Once can only hope Petland will come for her. Since they can’t resell her, they’ll have to recycle her into Soylent to feed to the puppers. Seems reasonable.
If she were younger, she might find herself locked in a tiny wire-bottomed cage, producing litter after litter of humandoodles.
Your stories break my heart. You’re an amazing person to endure what you do to look after these wretched, helpless animals.
Lotta dust in the room.
Thank you for being you.
Agreed! (to @SurrenderDorothy)
Yeah, lots of dust. Can’t see to type.
JFC. 
What a week indeed - bless you for doing what you do. I have a house full of other people’s cast-offs, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have the strength to deal with the actual people.
I didn’t realize Petland was still in existence. When I was young and stupid I worked for a smaller version of Petland, based out of Maine, Pet Menagerie. They sold puppies and kittens as well as fish, birds, small rodents, and supplies. I loved it until they got big enough to start seeing the animals as inventory and not living things. I will say I learned a LOT about dogs and dog breeds (because I’m kind of a geek that way) and I got to learn a lot from the vet that made regular visits.
The store was in a mall, and right next to a big restaurant. One evening a very drunk guy came in looking to impress his new? girlfriend (who was slightly less drunk) by buying her a fluffy puppy she’d cooed over. I started the process then took the pup in the back “to get him cleaned up and ready to go.” In back, I got a red marker and put little dots all over his belly and armpits. Brought the dog back up and showed the guy (his girlfriend wasn’t even interested) and said I’d have to hold the dog until the next day and let the vet check those spots, needed to make sure they weren’t contagious. Told him I’d put a big HOLD sign on the kennel, and he could call after 2pm to see what the results were. Shocker - no phone call.
The Pet Menagerie went out of business after Petsmart got so big. Their 8 or so stores couldn’t compete, and people were wising up to the puppy mill racket.
@SurrenderDorothy, I hope you have some happy, positive things happen soon to offset the horrors of the past week. Just … thank you.
Petland is the absolute worst. A few years ago a woman bought a puppy from a local Petland. She took it to her veterinarian and found out the dog had a congenital heart defect. She returned the dog and after a bit of a fight got her money back.
Not learning anything from the situation, she went to a different Petland to look at puppies and was shocked to see the dog she’d previously purchased for sale at that store.
Please pardon me if this seems glib, but you did mention that he’s prompt-dependent; is there any way you could find a prompt that he can respond to?
You’re a Saint. People are Awful…
That might have needed a TW. wow.
I have a small story; it’s tiny compared to others here. It’s true, it happened… but its not all that noteworthy. I could not sleep further early this morning. Rather than rumble about and annoy the rest of the house, I went outside and played some PokemonGo. Yes, I cheated; I drove a car to a gym a mile away. Happens; sometimes gamers get a little OCD about their gaming.
I drove back home, parked on the street, and walked in my yard when I heard a rustling coming from the treetop above me. I heard a light snap, saw something fall out of the corner of my eye, and then heard a loud < Fwap >. The sound was definitely meat-hitting-asphalt… and I’m under playing how loud it actually was.
It was a < Fah-WHAAAP! > .
Evidently I had startled a squirrel, who had been freezing/sleeping soundly and he had rolled out of his nest. A nest some 30-40 feet up a tree. And he landed full belly flop onto ice-cold asphalt. It was such a traumatic hit that I found myself saying out loud, “Geez, buddy… you OK?”. And quick as a wink, he was up and jumping, that run-jumping that squirrels do, across the street. He was getting air with those jumps… three feet maybe.
It was if he was saying, “I’m Alive! Holy Smokes, I’m Alive…”
Or maybe he was saying, “FUCK, that hurts…! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK! That hurts!
I am Never sleeping in That God Damned Tree Ever Again!!!”
I love wacky animal stories like that. Glad the little guy was OK. I never realized that being a squirrel was such a perilous life!
My very tiny rant is that I hate it when computers glitch, which always causes me great concern until I resolve it. This morning when I woke my computer from sleep it had no internet. The modem light indicated a wired connection, the Ethernet light at the back of the computer was on, everything was fine except … no internet, and Windows was basically saying “you may think you have a LAN connection, but I assure you there is none”.
As someone once pointed out to me, sleep (and specifically, wake-from-sleep) is a buggy technology, but it’s much better than it used to be. My computer goes to sleep every night and resumes the next day with no problems and has been doing this for years. This may be the first, or at most the second, problem that may or may not have been due to wake-from-sleep buginess. In any case, putting it to sleep again and restarting did not fix the problem. A full restart did.
I live on the west coast but I’ve been operating financially out of the east coast (I never took my money out of my old credit union because I like them). So it’s time to cut the apron strings and move all my accounts out here. Part of that included a check from a Fidelity account that I was going to use to open a checking account. Do you know how hard it is to open a checking account at a bank with a paper check? It’s damn near impossible.
First I went to the Capital One Cafe. I felt like I was in a Woody Allen movie or something. I walk in and see the counter where I could get a cappuccino or a scone, possibly a Mochiata Chocolatee with Whip Cream and butter cookie on the side but I did not see a teller in sight. This polite little guy asks me if he can help me.
“Where’s, like, the banking stuff here?”
“Oh we do that all online.”
“Well I just want to open a checking account with a paper check.”
“Right. You can do that all online. You’ll just have to mail us the check.”
“You mean the check that I have in pocket right now?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you for your time.”
What the hell are those Capital One Cafe’s for? Coffee and muffins? Ridiculous. Why would I want to keep my money in a bank where the half the overhead is locating ethically resourced coffee beans?
So I strolled over to Bank of America where I was welcome to open a checking account … three days from now which is when the nearest appointment was. I’m thinking, I see tellers right over there. Can’t I just get one of them to help me? It’s not like the place is swarmed with customers. Nope. He wanted to guide me through the process by downloading the Bank of America app and creating a profile and I thanked him for his time and left.
I might just keep my credit union.
Another computer glitch that’s been increasingly driving me batty; both my own home PC and the computers at work.
-
Bring up site or application
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Find search bar or fill-in field to enter text, put cursor on field to enter text
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Begin typing entry, then note that as you’re typing, none of this is actually being recorded/visible, as the previous act of placing my cursor in the field was somehow retroactively undone
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Gritting my teeth and cursing out loud as I’m forced to begin again…which, the second time around, always works.
I’m not sure where I see that he’s clearly not ready. He’s willing to sit there, he seems to want to do it, he just doesn’t understand what he’s supposed to do, exactly. We’ve been at it only a few days. I think if we just keep giving him the opportunity he will figure it out. The stress part is in finding a routine that we can all live with and not putting so much time pressure on it. Sure, if it takes six months, it takes six months. The BCBA will have a much better idea whether or not he’s ready.
I’ve noticed that too. I’ve often wondered if there was some sort of key-logger installed that I’ve never been able to find.
Things have been so stressful for the three of us trying to figure this out, we just decided to table it until he starts ABA (after Thanksgiving.) That way we can enjoy our holiday, and then communicate that we really don’t know what we’re doing. They’ve potty trained several kids before, they have a plan, and whatever it is we will follow it. But right now we are all so stressed out/sick/etc we are not making progress.
That sounds like a great idea. You surely deserve a break!
Maybe he’ll surprise you in the meantime.
This is dumb, but I’ll say it anyhow: I used to toss one square of TP in the water and tell my son to “sink the ship!”
That works. Boys love a goal attached to penis work. Even if they’re only 2yos at the time. That shit is wired in deep.