You know I have one dog, Zoie, who is the subject of many an image. She is a patient dog, always letting me dress her up and put things on her head. She is good with the children and sheds like a maniac. She comes when she's called, even if she has gone off of the property. She NEVER has an accident in the house, unless we've given her something that disagrees with her stomach... she's got a sensitive tummy. And she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer... once she got trapped under the kitchen table... those chairs are impenetrable.
Well, our other dog, Jezabelle, is the exact opposite of Zoie. A foil if you will. Everything that Zoie is Jezabelle is not. Everything Jezabelle is, Zoie could never be. Jezabelle has had many nicknames throughout the years... pissle-tail, Jeza-smell, beagle from hell, Cerberus... but her given name really suits her best. She has given me and everyone who has known her, so many headaches throughout the years, but the stories of Jezabelle will always remain entertaining.
Jezabelle ran away on Wednesday night. She used to run away all the time, and always returned. But this time she didn't come home. We waited and waited, but no Bella. At 2 am this morning I realized where she was... she had probably run to the camp behind us and they had probably turned her over to Animal Control. She loves to run to that camp in the summer... the kids there love her and feed her and pet her.... heaven for a dog. The staff usually calls us to come and get her, but this time Bella had lost her dog tags. So, this morning I went all the way downtown (getting thoroughly lost along the way) to see if Bella had ended up in the doghouse.
Sure enough, she was there. She had been renamed "Millie" and with an estimated age of 4 years old. Boy they were kind to her, she turned 11 last February. So I paid my 60 bucks (should have been 70 but she was too OLD to get another rabies shot... this set me to laughing so hard I couldn't speak for a while. Too old for a shot?!? Who ever heard of such a thing?) and brought her home, with a new ID tag and a dog who was grinning ear to ear that she had been on such a big adventure. 3
I'll start posting my Jezabelle stories here, so I don't forget them later on. I'd hate to forget... so here is the story of how we met...
I should have waited a week until the urge passed on. I was 19 years old and all of the sudden the urge to get a puppy hit me like a truck. I had grown up with dogs around and it had been 2 years since I'd had a full time furry companion by my side. It was a week before summer break, the timing was perfect. I could pick out a puppy and then take her home where my mom could help me train her. (Ha!)
I grabbed the newspaper and went to work looking in the pets for sale ads. I came across one that said "Beagle puppies, $30". I should have known then that they weren't really pure bred beagles, and maybe I did, but I didn't care. I drove out to the farm in rural North Florida to buy myself a dog. When I got there, only one pup was left. *I should have known! something was up at this point* She was the cutest little thing, all big floppy brown ears and sparkly little eyes. She had an Eddie Munster widows peak marking in black on her head and was just the most adorable thing I'd ever seen. As I wrote out my check to the portly farmer in the worn out overalls, I saw my new puppy grab a chihuahua puppy by the tail and fling her around in a circle. Oh how sweet, she's playful!
On the way home, my new puppy messed in her travel crate. I had to stop at a podunk convenience store to wash her off in the ladies bathroom around back that you had to get a key which was attached to a piece of wood to gain entrance into. Luckily, I had bought puppy shampoo on the way to get her. Once she was clean, and the crate was clean, and I was very not clean, we got back into the car to continue on. Sometime between the time I washed her off and the time I got back to my apartment I had chosen her name.
Back at the apartment, my roommate (who was not a fan of dogs) tried to bond with my new puppy. Jezabelle jumped right up and bit her on her top lip. My roommate was not impressed and I took off for home a day early... and then the adventures began.
