This afternoon I decided to take a dirt road west past Ruskin to investigate a small cemetery which I'd noticed when my dad and I were driving around last weekend. It's a small cemetery, with a couple of stones from the late 1800s, but most from the early to mid 1900s - although there were a few fairly recent graves, contrasting with others marked solely with crosses, containing no dates, and a couple which had caved in! I got one distance shot, but didn't really have the opportunity to explore the place fully.
I was wading through the high grass toward those stones you see there to the left when I heard the most menacing barking and growling coming from the woods. I uttered Oh, shit! and began heading for my car, when the vicious noises emerged as three fairly young, emaciated mutts. At first they were quite intimidating, and I was quite concerned that they would get to me before I could get to the car... and how fitting that my corpse would already be in the graveyard. Well, I began speaking to them nicely, and they immediately transformed from terrifying beasts into the sweetest, friendliest mutts imaginable. I tried to continue exploring the cemetery, but with three exuberant beasts, I ended up with little more than shots like these:
Look how skinny she is!
He was begging me to take him home...
There were three of them - a black male, a brindle male and a brown female - all nondescript mutts, all thoroughly emaciated, and all incredibly sweet. I really, really, really did not want to bring them home with me. Really. But I didn't think I could just leave them out there either. So I took them to my mom's house. (The fence around my yard has numerous holes; the dogs would be out in an instant.) Obviously, she's not too excited about adding three dogs to the three she already had (in addition to her 15 cats!), but luckily these guys not only don't chase cats, but they get along well with her dogs. Tomorrow I get to take them to the vet to see if there is anything seriously wrong with them, and if not, get them vaccinated and wormed and whatnot. We estimate that they're six to eight months old - definitely less than a year - so they'll probably get a little bigger. They're totally nondescript mutts, but very sweet... so if you or anyone you know would like to adopt a dog, please let me know! In the interim, I've been tasked with getting mom's new land fenced in so we can see about relocating some of these beasts!
7 comments:
Besides the fact that they've been nearly starved to death, those are some mighty cute pups.
Who will rescue all the forlorn animals of southern Georgia when you head off to Kyrgyzstan?
heh heh... my mom, I suppose! After all, she's the reason there are so many cats in/under/around my house :-)
i'm thinking pitbull/lab/possibly a touch of shepherd... they could end up pretty big.
i want them (note: "want" does not mean "can have").
i like the fencing in 8 acres for a critter refuge idea. your mom could probably get some serious land tax breaks if she declared it a rescue zone or something like that. of course, that would involve research, which would take time away from working to support all the animals...
Heh heh... we already have one pitbull/lab mix (Shiva), and now that she's full-grown, she's about three times the size of these guys. And the strongest beast I have ever encountered. We tied her to a concrete block once, and she ran full steam with it dragging along behind her. I hope these guys don't get that big... I can't imagine having four Shivas!
I'm taking them to the vet this afternoon to get them checked out, as far as their health, age, etc...
I can't wait to see what kinds of animals you adopt in Kyrgyzstan!
PS - hey, why do I only have to option to log in as a google type now?
What are you going to do with all of these animals? Aren't you and your mom breaking city/county codes having so many? I don't have any recommendations. When I see them, I leave them on the side of the road or whatever because I don't know what else to do - I can't bring them all home. Does that make me a bad person?
Melissa
Bob - I definitely need to look into whether or not I could bring an animal home from K-Stan. Also, I don't know why that option has just appeared. (Blogger is owned by Google, so that's part of the explanation...)
Melissa - When I lived in San Diego and only had space and money for one animal (Brie), so I didn't pick up animals when I found them. You certainly don't have room for more than your two cats! Meanwhile, we have three houses and eight acres, so I figure if we can, we should.
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