Update!

So we fostered a litter or 6-6wk old puppies  (Lila, Baxter, Linus, Lilly, Lucy, and one we called Tyrone, but that’s not what we really named him, lol) from the DDFL. Anyway, they were an insane amount of work. My mom adopted Lilly who is the sweetest girl. It’s nice we still get to see one of our fosters.

We also fostered a Great Dane, Millie. We fell in love with her. Poor thing was sick the whole time we had her. She was adopted to a really good home and my husband is friends with her new owner on Facebook, so we can check in on her from time to time.

Now we’re really taking a break because our dog Caeser is a hellion. That is all.

Original post: 

As we sadly just parted with Beilie, our old lady foster Dobe, I realized I was starting to forget the little things about the awesome animals we’ve fostered.

So I decided I should write a little something about them.

My first foster was Lucy. She was older, red, cropped, and docked Dobe. She was beautiful and very sweet. She was fun because she had been trained to ring a bell with her nose when she needed to go out. She also had a bit of incontinence, which we learned tends to be a problem with spayed females. She wasn’t a fan of Caesar, our previously adopted dobe from the Doberman Rescue of Colorado. We were going to adopt her until she took out a miniscule piece of Caesar’s ear. We thought this was just shocking and awful. Little did we know how uneventful it truly was, but you know first time “parents” and all. So a very nice man adopted Lucy and after being diagnosed as hyperthyroid, she was put on medication which took care of her incontinence.

My second foster dobe was Jimmy, a large, red, natural, and docked boy. He came to the Doberman Rescue of Colorado with mange. They got him back to a decent state of furriedness and adopted him out. He was returned when his mange came back. We fostered him until he was deemed ok to adopt out again. We were so attached to this huge, goofy looking dog, and subsequently adopted him. The first year was challenging with Jimmy though. I’m pretty sure he was an outside dog, as he doesn’t know how to ask to go out and doesn’t understand when he’s in trouble. Both of which are cute and frustrating at the same time. Jimmy is now almost 6 and doing great.

My husband and I fostered Max in the winter of ’07. He looked like a puppy. So soft and had the cutest face. He was a young, red, docked doberboy with IBS. Lol. SO many mornings we woke up to a needed nasty clean up. Max, or Max cub as we called him. I don’t remember why we called him that, come to think of it… He would sneak on to the couch, whether you were on it or not. He would press his crazy cold, wet nose into your neck whilst trying to snuggle with you. He would also make this sound when he was really excited. I can’t describe it, but I also don’t think I’d forget it either. And often we would come home and say his name like he was in trouble. He would run over to his bed and start squirming around until you went to pet him. He was SO cute. He was also rather dog aggressive too unfortunately. I was concerned when a family with a dog, which he didn’t meet until after the family drove back down to the springs, adopted him. When we asked how he was, the rescue guy just said he was fine. So, we hoped that was true. To this day, Max is the only other foster we wish we’d adopted. We think it’s because he was a more involved foster, what with IBS etc. Funny.

After fostering Max for the winter, we fostered Eva. Eva was a black and tan, natural, docked dobergirl. She drove us crazy. She was chewer. So there were shoes needing replacing, and a couch cover needing sewing. A nice woman who wrote a bad check to the Doberman Rescue adopted her and they never ended up seeing a dime from her. Part of the reason the Rescue now has to close its doors. People writing bad checks for adoption fees: awesome.

We took some time off after Max and Eva. Then in ’08 we fostered three dobergirls. Willow, a blue, natural, docked girl. Lexus and Gretchen, neither of whom I can remember what they looked like. So bad! The reason being that all three of these girls were adopted SO quickly. It was awesome, merely a matter of days. One of them was scared to death of our hardwood floors. It was funny and sad at the same time. We’d have to make a path of fabric for her to get around. All three of these dobes were so sweet. I hope that they are doing well in their forever homes.

Our last foster, Beilie, a black and tan, cropped, and docked old doberlady. We agreed to foster this girl after she was turned and told the Rescue she was 8, when really she was closer to 12 and unadoptable. She was the sweetest girl.

At the same time we acquired Beilie, we started fostering three kittens from the Denver Dumb Friends League, because of losing our 14yr old cat Molly, and we also bought five chickens.

We fell in love with all three kittens (Tiger, Pot Belly (now Ellie/Eleanor), and Little (now Leelu)), but I didn’t want three. One of the kittens had a hold on it so we thought for sure we’d adopt one and take the other two in to be adopted. Well a fiasco started via one of their littermates, fostered by someone else, who died due to FIP. So we were scared that these remaining two kittens wouldn’t be adopted blah blah blah. Well we adopted two, and the third ended up being adopted in a week. So all tragedy, presumably avoided.

We then fostered two more kittens, very sweet beautiful gray boys who came with the names Tony and Tyler. We changed them to Simon and Dexter. They ended up being adopted before even being on the DDFL Web site.   

After all the kittens, we had Beilie still. Until yesterday. She apparently had some sort of catastrophic spinal issue or something of the kind, which caused her to no longer be able to walk. She was in so much pain. My husband took her to be put down. He was with her the whole time.

We’re taking a break from fostering for a while. Let things calm down. Two animal deaths in one year is a lot. We simply had a lot of animal goings on period!

I’m so glad my husband lets us do these things, as crazy as they might seem.

So cute!

So despite the fact that we still have over two weeks to wait until we’re in the clear from the neighbors, and we still need to pay for our permit, we ordered our 6 chickens. We ordered 1 barred rock, 1 buff brahma, and 4 silkies (see links below). I wanted silkies! Which were seemingly unavailable, but that suddenly changed and we could have them the week of July 20th. So we made the decision. Hopefully we don’t regret it. They’ll arrive pretty much right when we find out if the neighbors thwarted our plans. Fingers crossed!

The white silkie. We got 4 different colors. They are so fantastically ridiculous.

http://www.geocities.com/spoyld029/Marilyn.jpg

http://truevineherbs.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/brahma-hen.jpg

http://koicraze.com/yahoo_site_admin/assets/images/Best-Chicken-full-5.103212736.jpg

So my wonderful husband went down to zoning and got our sign! So we have to post it for 10days. But neighbors have up to 30days to thwart our plans. So fingers crossed!

I’m writing to lament the loss of my 14yr old kitteh. She was not just a cat. She was so much bigger than that. To really explain, I must start at the beginning.

So my mom got me my first cat, a kitten to be precise. I don’t remember how old I was, probably elementary school. We had had some strays here and there, but this was my first cat, truly mine. Well, the cat was psychotic. He would hunt and stalk you in the house, leaping out and biting the ever lovin’ shit out of you. I mean gouging teeth marks. This was the Pet Cemetery cat. Once, this cat was curled up by my face, purring as I pet him, and he bit my face! PSYCHOTIC. He even bit my grandmother, not that cats can tell age. We grew to hate him, even wished he would get hit by a car. I mean, I’ve never wished that, on anyone or anything, save a few errant squirrels. We truly wished this cat would get mowed down and we’d be rid of him. So we did the next best thing and gave him to a friend. When passed on, he willed him to another friend. Last we heard, that damn cat was still alive. He has to be like 300yrs old, still torturing people. He bit every owner. So, I tell this story because we hated cats after this little venture. HATED them. We never wanted to get another cat as long as we lived. Well then along came Annie.

Annie was an alley cat found by classmates when I was in high school on our walk home. She was only a couple of weeks old. So tiny, and wreaked of garbage. I brought her home and called my mom to tell her of this tiny kitten I had found. My mom and I are huge animal lovers. There was never an animal I couldn’t keep. So my mom came home and saw this miniscule kitten curled up in my neck. We took her to the vet, got her cleaned up and spent 7mo with this sweet kitten before she was claimed by FIV. Now you are typically given the option to test for this, back then not at all. We were so heart broken that we decided to give adopting another cat a go. Enter Molly.

My mom had found this article about choosing a cat. All the tests seemed ridiculous, like any cat would let you lay them on their back in your arms without clawing the shit out of your face. Well Molly not only let us, but didn’t leave a mark either. She passed all the other tests with flying colors and we adopted her that summer in 1995, she was about 4mo old.

Molly was a talker. We would ask her for updates on what went on in her day. She would bark comments back. My mom has some white leather couches that started showing serious scratching. We of course assumed it was Molly. Though we’d already had her front claws removed, we removed the back ones too thinking she was the couch scratching culprit. We’re now pretty sure it was the dog, and would never declaw another cat after being informed of how awful that is to do to them. It’s an amputation and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

I took her to college with me as soon as I moved out of the dorms in ’97. She endured many college parties, including but limited to my roommate chasing her around screaming at her, poor thing. Then we’d move back home every summer.

She moved with me to Ft.Collins in ’99. She would wait for me to come home, and meow from the door when she heard the key in the lock. Then back with my mom when I was caught with her as I wasn’t supposed to have pets. Lame! She was my TV watching partner. She also loved to cuddle. She was not one of those cats where the petting was on their terms. Hence my exclamation she was not a cat.

She then moved with me again in ’03 and has been with me since. Even my husband, who was not a huge cat lover, fell in love with Molly. He even built her “the kitteh tower” a carpet tower. She LOVED it, and spent a lot of time in it.

She was dubbed the office cat as when you were working on a computer, seated in the office or elsewhere, she would come up to you on the chair, standing on her hind legs and put her front paws on your legs and paw at your arms with her smashy feet as I called them. They looked like camel feet due to the lack of claws to keep a shape to them. She would paw at you until you pet her.

She would often keep vigil over you while you worked, from her post under the table or desk.

When she drank water she’d have some leftover on her chinny chin chin hairs. We called it her water beard.

She would often “sharpen her mitts” by “clawing” the carpet, or my husband’s record collection. If she did that, then she was the DJ Cat.

She went by many names, Miss Molly, Molly McButter, The Mollusk, Molluska, The Kitteh, Molly the Cat, or MTC.

Yesterday, 06/18/2009, I came home to her having been dead for a few hours. We were nowhere near ready to say goodbye to her. She was supposed to last another 4-5yrs we’d decided. I hadn’t taken her to a vet in about a decade as she was an indoor cat and I saw no need to put her through that, so now of course I have no idea as to what was her ultimate demise.

This is our (my husband and me) first time dealing with a pet death on our own, and really nothing prepares you for parting ways with a companion that was a part of almost half your life.

Molly had been through so much with me. Always there, always with an update. Words cannot express how much we loved and will miss her.

She now resides in our garden, still keep vigil over us.

Ok here’s the letter I sent to our neighbors. We’re hoping to go back to zoning this week.

Dear neighbors,

We are the owners of the house on 5561 E. Gill Pl. We are writing to inform you of our intent to own chickens. We would like to inform you of why we want chickens and address any potential concerns.

Why do we want chickens?

·        Eggs! These will be egg-laying chickens, not meat chickens, and we are more than happy to share eggs with our neighbors.

·        Chickens eat table/garden scraps, less meat. Feeding chickens a vegetarian diet and scraps ensures that their eggs are higher in omega3s and lower in cholesterol.

·        Their refuse can be used in compost! Compost makes for a happy garden. Again, we are more than happy to share with our neighbors.

·        We are going to purchase bantams. Bantams are 1/5 to ¼ smaller that average chickens.

·        They are fun. They are not your typical pet, and in fact owning chickens as pets is on the rise in the cities. There are many Web sites dedicated to the urban chicken/owner.

Concerns you may have:

·        Are they going to be noisy?

o       No. We are only going to own hens, no roosters. The place we are buying them from sexes them before sending.

o       Chickens roost from dusk until dawn, if not longer, so they will be sleeping at the same time as everyone else.

·        Will they smell?

o       No. We will be very diligent in cleaning the coop. Moreover, as mentioned above, their refuse will be composted.

·        Are they going to be flying into my yard?

o       No. As we have dogs, and there are raccoons and foxes in the neighborhood, the chickens will be kept in a coop/run, completely enclosed. See attached diagram.

o       Their wings can also be clipped in the event of a “chicken run”.

Additional info:

·        If there are any other questions, we would be more than happy to address them, or as mentioned, you can view related Web sites on the Internet.

·        Joseph now works from home, so he is around more to deal with any issues that may arise, regarding anything, during the day.

We greatly respect our neighbors and appreciate communication between our households. Please do not hesitate to contact us.  

Respectfully,

Joseph and Lauren Jestes

Joseph and I were invited by my boss to attend his wedding in Mexico. We decided we had to go, not because it was my boss, he rocks and there’s no pressure like that there. We decided to go because neither of us had been to Mexico before, Joseph’s never been out of the country, and Joseph shooting a destination wedding would be huge for his business. This was all decided after Joseph lost his job too, which I’m sure many people were shaking their heads, but whatever.

So I bought our tix, hotel, and transportation to and from the airport online with our refund in Feb. I love that their resorts are all inclusive. That’s such a huge bonus. We were both so excited to go on this adventure together. And that’s what it turned out to be, an adventure, not unlike the out of towners movie.

Let me preface the rest of this story by saying we loved our trip and had a good time. The business possibilities it’s going to provide for Joseph are huge. We really do believe that we just got lucky, er unlucky with the shenanigans that happened. After all that, you’re expecting this amazing story, well I promise nothing.

Between my buying our trip and our leaving, Mexico became the absolute last place anyone should go between the gang/drug violence along the borders and the damn h1n1 virus… we were even banned from going to Mexico by our company. This led to my boss and I working from home for a week each, as a precautionary measure.

Two of our flights were cancelled before our departure. One time the flight was just rescheduled, leaving us in Mexico City overnight. So after getting those squared away, we were on our way. I actually felt bad for my boss and his now wife as some of their guests ended up not coming due to the health scare. And I know there was at least a glimmer of concern in general. It all worked out and was a beautiful wedding.

On our way from NC to Mexico, there was an hour flight delay to move us to a smaller plane. I would definitely do direct flight next time.

Then when we get down there the room they put us in wasn’t supposed to be avail as it was missing a shower head and had no cable. As my friend Stephen said, “you were drunk anyway”. So not the case the first day!
The next room they wanted to move us to, the bed wasn’t made, so room number three was fine.

The next day Joseph and I made the conscious effort to get drunk. We’re from the mountains so getting drunk at sea level proves to be a challenge.

I was told that we needed bug spray, so I grabbed what I could find last minute at Target, which ended up being this bug spray spf 30 combo. Perfect!

Until I realized it wasn’t water proof…

SO BURNED.

Then the wedding, which after viewing all the pics, I realized I was so burned a drunk, I don’t remember most of it. Well done!

I know it was fun though. So hey.

The next day we received a piece of paper informing us that the building we were in was low occupancy and they would upgrade us if we changed buildings. This was an awesome upgrade as we got a two room suite with a private swim up pool.

The next day, the day before we left, I thought I’d better get our transport back to the airport all squared away, which was easier said than done.

It seems everything is by appointment and no less than one day in advance for things. If you want to go on some all inclusive tour, eat at the restaurant at the resort rather than the buffet, and even transport to the airport. Rather annoying.

I missed our appointment with the company to get us back to the airport. In fact, the day before we needed to leave we wander around and ask one dude who does transportation for another company, and he said oh, you missed your appointment? And you’re leaving tomorrow? oooh. I was like, are you kidding?
We FINALLY get that straightened out and took a cab out to Tulum to look at the ruins in the middle of the day, over 90degrees and 100 percent humidity. GMFT. I was visibly sweating. NOT CUTE. The ruins and the accompanying beach were awesome though. Our experience, not so much, but that was more my fault for making us go at that time.
Then the day we needed to leave, our transport doesn’t show up, that we wasted hours the day before squaring away. So then we took a cab to the airport, go to the wrong terminal, have orbitz pick up the tab, and wait for more transport to the right terminal.

Not to mention I totally didn’t trust the ticket agent dude. I was even more surprised that our luggage arrived in Denver.

Anyway, lots of travel issues, being burnt, and drunk. However, so happy we went. Will we be in a rush to get down there again anytime soon, probably not. Nevertheless, we owe them another try. Everyone was REALLY nice down there, I mean really. So that was a bonus when dealing with things going awry.

Good trip.

So I can’t remember how Joseph and I got into the idea of getting chickens. I think it was the idea of my mom’s boss and then my mom and then to us for mulling. I read the entire mypetchicken.com Web site and with little convincing, had Joseph on the bandwagon.

Chickens are awesome for several reasons. They eat table scraps, except meat, not to mention that’s weird and gross. We’re not getting them for the meat, but for the eggs. When you have your own chickens, fed a vegetarian diet, their eggs are higher in omega3s and lower in cholesterol. You can let them out in your lawn they’ll take care of pesky bugs and aerate too! Plus a carton of all natural etc eggs are easily $4, and chickens are so easy to keep not to mention cheap. Plus they’re just fun.

We went to the stock show when it came to town and checked out all the chicken options. There are so many different kinds of chickens! They don’t all look like foghorn leghorn (though leghorns are a variety). We even got to hold a couple, they were so chill. Just hung out, enjoying the warmth of our hands.

That’s when i really started looking into what it would take for us to own chickens. Living in the city, of course there are permits etc. Looking at the denvergov.org Web site, all it says is that you have to write a letter to the director of animal control, informing them of your intent to own chickens and then they’ll let zoning know and then you pay a $50 to get the permit. Seriously. I might be leaving out one or two other items, but certainly not what we’ve been going through, to say the least.

I wrote this letter to animal control at the beginning of the year (2009) sometime. I should have known that actually mailing things anymore is a questionable practice. Anyway, Joseph was laid off and I thought our dreams of owning chickens were dashed financially. Long story short we worked it out. So I decided to call zoning to see if they had received anything from animal control. Well that was a no and the person I talked to was telling me I needed to come down there and fill out some application and pay a $100 fee and post a sign in our yard. I said oh I’m sure that’s not right, I’ll get in touch with animal control and see what’s what.

I then called animal control, whom you can only get in touch with via 311, which then asks you why you need to talk to them and then they pass you along. So you have to talk to two people rather than just one, every single time. So that’s fun. The first time I called I left a message with the 311 people for the animal control people to call me back. Well that never happened. So I called back again and was told that the person I needed to talk to, Paula, was unavailable and would call me back. That never happened. So I called back again and this time talked to Paula who of course had no idea about any letter sent. She said I could fax it to her. So I did. She didn’t get it. So I faxed it again. She finally got it. But then I needed to talk to a Sergeant Barker. So I called him and he said he needed a copy of the letter. So I had to fax that again.

Here’s the total so far:

No less than 4 calls to animal control.

One call to zoning.

No less than 5 versions (1 sent, 4 faxed) of the request letter.

Well Sergeant Barker needed to come and inspect our property. Fine, I’d rather there be no question of these animals care, what have you. So he shows up early and stays for no more than 5min. He told us that animal control would not oppose our having chickens. So I asked him what I was to do next. He said he would send us a letter that we could take to zoning. We’d then have to post a sign of our intent to own chickens. Damn zoning!

Fine we’ll put a big ugly sign in our yard if we can just get chickens.

So we went down to zoning. We don’t have to put up a sign. We have to put up two! AND be charged $100. Not to mention we got more paperwork to fill out. We also have to write letters to all our abutting neighbors informing them of our intent to have chickens. Two of our neighbors hate us. So we’ll see if bribing with eggs might work. We’re too stubborn to back out now. After filling out this paperwork, sending our neighbors letters and providing proof that they received said letters, and $100, we post one sign for 10days telling everyone our intention (this sign is neon pink). If we get that far, then we get to post a neon green sign for another 15days.

Here’s the total so far:

No less than 4 calls to animal control.

One call to zoning.

No less than 5 versions (1 sent, 4 faxed) of the request letter.

1 visit from animal control

1 returned letter from animal control

1 visit to zoning

Soon to come… more paperwork, money, letters, and no less that two signs from zoning.

We’re getting these damn chickens. Come hell or high water!!

Stay tuned.

So this is my first blog post. Evar. And its really only because Joseph and I want to get chickens in the city and county of Denver. This is proving to be quite the feat. So I’ll probably rant about other things, but that’s the root cause for this bad boy.