Welcome back! This week we come back from break and meet our newest little life saver. Darcy, a Cowboy Corgi with ALL the sass and a turned out paw trotted into our lives and stole ALL the hearts!
Transcript
Hey, welcome to Happy Tales of Happy Tales, the podcast where you’ll hear stories of the way pups have touched our hearts and our lives. So for the next few minutes, let everything else go and just listen and smile. I’m your host, Julie Jackson. Hi, friends, and welcome back to Season Two of Happy Tales of Happy Tails, took a little break, had some life changes going on around here and summer break ending and school starting back up things like that. So took a little bit of time to, you know, do life and regroup and now I’m excited to be back. So I’ve got some stories coming up with some really, really interesting people, some really great things, a dog behavioralist, you don’t want to miss that. And people just sharing their lives with their dogs. So, you know, just a reminder, the whole point of this is just so we have something that we all share our love of dogs, to just take us away for a few minutes during the time that we’re listening and remind us of the happy good, non stressful, funny, endearing things that are in our lives. So I had recorded I have recorded a lot of these stories even before the podcast ever launched. So sometimes chronologically, I kind of jump around. And there’s some episodes where you’ll hear me talk about Lilly and Roscoe. And then there’s other episodes where you’ll hear me mention that they have passed and sometimes they’re not in order. So I thought I would just kind of get you up to date today on on where we stand. But about 11 months ago, we actually were a three blue heeler family. We had a set of twins that were our senior girls Lilly and Eleanor their littermates. And Eleanor bless her heart. She looks like a black bear cub. And we joke we’ve always called her the office manager because she’s the one who keeps everything running around here. keeps everyone in order keeps the flutes under control. She’s very serious. She always looks at you very seriously. I don’t know if you ever saw the show Phineas and Ferb. Sidenote, if you haven’t ever seen Phineas and Ferb, it’s on Disney. Plus, do yourself a favor. I don’t care if you have kids or not. It’s brilliant. It’s fun. We still to this day. Love it. So go check out Phineas and Ferb. But there’s a character on there, Perry the Platypus. And he has a lazy eye. And he’s always very serious. And that is her. But it’s funny because Perry the Platypus has an alter ego, Agent P. And he’s a secret agent. And he goes on all these crazy exciting adventure missions. But no one knows what he’s doing. And he just disappears and they look up and a character will say hey, where’s Perry? And they never find out. But then of course, we see this exciting adventure that Perry is on. And so we joke that she’s our agent II because sometimes Eleanor just retires to whatever it is she does. And we’re pretty certain that she’s off fighting crime or keeping the peace or whatever it is she does saving the world. So her sister was Lilly. And Lilly is the sweetest sweet girl. super loyal. Both of them are but Lilly was always my shadow. She was always right there. Through the years though she had developed this really large tumor on her underside kind of on her belly. And the vets kept an eye on it. But by the time she developed it, they determined it wasn’t anything life threatening to her and by the time she developed it, it was really too risky to put her under anesthesia to remove it when it was not going to be something that threatened her life. So we made the choice to just leave it and she did fine with it. But it got so large she couldn’t really jump up on furniture with us anymore or snuggle us in the bed. So she was always at our feet. And she also started losing her vision over the years. So it was interesting because you know healers are cattle dogs and they are working dogs they are meant to be outside. And Lilly was funny because she was seriously agoraphobic. She hated to go outside. It stressed her out so much if we tried to take her out the front door. It before she lost her vision. She was this way even when she was little. She was comfortable going in our backyard, she would use the dog door she would lay out in the yard. She was fine in the backyard. But if we took her anywhere else, she got such a high anxiety. And so I started wondering as she started really losing her vision if maybe there was always some kind of vision vision impairment, maybe just in her periphery. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. But I just wondered if there was always something that made her feel vulnerable being out in open spaces that she didn’t recognize. But, man, even after she completely lost her vision, she she was so so resilient and so smart. And she did great around the house. I mean, she would still play with the younger pups, and she made her way around just fine. She knew where everything was, and she could navigate her way around. So she did great. Lilly and Eleanor, though, at the time, were 12. And then we had Roscoe and sweet Roscoe. I sometime we’ll just do a whole I’ll probably dedicate lots of time to Roscoe, but I’m not gonna lie. I’m still not ready to do just any Roscoe spin specific stories yet because it’s still hard. So about 11 months ago, Roscoe was a tiny healer. He barely he sometimes didn’t even hit 30 pounds. He usually hovered around 29. But Rosco was missing his rear right leg. So we used to assure him that he was a big boy, he just if he’d had that leg, he would have tipped the scales at 30. But he also had the face of a baby seal and an underbite not kidding. cutest thing you’ve ever seen. Rosco could do whatever he wanted. So and he was very athletic and very capable, even though he was missing that leg. So so many stories about Roscoe, I’ll have to share but Roscoe was definitely very, very special. He was always by my side, he, he was kind of an equal opportunity lover. Ricky called him his wing man. And he loved Ricky too. But he and Lily were probably out of out of our pack at the time. If two of them if any of them may be picked me as their person, a little bit more than somebody else. It was those two. So about 11 months ago, Roscoe he was he was almost he was around nine. And about he was a rescue. So we never knew exactly his age. But about 11 months ago, he suddenly got very, very sick. We thought that it was, at first we thought a UTI, then we thought maybe an ear infection. We did not think it was something life threatening, but we knew that he was sick, you know, he was having accidents in the house and, and starting to kind of have some little doggy vertigo, if you will. So anyway, took him to the vet multiple times over the course of a week and a half. And it he just rapidly rapidly declined. And after a week and a half, we ended up losing him. And it was very, very shocking. We just weren’t expecting that, at that point at that season in life. So let me just say, hug your pups, hug your family, hug your friends, because you just don’t know what this what the story holds. But anyway, so I’m already getting choked up. I told you I can’t talk about I still can’t talk about Roscoe. But so we had to say goodbye to Roscoe. And it was we think he had a brain tumor. We think that that’s probably ultimately what it was. And then about five months later, over the course of about a week Lily started declining rapidly and Lily was 12 she 12 and a half so she started declining rapidly and we lost Lilly on Easter Sunday. So we call her little Easter Lilly now but it took us down from a three healer household which is you know if you know anything about healers, especially a lot it’s a lot to Eleanor was our remaining healer. And Eleanor’s older known She’s very calm. She doesn’t have that wild craziness of of a young healer now she just has that sage wisdom of a healer because if you don’t know anything about them, they’re brilliant, brilliant, brilliant dogs and I almost feel guilty calling them dogs, but I mean that in the highest regard. So after losing Roscoe, I just kind of started watching the rescues, the blue heeler rescues and kind of looking at pictures thinking you know, we do have a spot in our home at some point and I don’t know that I was totally ready. I don’t know if you’re ever ready, but I was kind of just open to making sure that there wasn’t a pump out there that really was an urgent need. So, I should probably go back a little bit, obviously love healers. Part of the reason I love heelers is they’ve got a lot of sass I mentioned that they’re smart. They’re very funny. They’re very stubborn. And they’re very challenging sometimes, but I love that about them. There’s so much fun. I also love corgis. corgis have always made me laugh. I mean, don’t even even need to explain why I love corgis. If someone doesn’t love corgis, I just enjoy your life without a soul because they’re just the most delightful. So there is a I guess you could say kind of a boutique breed out there called a cowboy Corgi. A cowboy Corgi is a mix between a corgi and a blue heeler. Yes, they are every bit as wonderful and delightful and hilarious as you’re imagining, and all the steps, I have always thought they were completely the most adorable. But like I said, they’re kind of a boutique breed. And our personal philosophy is that we rescue. I have no problem paying rescue fees, I have no problem paying shelter fees. So it’s not that I want a free dog. It’s not about the money. But it’s that we want to use the resources that we have to save a life if we can. And there’s so many amazing pups out there that need homes. And so we always try to find dogs that that are in desperate need of a home. And so, so I never thought that a cowboy Corgi was really a possibility for us just because I wasn’t going to go to a breeder to buy a pup. Well, about the time that Lilly kind of started to decline. So I usually never even entertain the thought immediately after losing a pup of bringing another one into our home. But then, about the time that Lily was kind of you know, we were starting to see that hey, something’s maybe going on here. One of my very dear friends Michelle, you’ll hear me talk about her a lot. And I need to get her on here for multiple episodes because we joke that between us and our friend Tori we have it’s our pack. And we have so many stories about the pups in our pack. But Michelle knew that I’d always loved cowboy corgis. She tagged me in a post on social media. A local rescue group. They’re looking for an they have an urgent need for a foster for this little girl that needs to be pulled out of the shelter immediately. Oh my goodness, the most adorable thing you have ever seen. She’s a cowboy Corgi. She is a she looks like a tricolour Corgi if you know about corgis, there’s two types. There’s cardigan Welsh Corgis, and Pembroke Welsh Corgis. I don’t know all the differences but one differences one of them has a tail and one of them doesn’t. She’s the one that has the tail. I think those are cardigans don’t hold me to that because I’m not an expert. But anyway, so she she doesn’t have the little stumpy tail and she she’s a tricolour which means that she’s mostly black with some brown and white. So she’s not one that looks like the little fluffy loaf of bread running down the road. But she does have a black tail with a perfectly white tip. She has what we call her stole around her neck that almost looks like Dalmatian print. It’s in white with the black dots. And then she her head looks like a blue healer. She well kind of a red and blue. She’s she’s got more red on her face with white freckles. But she’s got the blue up around her Bentley. If you don’t know what a Bentley is, if you look at Blue healers most of them have a little white spot on the top of their head, sometimes kind of between their eyes or on their forehead and that’s called their Bentley. The name comes from someone who’s attributed with originally creating the breed. And so her her Bentley that on either side of that is is darker, more blue, and then her little legs are white with red freckles so her legs are not kidding probably four inches long. And she is definitely a little low rider as she stands about 12 inches tall. You may be able to hear her and Barney in the background right now. So she is half the size of one floof and she takes them both on at the same time. She is the scrappiest most fearless little thing you’ve ever seen. Anyway, spoiler alert, she’s Irish now. But my friend tags me in this post that this little girl needs a home and I immediately start trying to apply to be Her foster but I didn’t want I’m we don’t foster just because we foster fail. I mean, I already know we would foster fails. So if we are able to take in a pup and we have a spot in our home, we just we take them we become their forever home. And shout out to all the people that foster by the way because that there’s such a need for that. And they have such a special heart. And I’m telling you, it’s selfless. I mean, I will say it right now, I don’t foster my reasons for fostering are very selfish, because I don’t want to say goodbye to those pups. And that takes a very, very special person that can put all those little pups ahead of them. And so just shout out to all the Fosters. And if you’ve ever considered it, please do it. Please do it. So anyway, I did not get my application in a time and this wonderful precious family got her as a foster. And but in the comments, the foster mom bless her heart, she saw my comment that I really wanted to adopt her. And so after they got her and started taking just such amazing care of her, she tags me in the comment and tells me when she will be available for adoption, if I’m still interested. And yes, we were definitely still interested. So we arranged a meet up, and my husband and daughter and I went over to their house one night to meet Darcy. And she is the cutest sweetest thing you’ve ever seen. She’s very tiny. And her front right paw is I hate to say deformed because that makes it sound like it’s a bad thing. But that bone is rotated. And so that Paul when she stands still instead of faces forward faces completely to a 90 degree angle to the right. So she has this twisted paw. It does not stop her or slow her down at all. Not for one second. But it is a little deformity that she has. And we think the foster thinks that she was they found her in Oklahoma, they think she was dumped. And they suspect that maybe she it was by a breeder, because they couldn’t sell her because of that little paw, which is heartbreaking to me. But if you see her home, oh my gosh, the paw turned out. It always looks like she either has her hand on her little hip, or someone pointed out it looks like she’s in perfect third position for ballet. So her name is Darcy. And we call her the Tiny Dancer, which sometimes turns into Tony Danza. If you don’t know that reference, Google “Friends- Tony Danza”. You’re welcome. So we got Darcy as soon as she was ready for adoption, that the first time anyone meets her, she just has this gentle spirit and she walks up and she sits in front of you and she’s so tiny, and her little ears stick out. And she looks at you and just gives you this tiny little smile. Not the smile on your see your teeth but just the kind of little smile. She just curls her lips back. And it is the most adorable thing that you’ve ever seen. And then she we probably should teach her not to do this but she just loves it. She will stand up on her hind legs then and put her front paws on you. And take her little right paw and just tap you. And it kind of looks like the whole T Rex thing going on because her little little legs are so short, but just gently taps you to get you to look at her and pay attention to her. So she can get a little closer to you. She loves kids. She loves other dogs. She loves people. She’s very much a lady though she has very sweet little manners. She’s very polite. And so it was instant love at first sight. And so we after we met her we were able to go pick her up the next day we went and picked her up the next day and brought her home. I am so delighted to say she loves everyone but she really did pick me and that was really heartwarming. I don’t know why. But that very first night she crawled up in the bed and she got right up on my pillow and she laid her little head on my shoulder and slept the whole night. And now she loves everyone. She’s very independent. She’ll go do her own thing. But but every night at some point then she curls up and snuggles up with me and I’m her I guess her home base. But she has been such a delight. We recently took her on her first trip to Home Depot and Lowe’s as you do and on three different occasions, completely independent of one another. They, I mean, some were not even in the same store. We had people that were coming towards us that walked up and started laughing and said, your dog just smiled at me. Can I meet your dog? So it’s really hilarious. She just is so personable. She definitely is a healer. She looks like a tricolour Corgi wearing a blue heeler costume. And when our little ears poke out, and she’s so short when she walks in a room, especially if you know the light is behind her and you just see her silhouette, looks like grow grew from the Mandalorian walking in the room. She she’s just so funny. And definitely a healer she loves to herd and she herds by nipping. Some people don’t love that. But it’s very gentle. You just feel her tiny little her tiny little teeth on the back of your heel or the back of your calf and she likes to move you through the room. She just is so funny. One day, I was only moving about 10 steps. And when she gets really excited that we’re going somewhere she will heard and she started to hurt me. And of course, I only took about 10 steps. And then I stopped us stopped. She had her little head turned sideways and her little teeth on the back of my calf and she just froze. And she just froze with little teeth on there. And then she threw me side I like that’s it. This is it. We’re stopped. She is the master side I sometimes we definitely feel like we’re being judged, but it’s always so cute. She I don’t know if this was from her time on the main streets. But she is a little bit of a resource hoarder. Not so much with food, but with toys. And so we joke because she’s so tiny, she can get under things that the others can’t. For example, in my office, I’ve a futon. And we call that her lair. She loves to get under that futon and just watch everything. And if anyone gets too close or is you know, if they’re participating in shenanigans that she wants to put a stop to, she shoots out of that thing. It’s like a honey badger. Or she’s like a little Parana. She just launches out from underneath it. But I have learned that every day I have to go look under the futon and check her lair because she has a stash under there. This morning. I think she’s at somewhere between seven and nine of the toys. And then I found an empty cardboard box and a single sock and a sock ball a pair of socks. So excuse me, we have to go through and see what she’s up to. The flutes love her because she plays hard with them. She’s not scared of them, she’s not intimidated. And they all play together every morning especially they just wear each other out. And they’ll tag to each other. And she just gets right in the big mix of it. They’re all really sweet with each other though they don’t they don’t play rough for Well, I mean, I guess they play a little rough, but it’s play. They don’t play in a in a way where like the flutes don’t take advantage of the size difference because they’re a lot bigger than her. So anyway, she has just been nothing but a delight. So I guess if there is any kind of take home message from my story, first of all, it was just to kind of let y’all know that you know, now you’ll hear me tell stories about Darcy. And Darcy is our our newest addition. But I guess if there is a take home message to don’t with anything with anything in life. First of all, don’t let fear ever dictate your decisions. Don’t if you’re making a decision, Oh, I’m scared, we won’t be able to do this or I don’t, I’m afraid we won’t be able to do that. If you ever hear yourself saying that do not make a decision based on that, that that is not a criteria. And so if there’s if any of it is fear, throw that out. And don’t let that be a pro or a con on your list. But also, don’t ever wait for things until you’re ready. If you see an opportunity, and especially if you feel that tugging in your heart, saying I think I should do this. And if you think there’s any possibility at any any point you’re gonna look back and say, remember that little pup or remember that job opportunity, or remember that whatever. Remember that adventure that we decided not to take if you think there’s ever going to be a chance that you’re going to look back at it and say, hmm, I can’t believe we passed up on that or I wish we hadn’t passed up on that. Then don’t just don’t. I mean, be reasonable. Don’t don’t run yourself into debt. Don’t do something that’s going to endanger your life. But Don’t wait, just stop waiting. If you have the opportunity, take it because that’s where the blessings are. That’s where the blessings are. And they’re never where you expect, and you can’t plan blessings, you can’t plan them. They wouldn’t be blessings if you planned them. Blessing part of the beauty. I mean, some of them might be but part of the beauty of blessings is the you don’t see him coming. So I’m here to tell you just take that chance, whatever it is that you’re thinking about, do it, just do it. So that being said, thank you so much for being here. i Hey, seriously, please go visit us at the website. It’s happy www you know the deal, dot happy tails of happy tails. The first tails is t a l e s like stories. The second one is T A ILS like the kind of the dog swag. So happy tales of happy tales.com You can find all the episodes there, you can reach out to me, that’s the best way to message me. Also, I’ve added a Resources tab to that site. As you can imagine, we’ve probably try more dog gadgets and things around here than the average bear. And so we post things on there. When we find something that we really like we post it on there so that you can see it, we post the links, I am an Amazon affiliate, if you don’t know what that means, it just means that I have a little specific link that I can post that lets Amazon know that I sent you there. And if you purchase using that link, they send me a few bucks doesn’t change the price that you pay. But it does help me kind of helps to offset like, you know, hosting fees for the podcast and things like that. So you know, I would be grateful if you did use that link, but certainly no pressure. Some examples of things that we have on that resource tab right now, we’ve got a harness that we really like to use with the dogs, we’ve tried several. And some of them are much more challenging to get on and off, especially if you have a wiggling dog. So we found one that we really love because it’s very easy to get on and off. We also have some seat belts, we always use seat belts with our pups. And so we have seat belts that we have found that we really like we’ve tried several different types. We have a link on there. For those. I haven’t added it yet. But I will This week I’m going to add we have a really great little water bottle for dogs that we take with us when we walk. And we love it because it includes a built in little bowl they can drink out of but also a way that what they don’t drink can go back into the bottle so that it’s not wasted. Really love that. And another thing that I shared after one episode, it’s a flashlight looks kind of like one of those Maglite type lights, not the huge ones though the smaller size, but also has a stun gun a built in stun gun in the tip you can’t really even tell it’s there. Obviously lots of good uses for that. But I used to carry that when we would go on very early morning runs when it was dark outside. Not only for safety, but the other thing that I have found. Dogs do not love that crackling sound of the stun gun. So it would be a great thing if you’re ever out walking your dog even during the daylight. But if you’re in any kind of area where there’s the possibility that you can run into loose dogs, they’re just really sad, awful stories sometimes about people being attacked by dogs that are out. I’m just gonna say, I don’t think those are bad dogs. I think that they’ve either they either dogs that never had people to care for them, or they had bad humans whole other story. But if you were ever in a dangerous situation, a lot of times just using that crackling stun gun feature, not touching a dog with it just the sound is enough to deter them, we found that that often was enough to make the dogs run away. So those are some examples of things we share on the resource site. Also have some really wonderful guests on the show that have done super cool things. They offer really cool services. And we always reference those things on the website as well. You can find happy tails of heavy tails on any of the major podcast platforms. Please go check it out Apple, Spotify I heart, Pandora, audible Amazon, Google, please go find it please follow or subscribe. They all kind of follow you know call them different things. But when you do that it automatically uploads the episode every week to your list of shows. So you know it’s there and you can listen to it. All of those things just help other people find the podcast. If you rate or review the podcast that also helps a lot and is always much appreciated. And finally, I would love to hear your stories. I I run into dog people all the time and they’re like I don’t have any story to tell, if you have a dog, you have a story. Even if you don’t have a dog, you have a story. It’s just not a dog story. Everybody’s got a story. So I mentioned in the beginning, the whole reason for this podcast is just to bring a little joy and a little break, just a little break to everyone’s chaos, a little stress relief, where people can just hear stories about something that’s just pure and good and fun, and joyful. And that’s what dogs are. So you may have a story about a specific event that was funny, or sweet or heartwarming. Or maybe you just have a dog you adore, and you want to tell us about that dog. And we want to hear it because what happens too, is a lot of times, people listen, and they relate to that they hear something that they can relate to. And there are all kinds of experiences that we share. And we don’t know we share those experiences, until we share those experiences. And that’s what brings us together. So please let me know that you have a story that you would like to share. And what I would do is I send you a link to my calendar, and you just go to that link. And it lists available time slots that we can do a zoom call, I usually turn the camera on simply because there’s always almost always at least shenanigans going on in the background of my calls, where the pups make appearances. And that’s fun. And sometimes guest pups make appearances. So I do that so that we can post it on the Oh, it’s also podcast is also on YouTube, by the way, and I post the videos on YouTube. If you absolutely don’t want me to use the video, that’s fine. I will totally respect whatever your wishes are. But we still post the audio. And we just do that Zoom call and that’s where the podcast comes from. You can do it in your pajamas. If there’s not a time on my calendar that works for you. You just let me know I’m completely flexible and I can find other times we it is no problem. But I would love to share your story and you may not think so but other people would like to hear your story. So please reach out the website once again is the best way just go to the contact me part of the website. Send me a message. Thank you so much for coming back. I’m excited to be back. And remember You are as great as your dog think she thinks Y’all have a great one.