Wooly Kuta Dog

Kuta with his right side done:

Almost there:

Luckly, Kuta likes getting shaved (it tickles him) and he is SO much happier after getting all of that hair shaved off! He’s back to running around the yard, where are before he would just lay in the house panting.

We actually have these two cute horses on loan from a friend (they needed a bigger place to stay and we needed some lawn mowers), and I can’t remember the momma horses name, but I am calling the baby horse “Jackson” because he has a sweet afro mane.

We fenced in about 1/4th of our property for the horses to graze and it seems to be working out well. Kinda nice to be able to test drive some large farm animals before we commit, but so far Stefan thinks having horses is way sweeter then hours and hours of machete work…:)

Cheech has been bringing home (he stashes all of his prizes in the guest bed and bath) frogs, geckos, lizards and birds on the regular basis. A few of the lizards he brought back were pretty big, maybe 8 or 10 inches long. I prefer to remove the big lizards with a bucket when I find them alive, they creep me out.

Last week, a mother bird was dive bombing us when we walked across the driveway by our African Violet tree. She had a nest on one of the branches. It started dive bombing cheech on the regular and cheech started getting little cuts on the back of his head from where the birds were sticking him. Cheech probably never would have known they were even up there if they weren’t protecting their territory so diligently. As of today, the bird is no longer dive bombing us AND we found a cleaned up a bunch of feathers three days ago. My guess is Cheech turned around and got the bird doing some sort of Judo flying 360 attack move. Poor little guy. Cheech is a killer.

There is always a new crew in the bathroom each day…This guy escaped the cat of death with a little less tail.

This guy was resting up behind the trashcan, waiting to make his break.

Yes, we clean blood off of the floor everyday. Thanks Cheech…

I am a killer because I use gas powered yard tools. Apparently, my weapon of choice is our Weed Wacker. I mean well, but I haven’t been doing so good. After mowing the entire yard (a lot of areas are still more rock than grass) I go around and weed eat around the driveway rocks and plants. The areas that usually become very overgrown always create problems for me. I don’t see a plant deep down in the Elephant Grass or I am trimming around the plant and the plastic cords catch a rock, root or branch and pull the machine right up to the plant and it gets chopped in half.

Weed Eater Attributed Deaths: 5
Vehicle Related Deaths: 1

I am going to be scary with a chainsaw.

When Stefan 1st told me that Monkey’s nose was bleeding, I figured she had a scratch and it was a little bloody (no big deal). But, no. Monkey had a constant stream of blood, with gross meaty-looking blood clots pouring out of her nose, with no reason to be found. I was raised around animals (mom was a dog breeder, hung out in vet clinics, had horses, chickens, birthed puppies, etc.) and never had I seen an animal bleeding out of its nose for no apparent reason, so that is quite concerning to begin with. Then, not being able to stop the bleeding is a horribly helpless feeling. Could you imagine your child bleeding out through the nose and having to tell them, “Well, I hope you make it through the night because it’s Sunday and hospitals in Puerto Rico are not open right now…”

Any how, after the vet visit and medication, Monkey certainly does seem to be feeling MUCH better today and her nose did finally stop bleeding, so that is very encouraging news.

The night before the vet visit, Monkey decided to sleep in the storage room, on the queen size mattress Mark let us borrow (sorry, Mark! We owe you a new, less bloody replacement)…

Lots of blood loss is scary

There is literally blood everywhere downstairs. The bed, the floor, the walls. There was even blood spatter from one end of the room to the walls on the other end (7 – 8 feet?) from Monkey trying to sneeze out the blood that was coagulated in her poor little Monkey nose. So sad! I’m so glad she is feeling better. Fingers still crossed.

Extreme close up!! Cheech, buddy, are you okay??!!

Don’t worry, he snapped out of it…

Literally. We spend at least a few hours a week, yanking those little blood suckers off of our poor pups. And, it’s not like we don’t try and protect our dogs, it’s just that nothing seems to work. We have our dogs on Advantix (a monthly treatment) and we are constantly giving them flea/tick bathes. As a matter of fact, we have bathed them twice in the last 3 days and we still spent 30 minutes picking ticks off of the dogs today.

Our friends RT and Nora had to take their dogs to the vet to be sedated in order to remove all of the ticks from them.

Another friend uses tick pesticides intended for horses, on his dog.

I don’t know what else to do. Ticks are so gross!! Does anyone else have any suggestions on how we can keep the ticks off of our dogs in Puerto Rico?!

Kuta and Monkey do a really good job scaring off our neighbors goats on the nightly basis. Don’t take this the wrong way though, the goats are fenced in and can’t come into our yard. But Kuta and Monkey know that they are dangerous beasts so they periodically run outside and bark at them (next to our window) through out the night to deter them from even trying to break out of their pen. Evil goats.

Cheech does a good job killing critters, making sure I don’t sleep all night (attacking face/crotch at the wee hours of the morning) and making sure the house doesn’t get flooded by emptying the toilets on a regular basis.

Team Work Gets the Job Done

Here is a video of Monkey and Chichieto playing in the backyard when we were planting trees today.

If you’d still like to donate to ARF of Rincon, you can send donations to:

ARF of Rincon
P.O. Box 592
Rincon, PR 00677