Jan 31, 2012 on sunday we got to go see violet and meet her new family. she’s got a beautiful little shy pitbull sister and an amazing person in her life. we were so thrilled to see how great she’s doing and see her amazing new life…she’s living large. i’m so happy to have a happy ending stamped on this story!
;)
Jan 13, 2012 i’m so, so happy to announce that violet has officially been adopted. her trainers, nathan & bridget from k9 logics, have been amazingly kind enough to foster her over the last year and she’s been having a ball playing with all the dogs that come to their daycare. being the amazing little lady that she is she helped a very timid pit bull daycamper come out of her shell and that dog’s owner decided that violet was a keeper. violet now gets to spend her days with her new sister and her fantastic new life includes spending weekdays at daycare while her family is at work. we are so thrilled that violet is getting her chance at the life she deserves. i know she was happy during her time here and that she loved being with nathan & bridget but i needed her to be settled in her forever home to really feel okay…and quite honestly all that projecting my feelings onto her was getting tiresome.
;)
so it seems that sometimes you have to free some energy for things to move foreward. we’ve been in a holding pattern since violet left. i specifically have had a hard time with her not working here and probably didn’t feel right about moving on until violet was able to move on. that all changed the week before christmas when we were at an adoption event put on by emmylou harris’ rescue, bonaparte’s retreat, (note that we were going for the music…not to adopt). this dog passed by us that i missed but dave was very taken by (seriously he kept telling me i needed to see him). later the girl walking that dog came right up to a group of us and started a sales pitch for said dog…which we fell for hook, line & sinker. the dog, slater, was a handsome, about 1-year-old mix who had been returned to the nashville humane society on two different occasions. the end of the story and start of a new story so to speak is that slater is now a colella. he’s a sweet, lovable doofus of a dog who is dave’s new shadow. i am pleased to present slater for your viewing pleasure:
so far 2012 is looking much better than 2011 did…hope you all are having a great start to the new year!
Mar 8, 2011 this post is the kind i don’t like…one with bad news that i hate to impart. it is with heavy hearts that dave & i have come to the sad fact that we need to find violet a new loving family. over the past six weeks or so she developed an issue with watson and it is only getting worse. we sent her to an amazing trainer, nathan, for board and train for a few weeks, hoping for at the least a chilling out period and at best a solution to our problem. while she is now fantastically trained and very obedient the situation with watson hasn’t changed.
it has become an untenable situation causing unrest in our house. violet’s fine when she’s on a leash and under our control but she’s a fantastic dog and doesn’t deserve to live life on a leash and we don’t deserve an unreasonably stressful situation.
violet’s a sweet, loving lady with an endearing limp and a zest for life. one need only look to the right of this page and hit the violet links to see her pictures and videos to see proof of this. sadly watson is the only dog she’s ever had a problem with and that problem is really due to her close relationship with carly and our pack dynamics. i truly believe, while she may not be a good pack dog, she would do fine with other dogs. she has been with dogs, cats and children in her trainer’s home and has been very loving with our other 14 dogs. if you know of anyone who might be interested in providing violet a loving home please let us know.
while we are heartbroken at the prospect of losing violet we look forward to her being part of a loving family and to peace being restored to our home. we are committed (after a period of peace) to adopting another dog so we leave no footprint with this. this is new territory for us as we’ve adopted many, many fosters out over the years but have never had to rehome a dog that we thought of as part of our family. we could use help on this one and are hoping our earthdog community can aid us here.
;)
kym colella
here's a pdf you can print out if you'd like to pass it on or hang it somewhere - any help is much appreciated!
violet posterOct 28, 2010 dear gravy is benny talkative, which is ironic since he can't hear a blessed thing, and i use the word talkative because it really does seem like he's just chattering away. for some reason his mutterings ring as less annoying than just all-out barking but it does have a way of breaking you down eventually.
i gotta give it up to violet - i would have let him have the bone just to shut him up.
Oct 28, 2010 ;)
Oct 21, 2010 for the third year we will be sponsoring the spay station at the nashville event on sat. free neuters will be done on site (by appt) and vouchers will be handed out for free spays & neuters at fix for life in lebanon, tn. come join in the festivities - it should be a beautiful day. this fine little lady will be joining dave & i...
;)
click here for a state by state listing of events and here for more information on the nashville event.
Sep 21, 2010 it's hard to really concentrate on a book when this is what goes on next to you
Sep 16, 2010 i think we need somebody out there to remind us why we sleep (or try to) with 16 dogs in our bedroom. lately we’ve been lacking in the z department due to two culprits. the first is violet who is not a fan of her cage and starts whining anywhere from 2:30 am to 6:00 am. as puppies go she’s been fantastic, so good in fact we tend to forget she’s a puppy…she definitely seems to be an old soul. she pretty much does what she wants and we feel like she's safe to allow out of our sightline for minutes at a time, however we do insist she stay in her cage at night and when we’re not home. the other day in an act of non-sleep frustration dave decided to try letting her sleep out of her cage (which i told him was a bad idea for numerous reasons). all went fine the first night but the second morning dave was awakened by the sound of violet peeing (not that i’m saying i told you so but, well, i actually did). violet is back to sleeping in her cage and we get to listen to her whining…it’s a lose–lose all-around. yay for us!
the second culprit is this guy:
;)
to be fair it’s not phineus’ fault that he’s been itchy (we’ll try to forget he seems to have some strange nighttime-only itching phenomenon). it’s also not his fault that he prefers sleeping on the hardwood floor and it’s certainly not his fault that our hardwood floor has the ability to make a petite noise sound like the clock just struck midnight at a raucous new year’s eve party. benadryl has had no effect so for the past 3 nights i keep waking up to phat phinny scratching his belly, which makes his leg go crazy, which on our floor produces a sound akin to nonstop machine gun fire. it seems like it’s been going on all night but it’s really impossible to tell because i'm apparently in and out of consciousness and phineus, being the man of leisure that he is, naps all day so there’s no way to tell if he’s actually tired. i’m certain that he’s just developed a little seasonal allergy so today i broke down and gave him some prednisone which will hopefully break the cycle and allow us all to sleep a little more peacefully, until violet disallows us to all sleep peacefully. ah whatever, sleep is just practice for dying anyway…even if it is practice i really, really enjoy.
on another note the little lady had her surgery yesterday to have her pin removed and was spayed at the same time and she’s back home recovering nicely. while she was under the influence of the knock-out drugs she used her leg a little more and it seems something clicked in her noggin. she’s been using the leg to walk a bit and she’s got quite a unique, adorable gait which just makes me giggle.
Sep 2, 2010 violet had her surgery and yesterday she had her 3-week follow-up where we found out that while she’s healing well she will definitely not have a fully functional leg, although it could prove helpful for balance and some other leg-centric activities. the biggest issue is that violet seems to have written the leg off completely – won’t use it, won’t look at it, won’t have nothing to do with it, to the point that she many times lets it drag behind her and the sores and ground-down nails that result are of no consequence to her.
up until yesterday i’ve been mostly concerned and worried about her just getting to live her life. now that she’s been given the go ahead to return to basically full activities (which are fuller here than she probably is used to) i’m excited to see her start to thrive. in a nutshell we’re going to do the things we can to try to get her to use the leg and if it becomes dead weight for her or is a continual problem trying to keep her foot safe then we’ll have it amputated. since we’ve had two 3-legged dogs and countless 4-legged dogs we’re fine with either scenario as long as violet gets to live the life she should have been living from the get go.
she’s such a sweetheart and so loving that i feel like a bit of a jerk for being upset about her joining our family (before i knew her) but it’s not the first time i’ve felt that way and it probably won’t be the last.
i do have to interject into violet’s post to let you know that carly is the true star of our family. i’ll save the whole shebang for another post but let me just say that she has been a fantastic ambassador to the new introductees into our family, as evidenced in this video…
Aug 13, 2010 we got a call the other day from an acquaintance who had “rescued” a dog from a bad situation and needed some help figuring out what to do. unfortunately “the dog” had a broken leg and now the rescuers had had her in their care for a week without providing any care for the leg. not knowing what else to do and realizing that this dog needed help we told them to take her to our vet the next day and we would pay to find out what exactly was wrong with the leg and what needed to happen and then we would go from there. at the time the idea was that perhaps if the care was to be extensive that we could set up a collection or something to get her what she needed. the next day i spoke to our vet after she had seen the dog and it became clear that the situation she was in needed to change. she had a badly broken leg that either needed (hopefully) pinning but possibly amputation. dave & i talked about it and decided the best thing for us to do was to take responsibility for her both financially and emotionally so arrangements were made for us to pick her up the next day and go from there.
dave was away the day/night that this all went down and i am embarrassed to admit that i just felt an overwhelming sadness, both for this dog and the situation she was in but also for us. i just did not want another dog and hadn’t planned on another dog (not that these things are always planned) – i’m just not a fan of change and this change was a little more than i felt i could handle at the time. we have just really gotten to a new normal since adding benny to the pack and things are settled and moving along smoothly so to throw a cog in that wheel really was not what i wanted. there’s also the sad fact that dave and i have not been away together for almost 2 years (i actually haven’t left the house for even a night in that time). we haven’t had a pet sitter in that time, although to be fair we haven’t made a real concerted effort to find someone up for the daunting task, but still…
i was feeling fairly downhearted when we went to pick said dog up and then we introduced her to the pack and everything was better. i have to tell you that we have some amazing dogs…i am so proud of how they accepted this little bugger and they were all just so lovely it’s amazing. “the dog," in her own right, is equally amazing as she took all the introductions in stride and was completely unphased and completely loving.
so it’s probably time for the introduction of this little lady that i’ve been rudely referring to as “the dog” so i am pleased to present violet:
;)
she’s a female pit bull who is probably about 5-1/2 months old and she has coped amazingly well with a broken femur for over a week now (evident in the video below). i am happy to say she had surgery yesterday and our amazing vet feels very positive about the result. because of the scarring present (due to the time the fracture was given to heal on it’s own) some of her long bone had to be removed but we are hopeful she will have a fully functional, albeit shorter leg. we’ll have some tough weeks ahead trying to keep a pit puppy calm and quiet when she’s feeling better but we are thrilled to have her in our life and looking forward to a lifetime with her.
