Monday, February 25, 2013

Welcome, Ginger!


     We seem to have acquired a new stray dog, a pit bull with enlarged teats who must’ve been nursing a litter fairly recently. Don’t know where the puppies are, which is just as well. I hate to think of what may have befallen them. Ginger is hungrier for affection than for food, but she definitely needs to eat on a regular basis instead of scrounging, poor girl.
 
 

     She wears a collar and can't understand why we won't let her inside, so she must have been someone’s pet at some point, and an indoor dog at least part of the time.
     She’s a very “bully” pit bull and far too big to qualify as a 9 Dogs Howling Indoor Dog (though Polly could probably give her a run for her money), but she’s determined to come inside nonetheless. She lies on the welcome mat on the porch or stands with her paws on the windowsill looking inside. The day she arrived here, the rest of the dogs spent 4 hours barking and screaming and running back and forth because of Ginger. I finally shut the blinds in the living room so they can’t see if Ginger’s on the porch. Which gives the living room all the warmth and charm of a funeral parlor. 
     Mr. P. had a wonderful, sweet pit bull, Peach Pit, when we were first married, so we’re OK with pit bulls. But…in this part of the world, they tend to be bred as fighters rather than pets, so we have to be careful with Ginger. Pits are often well-behaved with their humans but badly-behaved with other dogs. Ginger gets along with the cats OK, which is in her favor, but I haven’t seen her interact with Blackie yet. Poor Blackie was attacked by a neighbor’s German shepherd last weekend and has a wound on a front leg from that. And it’s time for Babe’s annual check-up and shots. And we need to get Ginger spayed. Ugh. Dog rescue is a mighty expensive proposition.