Driving Miss Daisy

Somehow, I have failed to mention anything about my fur-babies thus far. So, without any further delay (bad mom, bad mom, bad MOM!)....

Here is my yellow lab, Daisy. She will be 8 in October. She is a papered lab, to be exact, so her full name is Driving Miss Daisy Mae...and although you aren't allowed to use cuss words for papered pets, her last name, in my book, will always be: Bitchface. She may be papered, but she is anything but distinguished pedigree.

Notice the buda belly, and the golf ball in the mouth. And the 'What the fuck do you want?' look in those green eyes. My Daisy is a mess. She is lazy. She loves golf balls, and will lie for hours like that. When no one is looking, she will tear the ball to shreds. And then try to eat it. And then I find pieces of it all over the yard for the next week, as she tries to shit it.

Daisy is not the sharpest crayon in the box. Nor the brightest. But she has 9 lives, apparently. She has eaten rat poison and lived. She has attacked the crap out of my other Lab, and lived. She has been hit by a car, and lived. She has chased cattle (and a bull), and lived. I promise you, I have Daisy stories galore. Do you have any idea how much money we have invested in this damn dog???

Daisy was the cutest puppy in the world. She was fuzzy, furry, soft, puppy breath sweet. She snuggled. She also puked in my husband's lap as he was bringing her home to me. First clue, right there.

Second clue: She pissed on my head and pillow a couple of weeks after we got her.

My Daisy really is a mess. She has very stiff hips, and needs exercise. But due to the broken leg, she has a 12 inch metal plate in her front leg, so she can't really bend the elbow, and the foot sorta flops when she walks. So walking her at a high rate of speed is out of the question, as is jogging with her. So, she is thick and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

She hasn't liked me from Day One, although she is allegedly mine. She ignores me. She runs into me. She steps on my feet, on purpose, I swear. She runs away from me. Oh, I have soooo many stories about this girl.

But, she has a fairly good redeeming quality about her: She loves my girl. She is so sweet and gentle with my girl. I do not worry about my girl with Daisy. And, she loves my other Lab.

Which leads me to, Kooter Brown:

Kooter Brown is a black lab. He is papered as well. My husband traded a deer rifle scope for him. He was the last boy of the litter, and I will never forget when I met him...his tail whacking me at a high rate of speed. He was supposed to be a Chocolate Lab, hence, the name. His name was picked out prior to ever seeing him.

Kooter turned 10 in February. He is an old man dog. I have taken to calling him Old Man
River, and he answers to it. He has a gray face, and other random gray spots on his belly, and on his who-ha. He is supposedly my husband's dog, but he is soooooo mine.

Kooter came from two 100 lb. parents. He was a big boy too, for awhile. I got him to lose weight, but my mother has fattened him up lately. However, regardless of what he weighs, he still likes to sit on my lap. He loves to spoon with me. He loves to lie next to me on the couch. When I am standing up, he will literally sit on my feet, and look up at me with those big brown eyes. Sometimes, he makes all sorts of noises: grunts, growls, whining....like he is trying to communicate with me. He totally should have been born a little lap dog.

However, Kooter has an odd side to him, that has made me very weary the past several years: Kooter has snapped at and bit several people. It's always been very odd-he's fine one minute, and they next he just snaps at them, and usually in the face. And after he has done it, he is so very sweet to that person. For instance, he bit my brother once. My brother was throwing a tennis ball for him, and Kooter apparently thought my brother faked him out. He ran out in the yard for the ball, didn't see it, and ran back to my brother. My brother pointed to the ball, and Kooter jumped up and bit my brother in the lip. And my brother tried to block his face, so his hand got bit too. There was no previous aggression, no growling or baring of the teeth, nothing. And afterwards, he was sitting on my brother's feet, being very docile, like he knew he had done wrong. And since that time, he loves my brother when he is around. He follows him, and sleeps with him.

Understandably, now that I have a child, this worries me. So, when my girl was at the crawling stage, my dogs got the boot. They were outside when she was awake. When she went to sleep, I let them in. And that was a big adjustment for them. And for me.

Then, we moved into a rent house with my mom last year, while our current house was being built. And my little sis has a little dog. And the fear that Kooter would eat her little dog was real, for all of us, so my dogs were booted outside, for about 3 months straight. It killed me. I felt so very bad. And in that time, I found a tumor on Kooter. One that was open and bleeding. And can I tell you how guilty I felt? I mean, if they weren't stuck outside all the time, maybe I would have seen it sooner????

And then, we moved into our new home. And my fat ass Daisy broke the fence. And they started running away. They didn't terrorize anyone; they just wandered the neighborhood. See, they had 23 acres to roam on, for about 3 years, when we lived in Springtown. Now, they have like 1/32 of an acre, seriously. So, it's not a surprise that they want to wander. So, I moved them to my mom's backyard, temporarily, while they put up our new fence, and fixed the drainage issue in our backyard.

That was 5 months ago.

I want my dogs back. I miss them. I love the companionship.

But, my husband is not thrilled. He stopped loving them the instant our daughter was born; I have no idea why. He doesn't pay attention to them, nor does he even look at them. I know he wants them to be gone for good, but I can't do that. They are mine and just as important: we are theirs.

My dilemma at this point is this: Kooter listens, he is calm, he is an old man dog who just wants to sleep and cuddle. Daisy doesn't listen, destroys plants, digs, drools nonstop, and randomly moves shit around the house. If it were just Kooter, I think things would be less complicated. But I cannot bring myself to separate them, to give Daisy away. How could I do that??