Savingdogs-Saving the chickens

savingdogs

Queen Filksinger
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LYourLinkGoesHere Well I've been a lurker on the SS, BYC and BYH sites for awhile and have finally decided to put a little more down here about myself. For some reason my pictures never seem to upload so I'll have to try to be descriptive because I'm not computer-savvy enough to know what I'm doing wrong (weird because I've been using computers for some 25 plus years).

Married mom of three, 50 years old, daughter 27 who just produced grandchild number one, and a son turning 18 and another one turning 13 going on 30...he is known in a couple of threads here simply as Trouble. The other two turned out good so God thought he oughta send me a stinker that someone needed to raise, God love him. We also have six dogs, three cats and I'll get into my barnyard in a few.

I'm new to the self-sufficient bug. Hubby has always been about 10 percent "survivalist" and I've always rolled my eyes at him. However a year and a half ago, we lost our nice home in the city (medical bills, too much debt consolidation and then lotsa pay cuts) and "downsized" to a mobile home in the country on five acres. We've always wanted five acres but we were married 26 years before we got them! I do miss my nice city house, but we love living in the forest. Our place is very very remote, forested mountaintop. We do have neighbors but alot of unowned or unpopulated state land surrounds us. We are close to Mt. Saint Helen's (yes, the volcano). We are not expecting any lava here soon in our location though, don't lose any sleep. We have a woodstove lit by wood we chop, our own well, and septic of course. We would LOVE to be off-grid because we hate the electric company here, they want to put power lines across our land and we are pretty PO'd. To be off grid would make it possible to say we don't want to do business with you.

Now we're Californians originally transplanted here to southwest washington state a dozen or so years ago. I always wanted a farm and chickens and horses and dogs and cats. Now that we are here, we are skipping the horses. While I'd love to have one someday, they are an expense I just can't justify at the moment. Whereas my little dairy goats, they barely eat any hay and I have three of them. And hopefully two of them will give me milk. I'm trying soaping and would like to make goats milk soap to sell over the internet and to give as gifts. We love our goaties. They are just adolescents right now.

We also have chickens that we adore and never guessed we would. While we don't have special favorites, we love them as a group and find them very amusing, almost as good as television (sometimes better). Certainly better than television when my husband has the remote. And I probably don't need to tell most of you here about the eggs....

In case you are wondering why I'm "savingdogs", it is because that has been my identification on the internet for some time. I'm a veteran volunteer in the field of dog and cat rescue aka working to foster animals from the humane society or about to go to a humane society. I've worked to promote spaying and neutering and fostered and placed in happy homes 330 dogs now and a little over 50 cats (we lost count on the kittens). We have actually helped many more animals than that through our endeavors, but those are the ones who actually lived in our house until new homes were found. All breeds, everything from chihuahua to great dane to border collie to common mutt to pitt bull to lab and many or mostly blends. I've had a blind poodle, several orthopedic patients, a naked dog, a dog with rage syndrome, a diabetic dog, ultra fearful, ultra confident, you name it, we've had one like it at our house (just about!).

Often, I do not chime in on posts because others are much more informed, but I do have unique experience with dogs and cats in that I have lived with so many and known so many and how to help them find the right situation/solution. So you will often see me posting on topics relating to dogs. Cats are my secondary love, I have and love cats but have only rescued them because I'm a sucker and while I was trying to rescue dogs, people suckered me into helping some poor cat. All three of the cats I own were fosters that never found anyone "good" enough. In the case of two of them, they were just plain mean kittens so they never got picked and the third and oldest one was a nice kitten but my boys found fault with everyone who applied until I finally caved.

We currently have one foster dog and one foster cat.

But in any event, I've come here to communicate and have fun with all you wonderful folk. I've recently lost my hearing and need ways to express myself and "hear" back and get the whole picture. And y'all are so interesting and have so many great ideas on frugal living and being more the way I wanna be!

edit of post title to conform with journal forum rules, user name
 

tamlynn

Lovin' The Homestead
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Yay for your journal! I look forward to reading it. You have a fascinating life and have gone through a lot. How is Trouble doing with school? Still good?

BTW, that is a whole lotta dogs you have helped!
 

savingdogs

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Online public school has been so far, so good. It is presented in an interesting format. He was such a huge procrastinator he could usually avoid things before, but all he has to do now is sit in front of the computer and watch a movie/video kind of thing, and then answer questions and take tests online. We have to be there while he takes tests and we do have to do some projects with him. He will have to go down there for state tests.

He tried to skate through the multiple choice questions but when one came up ALL WRONG on one paper we began checking all his work before he sends it in. It has worked out to be less time spent on school overall and totally took away peer pressure and issues we were dealing with. Seems to have simplified everything for us, being so far away from everything.

I'm sure Trouble will find something to do to make us mad, he has a talent for it. Yesterday he fed the goats in the morning for us but forgot to latch the gate well. I woke up to seeing my goats munching away on my baby apple tree orchard.
 

Hattie the Hen

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:frow Hi there savingdogs! :frow

I'm reading your blog from way over the water in the UK. I feel so lucky to be able to read about everyone's lives, hopes & disappointments. I look forward to yours; it has started really well.

Good luck with it...!! :D

Hattie
 

framing fowl

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Looking forward to reading more in your journal. What an awesome thing for all of those dogs and cats you've helped!
 

ohiofarmgirl

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glad you are chiming in!

and heh heh heh..sometimes we dont always know what we are talking about so dont hesitate to throw in your $0.02!!!
 

Dace

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Hi savingdogs :frow ! Welcome to the fascinating world of journaling :lol:

Just kidding :D

So happy to have you jump in!
 

Occamstazer

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Hi savingdogs! I've done a bit of wildlife rehab and stray rescue, too.
I had to stop when I ended up with four dogs. What does one do with the ones no one else wants :lol:
I can't wait to read more :D
 

freemotion

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Yeah, savingdogs, we want to here your opinions even if you think you have less experience.....another perspective is always good. Some of us don't have as much experience as you might think! :p
 

savingdogs

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Well I have started to chime in more on BYC and the soaping threads as I've gained a little experience with both.

Regarding the dogs....yes, we have had a hard time keeping our numbers down. I've been doing this 12 years now. Did one of those mid-life "What is the purpose of my life" review things when I was approaching 40 and reflected that I had not done much good. I read a book that told me people ought to think about what God intended them to do...what talent or extreme interest did you always have that were untapped? I had always regretted my life was not with animals and always cried about the puppies at the humane society.

I had a BAAAAAAAD habit as a young teenager on my own (moved out at 17) of going to the humane society and stealing puppies out. One I had until she was 12. Of course as I've matured I've come to see that the problem is people not spaying and neutering, and that society wants what it wants when it wants it and throws away the extra animals. I decided I wanted to be a force for positive change in this problem.

We did end up with four animals we MEANT to keep and five animals that could not get adopted. The weird thing is our favorite dog is the one who could not find a home. Favorite cat probably the same. But the dog, she was supposed to be dying of lymphoma soon after we got her....but she survived and is my most interesting dog (Karelian bear dog). I'll have to tell more of her story in another post.

The strangest thing is that my new hobby became the passion of my family. My hubby embraced this life (taking in dogs, finding them a home and giving them away) with as much fervor as my own. He was even President of one of our groups for a year.
I'm currently on inactive status with our group we work with due to some health issues, but my husband isn't, hence we still have foster animals here.
It was actually very good for our marriage that 15+ years into it, we developed a hobby like that together. It does take over your life.

But we have a saying in our house..."We are rich in dogs." The cats we are not as sure about, but we are the only house on our road that doesn't have a rodent problem!
 
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