Chaos

These last 2 weeks have been total craziness.. and an emotional roller coaster.

To start with on the 7th Scar .. our 1 yr old pit started pooping blood. on the 8th we took him to the Emergency vet to make sure that he hadn't swallowed anything. $378.00 later .. xray was clear and he was put on meds. The meds worked for about 24 hours then it started all over again. We were devastated seeing our baby in pain and not having any moeny to find out was was wrong and fix it. After sharing with friends what was going on.. a guardian angel showed up. Her name is Theresa. She covered Scars complete vet visit that monday. Without her our baby would have gone untreated and who knows what could have happened. Our baby was diagnosed with hookworms that had turned into a nightmare of an intestinal infection. Now almost 2 weeks later after a dewormer, special foods & meds our baby is back to normal. Theresa showed us that there are still people out there who genuinely care and are willing to lend a helping hand. We will forever be grateful for having her in our lives and will keep our word to pay it forward.

Along came Friday the 14th .. Adopt a thon day!! Feeling good because our baby was feeling better.. we went ahead and volunteered to help PIT STOP BULLYS RESCUE. After having 3 little foster puppies for 2 weeks for them I was assigned puppy duty. Guess thats just where I fit in. It was a long 24 hours but so worth it. Through the event all of our puppies found new homes. Last I heard a total of almost 150 dogs had found new homes. I cant even begin to explain how proud I felt to have been a part of such a wonderful event!!

Then came my final dilema for the week. Saturday as we are driving home from the event.. exhausted... i get a call from one of my friends telling me not to bring the Honda to the house.. because he had just stopped by the house and a repo truck had pulled up right behind him asking him all sorts of questions and advised him that he had an order to repo the Honda. This hit me like a ton of bricks. I had called CITI financial Friday as I knew I was late on my payment. I had made an arrangement with a manager.. who had given me an amount to pay to stop the repo. So Sunday I called in again to confirm the amount before going to Walmart to send the money to CITI.. at which point I was told by another rep that the first amount was incorrect.. and that it was almost $200.00 more. So that night we made the choice to give the Honda back to CITI. There was no way I would be able to come up with the money.. especially after just having paid Scars emergency vet bill and I was not about to continue to keep hiding the car. So Monday I started brainstorming and remembered all the bridges I hadn't burned when I worked for the finance company.. I made a few phone calls to some of the dealers I used to deal with on a daily basis.. and went to one that same night. We were approved right away for a 2000 Honda Odyssey EX. The payments were lower than our Honda Accord was .. and we will finish paying off the Odyssey almost 2 whole years before we would have been done with the Accord. We went home and gathered our stips and picked up the Odyssey yesterday. I am totally in love with it. Its super roomy and we can now travel comfortable with our dogs. Today the Accord was finally picked up. Although it really sucks.. because of all the money that was put into the Accord.. I truly do believe that things were meant to happen this way and in the end its for the best!

Our next step will be to file for Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. After doing lots of research.. this will be our best option to start with a clean slate .. especially with a repo. Now begins a new chapter for us.

How we became responsible pit bull owners

5 years ago when Angelie was still a baby we had moved into our first rental house and decided to get a dog. Although I wasn’t too fond of them Luis insisted on getting a pit bull. A friend of his from work had a litter that was about 5 weeks old. So we went to his house and picked out a super cute Tan & white boy. We named him Buster. So we took buster to the vet got all his shots and went and bought puppy stuff. The first 2 days were insane… all buster would do was cry when we would put him in his crate.. so we decided to leave him outside in the screened in patio instead. And so began buster’s life outside. Eventually he got too big for the patio and Luis built him an outside kennel. A few months later we moved to a bigger house with a privacy fenced huge yard. Again Luis set up his kennel. At this point he was outside 24/7. He had a huge doghouse inside his kennel and was allowed to run around the yard. Around this time Luis kept saying that he wanted a girl pit…. to mate with buster.

Around August I went to a birthday party at a friend’s house and in her neighbors backyard there was a whole litter running around. I called Luis to let him know and he went over there and we picked out Princess. She was the cutest little thing .. but was always a wild child. At first we had her in a crate in the back patio.. but after a while of her pooping and showering in her poop in the crate.. she ended up in the yard. Tied to a tree. Luis as well built her a good size doghouse. Princess as well as Buster now spent 24/7 in the backyard. We had the idea that they were our guard dogs.

May of 2006 we decided that we were not going to mate Princess with Buster.. because Buster wasn’t as big as Princess.. so we took him to the Humane Society on Armenia to get fixed. This was the day that saved his life. That day they discovered that Buster had heartworms. So immediately we called our vet and got him in for heartworm treatment. Thanks to this happening we learned that our dogs needed to be on heartworm preventative. Buster thankfully recovered from his heartworms but once he was recovered he went right back outside.

A few months went by and we had to move from where we were living. We had found a new house but Pits were not allowed.. so Princess went to go live at Luis mom’s house in plant city.. and we ended up giving Buster away to a friend who had a farm in Plant City. After a few months we found out that Buster had “supposedly” gone missing.. we looked everywhere for him and had no luck.. 2 months later this so called friend told one of Luis coworkers that Buster had killed some of his chickens so he killed Buster. This really broke our hearts. Although we were ignorant as to how to properly care for a pit it never meant we loved them any less.. we just had not been educated.

We ended up moving back to the house with the privacy fence in February of 2008 and immediately brought Princess back to the house with us. For the whole year that Princess had been at Luis mom’s house we had not given her any heartworm pills. When we brought her back to the house we decided that we were not going to tie her back outside. Instead we kept her in her crate in our screened in patio. As time went by I started to notice that she was having a hard time getting up when we would send her out to the yard to play and run around. We figured she was probably getting Arthritis or something like that.. boy were we wrong. When we took Princess to the vet she was diagnosed with heartworms. Right away Princess started losing weight…and while we tried to come up with the money Princess just kept losing weight.. finally we came up with the money to start her treatment. By this point princess had gone from weighing almost 75 pounds to about 50 pounds. It got a lot worse before it got better. While she was going through the treatment she continued to lose weight. At her lowest point she weighed about 40 pounds and was literally all bones. We even had to help her stand up as she couldn’t do it on her own. It was heart wrenching to see her going through the pain. But sure enough she is a fighter!! She overcame the heartworms and starting putting on weight again. This was the point when we decided that Princess would never have a litter.. as we would never risk her life and put her through that.

We weren’t really planning on getting another puppy .. but I was addicted to going on craigslist everyday to see what was out there. One day I ran across an add for a 15 wk old blue/brindle pit named Scar. He had a face that I immediately fell in love with. The owners wanted 150 for him.. but he had no shots or anything.. so I offered them 50 and promised to give him a good home. They agreed and the very next night we went to pick him up. He was insanely hyper at first.. but soon enough we figured out that all he needed was some exercise. We made the decision that since we didn’t want any babies he would also get fixed.

Researching through the internet I found ACT. It seemed like a great deal and a great place so we went ahead and got both of them fixed and up to date on shots. They both got fixed in December of 2008. We were very happy with out choice and knew that we had done the right thing. Both Princess & Scar were now being kept in the house. They would go outside to play and run around but slept in the house in the crate.

I continued to browse craigslist…. And in February of 2009 came across an add for a pitbull walk. Seeing as it was so close to our house we decided to go ahead and give it try. So we called CJ and she answered all of our questions as to what went on at these walks. All it took was that first walk and we were hooked. We soon realized how ignorant we had been prior to these walks. After talking with other owners and seeing how they were with their dogs we decided that we would start practicing some of the same things. So we started going on walks a few times a week with our dogs instead of just letting them run around in the yard. We got prong collars for them to correct any issues on our walks. On that first walk Allen was our leader and Art was behind us.. both of them gave us lots of great information. The following month we went to the walk again. Looking forward to seeing the great group of people again and seeing all of their beautiful pitties. Again we absorbed all the information we got and applied it to our dogs. We even got some great behavior advice from Jo who was going through classes to become a dog trainer.

By April we decided it was time we do more. We had made a lot of changes and by this point also considered ourselves responsible pit bull owners. So when Aprils walk came around we talked to CJ and told her that we wanted to try to foster a pit.. this is when we were introduced to Ashlie. We had seen her on the previous walks but didn’t really know who she was. We talked a bit with her.. went home a filled out the app to become foster parents. The next Saturday was the Arthritis walk at Al Lopez. It was great to walk with the group and our beautiful dogs. After the walk Ashlie came over for a home visit and brought our first foster Dutchess. She was a dutch shepherd mix. I must admit that we were very inexperienced and being as this was something completely new to us we were a little scared. Although we tried I honestly in my heart have to admit that we felt like failures with Dutchess. We were never able to accomplish much with her. After a month of having Dutchess she was taken to another rescue that had mixed dogs and would be able to find her a home. And then came Molly.. we were unsure if we were going to foster again.. and I thought Ashlie would be upset with us because of our failure with Dutchess.. but thankfully she didn’t give up on us.. and we agreed to foster again. So a few days later we got Molly. From the minute Luis walked in the door with her we were all in love with her. She has such a sweet nature about her and is so gentle. We called Ashlie that same night and told her not to even bother listing Molly.. she had found her forever home!!

Although Pitbulls pounding the pavement was on a hiatus.. another group was made. This new group was made of some of the members from PBPP. We just attended their second walk this past weekend and will continue to attend any future get togethers. This wonderful group of people means the world to me. They have opened our eyes.. educated us.. and welcomed us into this wonderful community. We have made many new friends through them .. and they have truly made us feel like part of the family. We consider ourselves their success story. Because of these great people we are no longer ignorant. We are educated and responsible pit bull owners. We will forever be thankful to them for showing us the right way to raise a pit. Now we are the ones that educate our friends and families about this wonderful breed that we love so much. We try every chance we get to break these barriers and show people how wonderful this breed is. At work I proudly display pictures of our beautiful dogs and educate anyone who questions why I love this breed so much. I as well have signed up with the SPCA to take the classes to become a dog trainer. This will not only be to benefit our own pack .. but to also help with the rescue and anyone else who I can help.

I know we have come a long way.. and we owe it all to PBPP, Bay Area Bullies and Pit Stop Bully’s Rescue.

Today we can hold our head up high and proudly say that we are responsible pit bull owners!!

My very first time.....

Blogging!! woohoo!!

Me in a nutshell.. I am a 29 almost 30 yr old mother of 2 beautiful girls.

My oldest ...

Janay just turned 11 and will be starting middle school in 2 weeks.

And my youngest ...Angelie is 5 and will be starting Kindergarten.

Its amazing how fast these years fly by!!
Both of my girls are special in their own way.. they both are very caring and have sweet sides to them.. but don't underestimate them. Janay is sneaky and quiet when she is up to no good.. but gets caught just about every time. And Angelie is bold and in your face....she has no problem telling you how it is. Either way I love them with all my soul! They are my reason for pushing on and always wanting to do better. I want them to one day look back and say.. my mom was amazing.. she was a hard worker and a good person overall...she always did what she could to make sure we were happy.

The next love of my life is Luis. We have been together for 6 yrs & 1/2. Engaged for the last 3. We have had a lot of up and downs..but through it all we have worked it out. If all goes well we will finally be getting married in 2012.

And last but certainly not least are our dogs.

We currently have 4..of our own .. and 3 that we are fostering for Pit stop Bully's Rescue. We also have 2 others that we are boarding for a friend.

Our 1st is Princess. She is a red nose/brindle pit bull. Just turned 4 in July.

Our second baby is Scar. He is a blue/brindle pit bull. He will be turning 1 tomorrow. Happy birthday my handsome baby boy!!

Our 3rd is Casey. She is a 2 yr old pekashit.. lol.. pekignese/shitzu. Never actually thought we would have a fru fru dog.. but the girls love her to pieces.

And our most recent addition to the family is Molly. She a 1 & 1/2 yr old pit mix. Originally she was supposed to only be a foster .. but from the minute she walked into the house we were in love. So we called Ashlie that same day and told her to not even list Molly because she had found her forever home.

So I have decided to start this blog as a way to share my thoughts and rant & rave here and there. Have fun reading .. and please feel free to share your 2 cents :)

My goal is to post everyday .. regardless of what mood I am in.