WARNING, reallllly long post! To quote myself,
You've touched upon my favourite subject!!!
It's so lovely to hear about others people's pets...
Dallionz said:
Cody - Our Yorkshire terrier. He may only weigh 8 pounds, but he has the heart of a great dane!
Khanrad - Our German shepherd mix. He is sweet as can be, but sure can look mean. LOL! He loves playing with the little dogs
Kit - Our border collie. She is finishing up obedience classes and will start agility classes in the fall
Pepper - She is the new addition to the family. She is a blue heeler/yellow lab mix and already loves the water
Wow four dogs?!?! I mean, not that I object as I'm crazy about my four-leggeds (yes, even more than my finneds). I guess in the US you're allowed to have as many dogs as you want. Here in Oz you're only allowed two dogs per household, by law (unless you're a breeder of course)
Here are my three babeez:
MISSY, the anorexic greyhound. She's 10 years, 5 months and 28 days old today. At the college where I did my Vet Nurse training, they always have two neutered greyhounds (one male, one female) for us to practice our skills on as they are SUCH placid, wonderful dogs with veins that stick out so much, that even the dumbest nurse can could do an IV injection on them. We practiced our surgical clipping on them, ultrasounded them, clipped their nails, expressed anal glands 
, practiced giving oral medications (they're on a daily heartworm treatment that if you even miss just one day, it could prove to be fatal. Instead of much safer and more effective monthly treatments or yearly injections), and general dog care. They go to a boarding kennel every weekend. I felt soooo sorry for them. (But it's even worse at Vet school where they use greyhounds for surgical practice and then euthanize them).
So anyway, Missy and Black Dog had been at the college for 9 YEARS!!! I guess she didn't cut it as a racer so they adopted her. The college had been posting notices at vets to retire/adopt them out, together. I wanted to so bad, but just couldn't have two dogs (explain why later). But on St. Pat's Day last year, Black Dog had a total systemic collapse and had to be euthanized. I was head nurse that day and jumped at the chance to take Missy home that night.
She slept on my bed that night and must have thought it was heaven. Right now she's upstairs loafing on her (ex-mine) favourite bean-bag. She's SUCH a bean-bag potato!!! When I accidentally leave the door open she sneaks in and runs upstairs where I spend most of my time. But she gets sooo excited and literally dances with joy when I say "Missy wanna go for a walk-walk???" or "Missy wanna go for a ride-ride???" She's old and arthritic so can't walk too far, but when she gets in the back seat of my car she just lays down and relaxes. The other day I took her to a short trip to the store (it was a cold day and I left the windows down), and when we came home, she refused to get out of the car (I left the door open) until I had to go to work the next morning and had to drag her out! She was busting to pee because that was the first thing she did (a river of pee!) but I guess she wanted to come along the next time I drove somewhere...
She's my princess. And she knows it --- I live in a two-storey apartment with a metal spiral staircase. She mastered the art of going UP the stairs immediately, but refuses to go DOWN. I have to pick her up (all 22kg of her) and carry her down the stairs...
SOX, the fat ginger cat who's about 15 years old. She's an American cat (I lived in Oregon for 8 years) -- I guess that's why she's super-sized 
and was actually my ex-husband's cat but I took her with me when when we got divorced. She'd been an only pet until I moved in (apart from some mice, one of them who bit her ear, ungrateful lil so-and-so's coz when the baby rats would fall out of the cage Sox would go wake my ex up to put them back in the cage). I'm so glad I took her coz he later ended up in prison! 
So when I moved back home to Australia with my second hubby, I went through the whole rigamarole of bringing her, along with two very large dogs (white German Shepherd Nanook and Rottweiler/Lab X Happy). We had to plan 12 months in advance, do blood titres and loads of paperwork to get them over here. It cost us five times the amount to transport them here than it costed us for our plane tickets. They had to spend 30 days in Quarantine (that's the minimum amount of time coz we'd planned so far in advance; some have to be there six months Hubby No.2 hated Australia (I knew there was something wrong with him... 
), missed his guns, etc etc so we decided to split and four months later he went back, with Nanook and Happy. The most well-travelled mutts on earth, I reckon...
Anyway, back to Sox. She was my first ever pet. My mum hates hates hates animals so we weren't ever allowed dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, anything (except fish) as kids. That's why I couldn't have two dogs coz she would have thrown me out of the apartment which I'm renting from her. It was hard enough convincing her to let me keep Missy...
Sox is my "first-born" and I love her to death. I couldn't imagine life without her *sob*. She's on a diet which has been awfully derailed since I got another cat... (they eat each other's food and Sox is supposed to be on low cal portion control!)
ALTHALUS, the nermil (see Garfield comics) of the household. He's a white and grey DSH, about a year old. He wasn't meant to be mine but I took him in as a favour for my best friend who had to leave the country a few months ago (she was an international student). He's named after the main character in David & Leigh Eddings' book, "The Redemption of Althalus". In the book Althalus was a rogue thief who turns good. The cat Althalus is a rogue thief but I doubt if he'll turn good anytime soon
Al (I call him scALlywag most of the time) has had a short but interesting life. He was found by one of my classmates as a kitten, starving and hanging around his mother's corpse. This friend already had 7 cats (she's moved interstate now and apparently has gotten another cat... funnily enough my friend's name is Kat) and they suspected that Althalus may have cat flu so my best friend Nina from Holland took her in and fell instantly in love with him.
About four months before Nina had to leave (at the end of the course), Al went missing. Nina even consulted an animal psychic. She lived in a busy part right in the heart of the city and after a month and a half, we'd all given up hope. Then one day out of the blue, one of the Universities called up and said they had found Althalus locked in the basement of one of their buildings. This Uni is about 20km away from the city, and Al would have had to cross two bridges to get there. Funnily enough, the Uni was right next door to our vet nursing college. Maybe Al followed Nina to school? Who knows 
One of life's mysteries!
Anyway, he was in a very bad way. He'd gotten his collar caught around his front leg/shoulder (to all you cat owners out there please please please don't use elastic "safety" cat collars, go for the ones that click apart when pulled, and don't leave the collar too loose. I've seen sooo many injuries to cats with collars caught that way ). He was severely malnourished, had a huge gaping wound on the inside of his shoulders and maggots crawling all over the wound. It was terrible but we were all happy about the miracle of him being found after all hope was gone. He's all healed up now, thanks to my Vet.
Technically, Althalus isn't mine. I keep hoping Nina will come back to Australia to do more study, and if she does Al will go back to her. It's kind of my incentive plan to get her to come back as she is so depressed at home without him.
But I do love him, and his rogueish little ways (so far, he's broken two cereal bowls, three glasses, and the cover to one of my fish tanks, not to mention drinking out of my glasses of water and knocking it over once in a while). About half an hour ago he also managed to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and turn off my computer, thank goodness I had saved this "essay" or I woulda been soooo mad! He's still sitting on my lap atm. He's a VERY talkative cat, which I love (most times, hehee). He terrorizes poor Missy (she's scared of cats, can you imagine that?? A greyhound, bred from ancient times to chase furry little things that move, being scared of a cat LOL!!!) and wants to be Sox's friend all the time. Which she tolerates most of the time but sometimes he just gets too close and she loses her patience and swots him one, claws sheathed.
Oh yeah, I also have two motorbike frogs, Xena & Virago. I'd just recently got them, from a lady who didn't want anything to do with them anymore. Actually I haven't been able to find Xena (the momma) for a couple of days. There's a tight-fitting flyscreen lid on their terrarium so I have no idea where she is
These critters are native to my area so I might let them/it loose at a local pond
I lurve them all to death... and I want to buy my own house (pretty hard these days
) so that I can have more cats, I'm thinking a Siamese and a Bengal from kittens, I love cats that talk. And an Italian Greyhound.
But I also
the countless dogs and cats I meet at work as a Vet Nurse. I reckon I have THE most wonderful job in the world (apart from the atrocious pay). I wouldn't ever want to be a vet as they just do surgeries, treat them and then leaves us nurses to care for the little darlings. It breaks my heart sometimes, especially the
things like euthanasia for no good reason. And surgical A.I.'s (artificial insemination) are a bit iffy too (that's where we anaesthesize the *****, open her up like we're gonna spey her, take out her uterus and inject semen straight into them, then stuff the uterus back in). Some bitches go through this procedure every season. I work at a specialty breeding hospital and breeders are a breed onto themselves
. Some are wonderful but most are not regarding their attitudes towards the breeding animals. They see them not as living creatures but money makers. Caesarians are interesting, and so rewarding to see newborn puppies and kittens. My first C-section EVER while a new trainee involved a Bull Mastiff with 19 pups!!! (Of course, the ***** had been surgically A.I.'ed)
By the way, in the past I have had pets such as chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese (they were African geese and I called them Schezuan, Hunan, and Canton
) raised from chicks. Two llamas. Four ferrets -- Itchy, Scratchy, Kramer and Bandit. Three pigs (OK so maybe these weren't pets as one of the were named Bacon LOL). Three other cats who were unfortunately taken by coyotes. *sob* A Siberian Husky named Shasta (she had a seizure and died, broke my heart... I still have her ashes in a box under a statue that looks like her.
I miss them all...
Anyways, enough of my rambling. You've touched upon my favourite subject!!!
I have sixteen non-fish pets, and the other sixty-four are all my fish and snails. 
