Stray dogs.

The morning started off with two stray dogs who found their way onto our property... of course they weren't fluffy lap-dogs... one looked like a German shepherd and the other had the rounded snout of a pit-bull. Both huge, both running here and there, and one found its way to our porch and gobbled up the Meow Mix.

I got Mickey into the kitty-coop as fast as I could.... Gatsby came willingly into the house and ran into the TV room.... and I told the orange cat that he was on his own. (Orange Kitty went into the drainage pipe to hide.)

Then I got on the phone to our close-by neighbors........ one has a cat that is sometimes out on her patio, and the other has a very small dog that likes to soak up the sun on her deck.

My husband tried to get the dogs away from the properties up here.... they wouldn't come when he whistled, in fact they stood there in the road just looking at him.  Then my husband got out the air-horn and gave them a blast of that noise.........the shepherd ran off into the hills and the pit-bull dog ran further up the road.

About an hour later, there was no sign of the shepherd and I saw the pit-bull running down the hill, probably searching for his dog-buddy.  We didn't see those dogs all afternoon, which is a good thing.... I'm hoping they either found their way back to where they belonged, or they're off in the woods somewhere deciding where to go next.

I've lost count of how many stray dogs we've seen up here..... there was that big brown hound dog that found its way here on the day that Prince William married Kate (we took him to the shelter on the day he killed one of our chickens).... there were two black-lab mixes that we found one night when we came back from playing cards at a neighbor's house.... then there was Captain January, the little dachshund mix that I found on a freezing day last January (and I still wish I had kept that little guy).... and there have been other stray dogs that we had to take to the shelter just because they were either too big or too unpredictable.

Listen up, people.... if you have a pet that you no longer want, please please please either find a new home for them or bring them to the local animal shelter.  A lonely country road is not a good option for dogs and cats that have once been a part of your family. (And if you're that kind of pet-abandoning person, then you probably should re-think the whole idea of having any sort of pet in the first place.)