The Ruby Rose and the Big Little Angels 3 Blog

I don't know about you but since mom and dad have been home all day I barely have the privacy to lick myself.

With the virus foremost in everyone mind's, we want to know if anyone in your family or extended family has to work and if anyone you know has got the virus.  If you have any stories please share them. Pocket:  We have been lucky.  Neither of my parents has to work, although working helps with some bills, there are many more suffering worse.  Everyone in our family, and our extended families, are not working through the crises.  We have not heard of anyone getting sick that we know.  We pray it continues that way

I don’t know if my good friend Peabody ever had an easy day during his twelve years as a mortal dog.  I am sure he lived happily and peacefully in his early years, but during the past few, it seems that our friend had fought off the dementors trying to claim him for the immortal life every day so he could stay with his mom. Peabody had a myriad of illnesses.  He has been on prednisone for four years and was suffering from the side effects of his needed medication.  He had trouble standing and had to be held up when he got baths. He had frequent bouts of diarrhea and vomiting.  He suffered from terrible allergies and arthritis. He even was hospitalized for licking antifreeze. If there was a medical problem that could occur, it did to Peabody.   No matter what was thrown at him, Peabody put his head down and studied himself for the fight.  He was undefeated up to last week. That is the problem when you spend your life constantly fighting diseases.  When you win, the gam

Bo lay in the sun, gently breathing.  He had been at the Bridge for almost ten years.  This was his preferred spot. He ventured into our society, to welcome friends when they arrived, and to spend time with Sandy, his more social brother, who joined him at the Bridge three years ago.  But, mostly, Bo lay in the sun, waiting. Bo had two parents, Lea and Terry.  He was close to his dad. Terry greatly missed Bo when he went to the Bridge.  When he took ill, Bo left his sunny spot and flew prayers up the mountain for Terry to recover.  Bo knew his dad was quickly running out of heartbeats, but it was still his duty to make sure his mom and dad had as much time together as possible. Bo was worried about his parents. He missed his dad with all his heart, but he did not want to be with him yet.  It is more traumatic for a human to pass over than a dog. It can take them a long time to recover. Since they live such long lives, and the careless way humans breed, they leave a more lov

Like Pocket, I love having my parents home.  I have only been left alone for a couple of hours this week.  It has saved me a lot of energy trying to keep my mom from leaving the house by hiding on the porch or grabbing on to her leg and making her drag me.  Luckily, we all still get out of the house. Weather permitting, and despite the stay at home order, we still take daily walks. We are not rebels.  We just need to get outside before the humans kill one another. Our park has wide streets and little traffic, so even if someone else is outside walking, they are easily avoided, and if they do come towards us, that is where my and Pocket’s training comes in.   My parents did not know that Pocket, and I was secretly taking classes to help in this kind of scenario.  When we practiced, our parents, who were unaware that we are doing homework, tried to stop us. Pocket and I are officially social distance dogs.  We were inspired by our friend Freddie Bear whose mom has an immune de

George was terrified when he was startled by Steve who once again had forgotten social distancing.

On a scale of one to ten, how stubborn are you?   Pocket:  I am a seven, I can be stubborn but I give in. River:  Is there a number higher than ten?  I am not stubborn unless someone wants me to do something I don't want to do

In these terrifying days, I thought it would be a nice change of pace to tell a happy story or at least as happy a story as can be said about a dog living in a shelter for seven years.    Angels get millions of prayer requests from homeless dogs a week.  We want to say yes to all of them, but there are not enough yesses to go around. Saving shelter dogs usually work backward.  We get a prayer from a human looking for a dog and then find the perfect one for them. It is much harder to get a human interested in a dog when they have no desire to add one to their home. One of the many sad prayer requests we got from dogs living in shelters came across my desk last week.  I popped into the pup's dreams to tell her we were doing everything we could. We both knew this meant there was nothing that could be done.   The dog looked a little bit older than most requesters. I asked her what her story was, and she said her name was Ginger and she had been in the shelter for seven years.

Even the bravest dogs need saving now and then.     Nell is a border collie who has been specially trained to find lost hikers in Dundonnell Scotland.  Last week two ultra-marathon runners became lost in the Dundonnell mountains. Nell, a master rescuer, was one of the first dogs to locate the missing runners.       She barked until the two-legged rescuers reached the runners.  They contacted the coast guard who dispatched a helicopter to airlift the stranded couple to safety.  Nell dutifully stayed by the runners until the plane arrived, but the sound of the engine, and the chaos caused by the rotors, scared Nell, and she dashed off high into the mountains.        She tried to find her way home, but she kept coming upon cliffs that blocked her way.  The temperature dropped. She was cold, hungry, and ashamed. Nell was a professional who had allowed herself to get spooked and ran away.  She didn’t know if she could show her face at the rescue station again. When night fell, it gr

My parents are home almost every day now.  They don't want to contract this nasty virus that has sent so many people to the Bridge and made a hundred times more sick.  It even made Eldris Alba ill. If something makes him sick, it will run over my Dad like he's a cockroach.   I am watching my parents very closely.  I lick their hands to make sure they don't have a temperature, and if they are going to cough or sneeze, I jump on their faces to keep them from spraying their sickness on the other one.  It is okay if I get the virus. To a dog getting it is like us finding food on the floor. Once we get it, we don't give it to anyone. We dogs have a confession.  While the world is suffering from a terrible pandemic, the economy is crashing, and people are panicking, I have to admit that things have been pretty, pretty good for dogs.  Our parents are home much more than usual. It is like we have been hit with a blizzard without having to trek through the snow. It is k

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet wet from the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how couldn't it be so? It came without drinking. It came without parades. It came without public urination, bar fights or beers. And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. What if St Patrick's Day he thought, doesn't come from a bar? What if St Patrick's, perhaps, means a little bit more?

Has had COVID-19 affected your family so far? Pocket:  Everyone is fine at my house.  Daddy isn't working for the foreseeable future.  Since retirement is his main source of income he can afford to sit this one out, and his job requires in store sales.  He would like the company to lay him off since no one can work. Mommy is going to be home a lot. All entertainment, restaurants, bars, most movie theaters, are shut down here.  They are still going to have to make supply runs but hopefully they can just pick up and won't have to go into stores. My parents aren't afraid of the illness but they sure do respect it.

The young always believe they are invincible.  We dogs are no different. When we joined social media more than ten years ago, we invented terms that have become part of our vernacular and created the way we communicate with one another online.  We were in the prime of our lives. The moment our heartbeats expired seemed off in the seldom thought about distance. Then one day we take ill.  All our youth and vitality are stripped away. Our parents and the vet begin to have a hushed conversation about us.  Suddenly our heartbeats start to expire. It happens in the blink of an eye. I remember when we thought the Min Pin gang was invincible.  Four beautiful little dogs, Tennie, Mouse, Scooter, and Rabbitt, who happily lived with their parents.  But one night, the lions came. Their parents split up as did the gang. Tennie and Rabbit went to their dad and Scooter and Rabbit. Sometimes during divorces, humans take things because they want them, and other times they take things bec

As bad as politics is in the mortal world right now, I try not to get involved. But then I learned of a situation that begs for some Yorkie influence. I call your attention to Fairhaven Vermont in Rutland County home of the fighting Ruttles. For the past two years, they have lived under an authoritative regime administered by an ignorant loudmouth orange face dictator.  Of course, I can only be referring to Lincoln, the goat. It has been a hard two years for the good citizens of Fairhaven living under a despot who is against any legislation that aids dogs, cats, or other household animals. No matter how well the dog and cat council does in explaining their legislation, the mayor's reaction is inevitably a braying neigh. I received many prayers to help the woebegone dogs and cats living under the iron-fisted rule of Goat Lincoln the First.  The pups and kitties only ate the most basic food filled with additives, preservatives and by-products. Their treats were hard and ta

This Monday was tax day, one of my least favorite times of the year.  My parents sit at the kitchen table with documents strewn about, and they argue with each other and the computer while Daddy furiously bangs on the keys, until the taxes are finished.  Hopefully, they are satisfied with the outcome, and there are a few more dollars in the treat jar this year.  Besides the tension, I don’t like tax day because my parents sit on hard kitchen chairs, and there is no place for us to sit.  For the first five minutes, we pester our parents trying to either convince them to stop and return to their comfortable recliners or make room for us.  Pestering is very tiring, so eventually, we sadly retreat to the living room and sit in the chair solo. Pocket curled up and went to sleep, but I am more curious.  I listened to my parents talked about when their dads’ did their taxes.  While the failure for documents to load, and pages that couldn’t be closed because a mystery question neede

What do you mean this is a girls' bike?

This is a human question, not a dog question, but if we know more about our parents then we know more about one another.  What does your parent do for a living, or what did they do?

I welcomed my sister from another mister Trixie to the Bridge this week.  Trixie and I are both incredibly cute Yorkshire Terriers, the kind of dogs who, when a human sees our pictures, they wish they had one.  Like me, Trixie is an advertisement for Yorkies, but neither of us accepted a dime in endorsement money. We believe we are a superior breed and are happy to spread the word for the betterment of all. Trixie and I are sisters for more profound reasons than what is on the surface.  Both our moms contracted cancer, which left them very sick and scared. We stayed with them during their treatments, operations, and subsequent recovery, playing nurse, and being their best friend and loyal companion.  There is a special bond that is created when a dog nurses their parent back to health. Trixie and I, along with our moms, are blessed to have experienced that bond.  Trixie and I had one other common trait:  The way we arrived at the Bridge. Both of us caught the terrible, horrible,

Most dogs don’t retire. Mainly because we don’t do much, it is hard to retire from a sedentary lifestyle.  What are we going to do? Not lie in the sun for hours, sleep half the day, or beg for treats? The last thing a dog wants is to retire from being lazy and become active in their senior years.  Some dogs work.  I greatly admire them.  Sam, from the Tails Around the Ranch blog, is one of them.  Sam was employed as a therapy dog at the Lutheran Medical center.   He met with patients, soothed their worries, eased their pain, and showed them love, something people in hospitals need as much as morphine.  Very few performed their duty as well as Sam.   If you believe in the theory that a dog ages seven years for every human’s one, then Sam worked until the was 98.   At the time he stopped five weeks ago, he was showing signs that the job was taking its toll. It took him longer to recover from a day’s work than it did in his youth, and he was slowing down.  Sam would have gladly co

Oh, what a terrible, horrible, awful week I had. It began early on a Wednesday morning. Daddy heard a strange noise, like someone trying to force a baby rabbit down a water slide.  It was my belly. I have had a troublesome tummy for years. The doctors called it “stress colitis.” It is an apt term. When I get colitis, I get stressed. Loud, unexpected, or high pitched sounds can turn everything in my body into water, which I expel, bit by bit out my butt. The noises, which I named “Prelude to diarrhea,” is like the newest Jurassic Park movie.  It promises to be bigger, badder, and faster moving. I don’t eat when I am not feeling well.  Basically, I need to be perfect, and the weather 60 degrees and sunny, or I ain’t eating.  But on Thursday morning, I happily ate my food, then marched into the kitchen and left a river of poop smelling foulness you can’t even imagine.  My parents and I have an agreement:  They don’t get mad when I have an accident on a bad belly day, and I never

"Excuse me, that's my ball."

What is your relationship to the toilet bowl?  Do you ignore it?  Drink out of it?  Sit on it?  Step on the rim and look down like there is something good down there? We art too little to drink out of it.  I ignore it  River likes to jump up on the seat to sit.  I think she is trying to figure out what is so special about it

Happy Dr. Seuss day. This is one of my favorite days of the year because I have always thought of myself as a Dr. Seuss character. If he had met me, I would be a lot more famous than that stupid Who hearing Horton.   This morning it was raining.  I heard a knock on my door and opened it to find my kitty brother Gizmo wearing a fedora on my front step.  I was wary of him. I came into the family right after he went to the Bridge. He still blames me for usurping his position in the family. "Hello Foley, it is I the Cat in a Hat," Gizmo said confidently.  "No, you're not you're a freak in a chapeau." I shot back.  "Same difference," Gizmo remarked arrogantly. "Blake asked me to come by and check on you."   I knew this was a lie.  While Blake and Gizmo had happily lived together on the mortal side, Gizmo was always full of mischief. Here at the Bridge, Blake worked hard to keep a clean house. When Gizmo visits, he rips up the fur