Goat

It all started when we saw a sign at the farmers market saying "Meat Goats- $100."

Next thing you know  I have an entire goat carcase sitting on my kitchen counter.  I am not one to turn down reasonably priced local meat for both me and the dog.  We spoke with the farmer who was happy to kill and skin the goat.  He also was gracious enough to give us the head and all of the guts in a bag for the dogs.  There are really no words to describe this journey, so I shall do it with pictures.  I have omitted the really gross stuff.

The counter after being sanitized with bleach.

Cutting and organizational tools.

We started with the bag o' organs.  It was frozen in two week
supplies for Copley, this is one of the packs.

After we were done with the organs we re bleached
the counters before starting on the goat.

Some of the prime cuts of "people meat" being trimmed.

Back, neck and pelvis bones for the dog's chewing pleasure.

Finally all packed we have: People meat- several lbs of stew
meat, two shoulders,two racks of ribs and scraps for stock +
Dog Meat- Several poundsof meaty meat, liver, lung, heart,
kidney, spleen, tripe, stomach, lots of meaty bones
to chew on and a head (not shown).

The first cooking project- goat stock with farmers market
veggies and fresh sage from the herb garden.

One question I have been asking myself after all this is "Why don't people eat more goat meat?"  Or more specifically "Where do all the baby milk goats go?"  As you may (or may not) know milk animals are constantly pregnant.  Be it a cow, goat, sheep, whatever, if you want milk from that animal you need it to have babies to stimulate lactation.  When the baby animal is born it usually is removed from it's mother (with varying degrees of humaine-ness, think before you eat veal) so the milk is all available for the farmer to harvest and sell.  Some smaller and more ethical farms allow the animals to stay with their mothers, loosing out on some milk but keeping things a little more natural before the babies are sent to slaughter.  Either way there are lots of baby goats out there being born to milk goat mothers.  A few of the female animals are kept around to become milk goats themselves and even fewer males are kept around to keep the females pregnant.  With goat cheese being so popular there must be lots of little goats sent to slaughter.  WHERE DO THEY GO?!?!  You can't buy goat meat at the supermarket, you don't even see goat meat in dog food.  That is particularly puzzling with the new "novel meat" anti-allergy craze in dog food.  If I can get emu meat dog food, why can't I get goat?

This puzzle is still unsolved, so if you know where the baby goats go, please let me know.

One Dogs Toy is Another Dogs Bed

Observe- Kerrigan uses Copley's squeakey toy as a bed.

Introducing Kerrigan!

The puppy finally has a name!  It is Kerrigan or Kerri for short.

Settling on a name proved harder than it was for Copley.  With Copley we were still incredibly homesick for the east coast.  We named the little guy after a subway station that we both went through almost every day while living in Boston.  It has a nice ring to it, people out here have no idea how to say it and everyone back in Boston thought it was just perfect!

With this puppy it has been much harder.  We went through several names and didn't like any of them.  On Wednesday we settled on Flora because my husband likes plants a lot and frankly we were tired of coming up with other names.  I even got a name tag engraved that said Flora.  All along I knew it was not that great.  For starters I just could not imagine yelling "Flora" out on an agility course and on top of that no one would ever get the plant connection because Flora is also a normal woman's name.

Luckily last night after observing that we only really called her puppy and were totally ignoring Flora a friend of ours suggested a great idea for a name.  Kerrigan.  It is the name of a character in a video game both of us play.  The petite but feisty lady is turning out to really live up to her namesake, so long as she avoids being mind controlled my an alien race everything should turn out just great!

Unfortunately for some reason I seem to be taking a lot of shit for this name.  Kerri seems like a perfect name to me, short, sharp and easy for her to learn, plus it is cute and has a connection to something both of us like to do.  So what I named my dog after a video game character?  My other dog is named after a SUBWAY STATION and no one seems to think that is so strange.

Puppy!!!!!!!

We got our new puppy!  She is a little chihuahua, weighing in at a whopping 4.2 LBS at 13 weeks.  We got her from the city shelter where according to their website they had 243 dogs available and 60 were chihuahuas.  So if you are interested in adopting a Chi and live in the Las Vegas area you should know Lied animal shelter (aka The Animal Foundation) has plenty.

Here she is!  I keep trying to take pictures at night, when the light is not so good, I promise better pictures tomorrow during sunlight hours!

The puppy says hi!

Copley asks "What have you done to me?"

 

The little lady was having some trouble with the raw chicken so we gave her a break and are cooking it.  At this point she is getting fed three meals a day of seared chicken (very rare) and yogurt in a kong along with a multivitamin, calcium supplement and a pro-biotic.  The hardest thing about these is that they are miniature amounts.  One of the supplements she gets 1/16th of a teaspoon split into 3 meals!  How do you even really measure that?

 If her tummy manages to stay settled we will be adding some veggies and some kinds of fattier meat tomorrow.  The vet said she is a little skinny for a puppy, but that is expected after four days at a shelter.  I could probably use starvation tactics to get her to take the chicken raw, but since we have the calcium supplements as a raw bone replacement we can go on with cooked meat until she gets a little weight on her.

That is all for now!  I will be doing more updates on the puppy very soon.

Copley's DNA Test

As previously mentioned we got the results of Copley's DNA test.  Here are the results-

At first glance these results seem a little crazy.  It gets even crazier when you realize the Doberman part of the mixed breed ancestry is only 2% away from the threshold that would have caused the report to say he had a purebred doberman grandparent!

But lets think about this for a second.  We know Copley is a long nosed breed of dog crossed with a short faced breed from his severe under-bite.  Based on our observation of other "puggles" we had determined he was probably only 25% short faced dog.  So 25% pekingese, I can handle that.

Next lets look at the chihuahua part.  We always comment that he has the fur of a "desert dog" plus he does have tiny, tiny feet for his size.

Now for the mixed breed that is mostly doberman.  He does have a deep chest like a dobe and something would have to be thrown into this mix to give him a little size boost.  At 22lbs and lean he is over twice the size of a normal chihuahua or pekingese.

So what do you think?  Are these pictures of a Chihuahua/Pekingese/Doberman?

I am going to own a Chihuahua- WHAT?!?!

Or maybe this post should be titled- "It turns out I already own a chihuahua, and now we are getting another one- WHAT?!?!?"

I should start by saying that when we first got Copley me and Mr. DogInTheDesert had very different ideas about dogs.  At 22lbs Copley was the absolute smallest dog I was willing to adopt and the biggest dog my spouse was willing to adopt.  Copley was listed as a pug/beagle mix and I thought that was pretty cool.  Beagles are great dogs, laid back but still have that rugged outdoor-ness of a hunting dog.  Pugs are just adorable so it seemed all good.  It turned out that he was the best dog we could have hoped to adopt.  What can I really say about him?  He is just the most rockin dog ever known to man (I might be biased).

Knowing that one day we would want to adopt another dog I decided it would be good to volunteer us to work with large breed dogs of some sort.  I found an organization that specialized in bully breeds.  "Perfect" I thought "My spouse will learn how lovable these big dogs are, pit bulls are perfect because they are really just loveable goof balls, and through one of the most misunderstood breeds out there he will learn that big dogs are the best!"

It was a good thought.  He did learn to love the pits, how could you not?  We walk them and go to adoption events and have become all around pit bull advocates.

Unfortunately this rescue led us down a path I never expected.  Our city shelters are mostly filled with two kinds of dogs- pits and chihuahuas.  Chihuahuas were difficult to avoid in the rescue community and Mr. DogInTheDesert loves them.  I have to admit, they are the perfect dog for him.  They like to cuddle and sit on his lap while they play computer games, he can carry them around with him and they are just plain cute.  After careful consideration (and finding ways to over come the fact that we are outdoorsy people and a chihuahua is really just hawk bait) I have finally come to terms with owning one.  Our plan is to start looking in a few weeks.  More on that later.

As a sort of icing on the chihuahua cake we got Copley's DNA test back.  50% Chihuahua.  Turns out I owned one all along and didn't even know it.  As someone who always imagined owning a rottweiler or a husky or a shepherd it is taking some getting used to the fact that I soon will own one and a half chihuahuas.

Introduction

Since adopting our dog Copley a little over a year ago I have been thrown headfirst into the world of dogs.  I have volunteered with a private rescue, taken classes with show dogs (and their owners and breeders) and encountered many other dog owners at the pet store, park and even in my neighborhood.


While these people all have very different points of view they share three basic qualities.

1. They have opinions about how you should raise your dog.
2. They are convinced they are right.
3. They are not afraid to share their opinion with you no matter how crazy and misguided their opinion is.

I really try to listen to what people have to say, understand it, and take it to heart, but sometimes I wish there was more of a healthy debate about things.

 

So that brings me to this blog.  If I am too polite to tell people how I think it is in the real world why not hide behind the anonymity of the internet to share my thoughts and experiences as a dog owner?  Even if no one reads it at least I will have the illusion of getting my ideas out.

Plus... don't tell Copley... but we are going to be getting a new puppy.  I am sure the puppies grandparents are going to want to be reading so they can watch their new four legged grand-kid grow up.