Salvadore Doggy

A year after the Huz and I got married we got a dog, a puppy to be exact. A 4 week old 1/2 English Springer Spaniel and 1/2 Great Pyrenees puppy to be even more exact. He was the cutest little fluffy, wobbly guy. We managed to get our puppy the same day we were moving into a new townhouse. That first night we slept on a mattress in the living room, I can't remember why exaclty. I think it had something to do with helping the puppy become acclimated to our home. But what really happened was the damn dog cried for hours on end and then just kept peeing on our floor the whole night. We named him Salvadore Doggy (you know Salvadore Dali...Salvadore Doggy...yeah, yeah.)

Salvadore was such a fun and lively dog. He was also an injury prone dog. Have you ever met a dog who sprained it's tail b/c it wagged it too much? Well that was Salvadore. And he did it not once but twice. He also managed to sprain his back not once but twice. He pulled a claw out of his foot, not once but...twice. You see this was a special dog. We loved him just the same.

Once when he was about 6 months old we were awakened by a constant thumping sound. We sat up in bed and could see from street lamps shining through the windows that Salvadore was repeatedly walking into the wall...no shit. We jumped up and drove him to the 24 hour Animal ER and found out he had an infection that was causing him to do weird things. Well they do and xray and then call us back and there on the xray right before his belly was a screw! The dog swallowed a screw! Not a little screw but a honkin 2" screw! WTF?! Well he fortunately passed the screw and the cost managed to stay under 1k but holy crap!

When we started to have kids the huz and I vowed to eachother that we wouldn't be one of those families who give up their dog after they have kids...no matter what. My how things change after you have children...especially your patience and understanding and ability to "deal" with life. You see Sal was overall a sweet dog. But he started to get incredibly jealous after Super N was born. He started to shred poop filled dipes all over my couch. He also started jumping the fence and wander around the train tracks just behind our house. I'm not sure what's going on back there on the tracks but often he'd come back wet and smelling disgusting. Like skunk mixed with poop. We concluded he must have been rolling himself in some sort of trash & animal poop sludge mixin it up on the tracks...disgusting. Well guess who had to bathe him after this little adventure, every single time.

It started to become apparent to us to start to look for a new home for our furry baby, sadly. We searched and searched for about 4 months until one day we came across an older couple who was retired and wanted an older dog for their older dog to play with, Sal was almost 7 years old at the time. The couple came over with their dog and Sal him played it up in the backyard. They played well together and the couple seemed to fall for Sal right there. They took him that day back to their piece of land with a pond. We periodically receive emails and pictures of him. And they told us he likes to dive into the pond.

As difficult as it was to give our furry babe away, we felt we couldn't love him the way he should be loved anymore. Our house is small and it quickly became tight with a wild dog and two small babes. We were fortunate to find a couple who were willing to love our dog and take good care of him. We think about him and miss him a lot but we feel it truly was the right decision for us.

Oh yeah I can't forget to tell the best story ever that involves Sal. One day I had come home and I went to open the gate that I had blocking Sal in the dining room and kitchen. I walked into the kitchen and there on my floor was a dead rat! Now I know that peeps often refer to mice as rats but no I'm talkin about a 1ft from head to tail RAT! He was laying on the floor belly up...dead. Sal had apparently thrown down with him and kicked his ass. Of course I'm like totally calm but flippin out in my head. At that time I had only W but I was 7 months pregnant with Super N. I kept thinking about how unsanitary and disgusting rats are and that it was in my house and how the hell did it get there etc. And you know all this passed in my brain in a matter of 1.5 seconds. I quickly grabbed like 6 shopping bags and slid them into each other than grabbed about 10 papertowels, folded them up and grabbed the bugger by his tail! I wanted to run him to the dumpster out back but I really wanted to show the Huz when he got home from work too! So I sat the bag with the rat on the basement stairs. You better believe I thoroughly scrubbed and sanitized all the floors, baseboards, everything the rest of the day. I also found how he got in. We had a hole in the floor of our laundry room, it goes directly under the back of the house. The rat apparently smelled food and came on in. That night I sent the huz straight to Lowes and he bought a piece of steel and drilled it into the floor covering the hole. We've had no issues with rats since.