In training

Gregory has never asked for a pet. We have had pets Gregory's entire life and even when we go to pet adoptions, etc., he never really pays attention to them nor asks to bring any home. For new readers that do not know, Gregory is 8 and was diagnosed with Autism at the age of 25 months old.

Up until today, we had three dogs, after having to evict Cody (story earlier in blog). Bailey is a terrier/Maltese mix and definitely Felicity is her girl. Sure, we are all great, but Felicity is her girl. Bailey is 4 and we have owned her since she was a little puppy.  Petunia is a chihuahua (and SO chihuahua), she is also 4 and we have had her too, since a puppy. Petunia likes Gregory and is patient with him, but is really a family dog, but I am "Momma" to her.  Margo is my poodle that we rescued 6 years ago. She is around 10 or so years old. She is MY dog, no other way. She is patient with the kids, though, but she definitely is "Momma's girl". Margo and Petunia have a mother/daughter type relationship and Bailey rules the roost around here.

Our neighbors have a litter of Heinz 57 puppies. Felicity has brought this cute little girl one home before to show me, and yes, she is cute, but I said no more dogs. Then yesterday, Felicity brought the puppy to show me again. Gregory saw her this time and said he wanted "Oreo to live with us". He has never said that before about a pet! He loves the chickens, but never wanted us to add another dog to the family.

Gregory helps out with feeding the dogs and letting them out of their crates in the morning, then outside most of the time after letting them out of their crates. Lately, he has been trying to get Bailey or Petunia to sleep with him in his bed, or even just sit with him on the couch sometimes and they just usually get down. So after he asked to keep Oreo yesterday, I got to thinking that maybe he needs a companion of his own. So....

Meet Gregory's "service dog in training".... "Oreo".

Oreo is 6 weeks old. She is a total Heinz 57 from what we can get from the owners of the Momma next door. Some Pit-Bull, likely some Heeler and a lot of who knows what. Her paws are tiny, so I am hoping she stays somewhat on the smaller size, but he will love her no matter what.

We hope to be able to eventually get her certified as a service animal for him, but have not looked into the process yet. We will train her and teach her that she is Gregory's dog. We will teach him how to feed her (correctly) and play with her, walk her, let her out to potty and everything involved with having a dog. I will put together a chart to teach him, but I am aware I will do most of the house-breaking initially and that is fine with me. If he is happy, we are all happy.

We made the "puppy" trip to Petsmart today. Food, toys, bowl, collar, crate....whew! Free puppies definitely ARE NOT free. Tomorrow it's to the vet for her first shots and check up.  Bailey, Petunia and Margo are doing great with her so far!

Welcome to our family, Oreo!

So much has happened

I won't go into the details right now, but our foster sons are no longer with us. There were many things that contributed to our decision, and it was such a hard decision to make.

The day after the boys left, I slept nearly all day and part of the next day. As of right now, Mike has slept 13 hours straight! To say we were exhausted is obviously putting it mildly. We didn't realize how drained we had become.

Will we continue on our foster parenting journey? That remains to be seen. If we do, we will be much more selective as to what children we agree to accept.

When we moved into this little house, we wanted our foster children to have as much space as possible, and were hoping to get our allowed number of 3 kiddos, so Mike and I took the smallest bedroom and put children in the master bedroom.  After realizing that we wouldn't be getting a 3rd child any time soon, at least until we had adopted the boys, Mike and I could stand it no longer ( we were in a bedroom that is 7.5' x 11') and decided to move the boys into a secondary bedroom and we would move to the master bedroom. We had the move planned for this weekend (even before we made the decision about the boys), and despite our tiredness, we switched rooms on Friday night. The house is still in shambles and I hope to get everything straight and put back away today.

Felicity and Gregory are much happier, now that they have Momma and Daddy back to themselves.

Two weeks ago we added two new dogs to our menagerie. They are Mike's dogs. He needed a "man's dog" to hang out with, and since all 3 of our other dogs are little dogs, he never felt like they were "his". We adopted brother puppies. They are Blue Heeler mix, we think with Bloodhound. They are great and we all love them.

We also added 7 new Seramas to our flock. They came from New York state and arrived on Thursday. They are silkied Seramas and I had never seen them before, but I LOVE them!  We plan to grow a decent size flock of Seramas, not just for pets, but for breeding and showing. The photo below is one that the previous owner sent to me showing me the birds. We have named this gorgeous fellow "Denton".

The name I have given our Serama flock is "Yellow Rose Seramas". I have started the flock blog, too. Be sure to head over there and "like" them. The plan is that all of our Seramas will be named after Texas cities, counties or well known people from Texas.


I will share photos of the new dogs and Seramas as soon as I can find my camera cable to transfer the photos to my computer.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

We are not farmers after all

I have the best family; but we are not farmers.

Mike and Felicity have only supported the goats and my little venture into turning our family into a farming, self-sufficient family because it was what I wanted. I knew that Mike helped out as much as he could to help me, but Felicity finally "fessed up" that she has never really liked dealing with so much work with the goats and chickens but wouldn't say so because she didn't want to hurt my feelings.

So, after a long couple of weeks, we have come to the conclusion that we are not farmers.

Thank you to everyone that left suggestions for names for our farm, but we will not be needing them after all.

After this weekend, we will no longer have any goats and the chickens will be very few.

We decided that with bringing in new children and all the activities that lie ahead of us once the school year starts, farming is just too much for us.

Our dogs and cats will be thrilled to be the center of our pet universe again. We are also keeping my beloved Seramas. As far as I'm concerned, I will have Seramas indefinitely. The whole family enjoys them and their sweet, unique personalities too much to be without them.

Another new member

Mike and I have been discussing getting another dog for the family. We have been strongly leaning toward a Boxer. But we had decided no new dogs until we make our move with his job later in the fall.

Our poodle, Margo, we got through rescue two years ago. She apparently had a very bad experience before we got her and she is very skittish with anyone in the family except me. So Margo is "my" dog. Thus being the reason we want another dog. One that likes everyone!

Katie (my grown daughter) got this little Maltese mix puppy from someone on FreeCycle about a month ago. She's just as cute as she can be, but Katie, as usual, keeps getting dogs when she doesn't need them.

Katie called me night before last asking if we wanted to have Bailey (the Maltese mix). I told her no, and just quickly "double checked" with Mike to confirm that no was our answer. (I asked Mike because I knew he kinda liked Bailey). He confirmed no. So we hung up the phone. Done deal, no biggie.

About 10 minutes later Mike started asking me questions about Bailey. Well, long story short, he decided that we, in fact, would like to have Bailey and add her to our family. I didn't really care either way. She's cute and great with all of us, but as I said, we had been discussing getting a Boxer later down the road.

So, may I introduce the newest addition to our family...

She is +/- 4 months old. Her mother is full blood Maltese, but they had no idea what the father was. She's cute as can be, minds really well and loves the kids to death!

Last night was her first night with us. She slept well in her kennel and only cried for a few short minutes when we first put her in there. Margo is now sleeping in a kennel next to Bailey at night.

For those outside of our family, here's "big sis", Margo.