Flu you, pal

Ugh.  I woke up this morning, my first post-movie free day off, with knives buried in my throat and some kind of flashing heater in my sinuses and brainpan.  I feel like ten kinds of poop, and this thing is kicking my ass all around the house.  I can’t remember the last time I was this sick!  In fact, I think the last time I felt this lousy with a cold or a flu was probably when I had Mona and her puppies sharing my very tiny living space.  Remember spotty mama Mona and her spotty puppies, from Chilliwack Animal Control?

So it really will not surprise you, then, that I have decided to recreate past periods of my life, and being the authentic sort that I am, I am even replicating the flu.

Meet spotty mama dog.  And her spotty puppies.  From Chilliwack Animal Control.  Sharing my tiny living space.

The only difference is that this spotty mama dog has 8 puppies rather than 7.

Black and white male

Almost all black female

Sable female

Light merle male (now with extra attitude!)

Another, mellower, light merle male

Darker, split face merle male

And one more mostly black female who was busy eating and didn’t want to pose for photos.

I have no idea what mama dog is.  She is obviously an Aussie mix – she has Aussie face, and Aussie pants/butt (with a tail) but her coat is short and very bushy.  Maybe mixed with shepherd?  She is stocky and weighs about 50lbs or a little less – 35lbs of that are her boobs, I think.  She’s a little larger than Tweed.

Make that Tweed AKA “Pervy Uncle.”  He is, as I type, ensconced firmly by the XPen keeping a watchful eye on the puppies he desperately wants to hump.  Mama dog keeps snarling him away, and he keeps coming back and leering at her offspring.

Mama is very unhappy with the other dogs, but she’s only been her for, like, an hour.  She is pretty stressed out, and who can blame her?  She came from a crowded shelter to my house full of strange dogs with her very young puppies.  Their eyes have just started opening in the last 24 hours, so they are maybe 10 days old or so?

And speaking of unhappy, I present you with photographic proof that most dogs with dog-aggro issues are just stressed out and afraid.

This is what TWooie has been doing ever since I brought these 9 strangers into his home and sanctuary.  I nearly went ass over teakettle slipping in the *puddles* of drool he is leaving all over the floor.

Poor TWooie!

Thankfully, TWooie will not be stressed out for too long.  Auntie Hilary, TDBCR puppy raiser extraordinaire (she raised Dexter and his siblings!), is taking these cuties off my hands as soon as she returns from vacation in 10 days.  I just didn’t want to leave them in the shelter any longer than I had to, because a shelter is no place for a mama to raise her puppies.  That’s not a comment on CAC – they do their best, and remember I too work in an Animal Shelter. But my shelter is to the rural shelters what the Shangri-la is to a shady roadside motel run by a guy named Chuck.  All the kennels were full at CAC, and there was ANOTHER litter of maybe shepherd mix type puppies there as well, just a little older than this litter.  It’s just sad.  So I brought these guys home with me and will suffer through my flu-fog and no-doors, open-plan, tiny home with 14 dogs in it for the next 10 days just to make sure they get the best start possible.

And you’ll just have to suffer through 10 days of photos like this that make you all melty.  Aww gee, poor you.

Now I am going to lie down on the sofa with poor, drooly TWoo and wait for my fever to break.  Blargh.

PS – if you can think of a good theme for names, don’t hesitate to suggest them!  5 males, 3 females, and a mama dog.  Any ideas?