us a great deal of stress to see her stalk and torture Olive and we haven’t found a good way to manage that situation. And we can’t get angry with her over this behavior, because it’s a case of Olive reaping what she has sown… the terrified, innocent little kitten she attacked over and over grew up and said, “it’s payback time, bitch.”

Maggie is frustrated because we no longer have a fenced yard to let her energy out in, nor do we have a safe place to walk with her, and then she gets in trouble when she tries to bounce and play and inevitably steps on one of the other five bodies crowded into the living room. Cricket sometimes eats, sometimes doesn’t, we have to coax her and simultaneously fend off Olive and Simon — who can’t understand why they aren’t offered tasty treats on a plate in the living room.

Lindsy, ironically, is less neurotic than she used to be, owing to the fact that she can no longer hear us yelling at any of the animals. But since she now likes to bounce around and bark loudly when we come home, it adds to the chaos. We try to be understanding but it’s hard when you are trying to hurry and feed six animals in the dark, and there’s a sixty-five pound dog bouncing on the other animals like a pogo stick booming “WOOF! WOOF!” at the top of her lungs. Today we had to run to the store and we thought it would be nice for the dogs to go for a car ride. Cricket wasn’t feeling well and stayed home, but Maggie and Lindsy were beside themselves with excitement at the opportunity. We opened the car doors and Lindsy tried to leap into the back seat like she always does… except her near 13-year old back end just couldn’t hold her up and instead she did a back flip onto the driveway. So now she’s sore and we’re worried… so much for trying to do a good thing.

We come home from work and it feels like they descend upon us in a horde from all directions, each one screaming (in Simon’s case, quite literally) “Me! Me! Me!” and we just feel like we are drowning in the flood of neediness. Again, we are fully cognizant of the fact that this is all the result of decisions we ourselves have made… it’s hard not to kick ourselves when we look back at all the vet bills, the places we’ve lived that we wouldn’t have if not for the struggle to find a place where the animals would be permitted, the trips we never took because we couldn’t get away (we lived less than eight hours from the Grand Canyon for four years and never saw it) and the stress and grief we endured because of those decisions.

This past year, seeking ways to alleviate stress, we learned about the concept of ‘mindfulness.’ We realized that we were spending most of our time divided between agonizing over the past and worrying about the future, while the present — the only part of our lives where we were interactively present, just drifted past unnoticed while we immersed ourselves in an endless cycle of guilt, frustration, and worry. Once we realized this, we could see clearly the senselessness of this way of living, and began trying to move forward positively from that point. We have made some significant changes towards living more in the moment; the problem we now face is that “the moment” is often a stressful and frustrating place too — we need to fix that somehow.

I think one of our big steps for the new year will be for us to find a way to balance the needs of our furry family, who are dependent on us, with our need to have some peace to ourselves. We’re not really sure how to do this, but hoping that recognizing the need is the first step on that path. Suggestions are very welcome.

Not having a fenced yard with a dog who likes to run like a gazelle is nerve-wracking but there’s no way we can justify spending money to fence yet another place that isn’t ours. The fact that some of the neighbors don’t take the care that we do in keeping their animals in their own yards causes us a great deal of stress. We don’t necessarily think that Maggie would start a fight, but she would certainly be able to finish one and would get the blame for it regardless. Especially at this time of year, when we get up in darkness and come home to darkness, it’s scary letting the dogs out the door when we can’t see what is out there. We just have to hope that there isn’t a cat, or a 100 lb German Shepherd standing outside the house somewhere.

So 2008 is rushing towards us and we have this feeling that this is going to be another year of changes for us. Partly because of the animal stuff mentioned above, but maybe more than that as well. We’ve cut down so much on the clutter around here and are still working to clear out even more. There’s no reason to lug around all this junk that we have no attachment to. This year we made even more of a point of recycling everything we can and we now take our own bags into the grocery store, and are buying much less processed food. We’re trying very hard not to buy cheap “made in China” products but quickly discovered that this is harder than it seems. The important thing is that we are trying, and over time it gets easier.

We aren’t sure what the future will bring with our jobs; the small-town computer shop where we work has had to contend with a brand-new Staples store opening in town, with a super Wal-Mart and a Best-Buy soon to come… at the very least, the shop will have to change the way things are done to stay afloat. I’ve had this growing feeling that I am perhaps not quite on the path that I am supposed to be on, that there are talents of mine that are going to waste spending all day running here and there and fixing computer catastrophes, and being in a perpetual state of having to be reactive without ever having the time to think proactively and put my creativity to use is just wearing me down. By the end of the day we are so beat we just come home, feed ourselves and the critters, and go to bed. There doesn’t seem to be any time for ourselves, let alone for writing, working on the website or all the other little projects I used to do. I guess we’ll see what the new year brings.

We’ve settled in comfortably into the house… we’ve made it a very homey, cozy place and really enjoy having the big living room with those patio doors overlooking the mountains. The landlord had a screen door put on the patio and we put up a crystal that makes rainbows dance all over the room when the sun hits it. We have a huge assortment of wildlife that comes to visit every day, titmice and chickadees and cardinals, several squirrels that give the cats a fit by coming up on the deck, and our resident pair of wrens that like too hop around on the deck and peer in the windows. There’s also blue jays, crows, doves, and tons of assorted finches and sparrows. Nadine the chipmunk has been absent for a few weeks, we assume she is hibernating.

We hope that this new year brings good things for everyone and some needed positive changes in the world.

We’ve added an album for the pictures we’ve taken on our various hikes up along the Blue Ridge Parkway in the past month or so. There aren’t a lot of pictures in it so far, just a few that we thought were interesting or fun. Maggie’s been coming along with us but the last time out the heat seemed to really bother her so we might start going out on our own until it cools off again.

I suppose this is my fault; after last month’s $500+ in animal-related spending, I had a big rant where I declared that no one else was going to the vet unless they were gushing blood from somewhere or had an eyeball hanging out. This definitely fit the former criteria. The vet had to put her under and stitch the tail, then sent her home with an elizabethan collar to keep her from tearing out the sutures and a bandage with a plastic casing on her tail. She has since just about destroyed her dewclaws and torn the backs of her ears to ribbons trying to remove the ecollar, has removed the collar three times and the bandage twice. The surgery cost us $232 plus probably another hundred or so once we’re done with all the rechecks and bandage changes over the next week or so. This is the sort of crap that just happens over and over, and why we’ll probably never be out of debt.

Poor Maggie has dealt pretty well with the whole thing… It wasn’t her fault it happened and not her fault she’s terrified of the plastic head collar, or that she has ongoing skin issues that have been pretty costly as well. If I sound frustrated, it’s just because it feels like no matter how hard we try, we just keep digging ourselves into a bigger and bigger hole.

Maggie and Lindsy at the store. Maggie is proudly wearing a fuchsia party collar with roses. The picture’s a bit small; Amy, who works with Joy, took it with a cell phone and sent it to us.

Maggie crashed after her big day.

Snow!

London Road

Brrrr! The white stuff is, uh, interesting. Can we go in now?