Wow, Nina! What a crew of sweeties.

Do llamas have wool like alpaca? Those piggies sure are rotund! Piga are smart, aren’t they?

@hobbitmom you're so sweet! all of those animals are long gone but left me with wonderful memories. funny story about my goats. tuffy was my only horse for a while and thinking a goat would be nice to keep him company, i got one. every time i took tuffy out to ride, the silly goat would stand at the fence and scream. thinking a second goat would keep HIM company while tuffy and i were out on the trails, i got another one. i ended up with TWO goats screaming bloody murder at the fence so i decided, since there is virtually no traffic out here, i would just let them go with us on our rides. it kept them quiet and they were great company!

@marilyn_c my 3 rescued pigs were quite challenging. as you probably know, pigs bond very strongly with their people and uprooting them from their homes, even though it was in their best interest, presented problems. it took endless weeks of just sitting on the ground with a bowl of cheerios and tossing treats out until they got closer and closer and finally allowed me to touch them. once they were comfortable with being petted and fussed over, they became very friendly and actually pretty affectionate.

during the winter months, they each got a bowl of warm kool-ade every day which the loved! in the summer, they had 3 piggy pools. their favorite thing to do was bob for chunks of watermelon in the water.

Pets just don't live long enough, and there is such a huge emotional hole when they leave us.

I had little contact with my elderly parents when they died. (just the way it was.) I was able to say goodbye to them both when their time came, but to be honest, it had just a fraction of the gut-retching pain in my soul when my beagle Maxwell died. It was like a knife in my heart that was stuck and wouldn't go away. It's hard to admit, and it makes me sound awful, but it's the truth. I have a feeling that I'm not alone in this. I'm so very grateful that I have my beloved cat, Pooky, who is a laugh a minute, and so, so precious to me. Maybe that's what it's all about.

Beanie, our foster dog. She has to be an only pet, so it’s difficult to find a forever home for her. She has been with us for 10 months now, and we do love her to death. She is otherwise a perfect dog. Not destroying a single thing, and very cuddly.

It's hard to admit, and it makes me sound awful, but it's the truth. I have a feeling that I'm not alone in this.

oh, you definitely are not alone. over the years, every pet i have lost whether it was an oinker or a dog or a horse or, or, or, all had some sort of special connection with my late husband. most of them i acquired after he was gone but i remember him teasing me about "one of these days, i'm gonna come home from work and find a pig in the house!" he loved the mini boys and was so sad when he became too weak to be able to go out to visit them so i often brought them up on the deck just so he could see and pet them and give them treats. he had never been around horses before we got together but he learned to love them, too. losing every one of these pets was like losing him all over again.

@ Iris i admire you and anyone who can foster an animal and not get too attached to give them up. two of my past danes were foster fails, pretty much from the moment they walked through my door.

Petalique, I can do A Horse Named Wizard...I just posted it recently and I have the pictures. I am pretty sure I posted some of these stories here quite a few years ago, but I am happy to post them again, as I am able to find them. I know there was one called Devoted Friends about pigeons, and several about possums, and a few raccoons, and horses.

Yes, Jody was a commercial shrimper.

I met him when I was 12 years old...he moved to Texas from Florida to live with an uncle because his parents died. I went to a very small school... probably not much more than 140

students grade 1 - 12, so it was a big deal when a new kid arrived. Jody was really cute and instantly popular. I was a skinny tomboy with my hair in long braids...but he came to see me

(March 25, 1959...wrote it in my diary) because I had a horse. Little did he know he would marry me 7 years later, and buy me many horses. The first horse he bought for me was a half Arabian, for. Christmas, before we got married the next month. Jody was a very kind hearted man. He put up with a lot....from going with me to Ohio where I entered goldfish in a fish show and buying a bulldozer and digging 6 ponds for my waterlilies and koi. Plus countless animals that shared our lives. (I heard a psychic on YouTube say our pets wait on the other side and our departed loved ones care for them. I don't know that is so or not...all I could think was...I bet Jody wishes I would hurry up and get there!)

Ninapearl you are obviously a special kind of person. The story of the two screaming goats was hilarious… It says a lot about you that you listened to them.

Marilyn_c , such a wonderful story. I’d say Jody got a great deal! Lots of fun with a good loving wife and plenty of loving horses and others. I too was a tomboy and had braids. — until my mom decided to have a neighbor cut/hack our hair. Jody will be patient. You are needed here.

You must have gone shrimping with him? Bet it was a tad wet and messy. I used to lobster fish with my dad. Lots of fun but up and working way too early and lobster bait (the flayed carcasses of fish, salted in a barrel, smelled pretty bad. Even after washing clothes, ugh. Clothes had to be designated ”hauling clothes” the odor never left them — well maybe if washed 10 times and left in the sun for a month.

Tell me when you’re ready for A Horse Named Wizard.

PS You really drove to Ohio to enter a goldfish in a contest? That’s got to be one crazy story.

Nina and roxsol - you've lived my dreams! I used to wish I could have pet goats and little burros. That was back when I wanted pets, I don't really any more. The loss of my last kitty was almost too much to bear, even tho she had a good long life and passed peacefully.

I do think the overwhelming grief at the death of a pet has a lot to do with the fact that they cannot speak and their unspoken suffering seems extra tragic.

@petalique i think llama wool is more course than what alpacas have. there are "silky" llamas that have very long, flowy wool that's very soft and luxurious and much sought after for things like socks and sweaters.

i got my 2 llamas from a llama farm not far from me. the plan was myself and the breeder were going to teach them to pull a small 2-person cart. just weeks before we had planned to start their training, my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney cancer so our plans came to a screeching halt. i had so much on my plate caring for him, i eventually gave the llamas back to her where they lived out their lives. llamas are strange animals, not at all affectionate and most are very standoffish. still, they were unique and i enjoyed them during their time with me.

pigs are incredibly smart!! they can be taught all kinds of tricks and once they bond with you, they are very, very affectionate. winters here were challenging. i built little sheds for them inside the barn where i could put heat lamps. they're "tropical" animals and spent much of the winter months curled up inside. contrary to popular belief, pigs are also incredibly clean critters (very unlike goats, in my experience). they would absolutely not potty in their shed and would walk out as far away as they could get to do their business. during the winter months, i would go out and plow paths in the snow so they could get to their potty spots.

there's a *thing* called forking a pig. i used this method whenever it was time to trim their feet and/or tusks. as long as i was forking, they would lay completely still. it was hilarious and the first time i did this when the vet was here to trim feet, we laughed till we cried. he had never heard of it and later told me he often used this method when he was treating pigs for just about anything.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2VrWz4qE1ck

@liasch i'm not sure about "special", most probably thought i as a brick shy of a full load! 😂 there is a tiny country church just down the road from me. one sunday morning, i was passing by on my horse with the 2 goats in tow. services were ending and as people and children poured out the doors, there was much laughter and little kids squealing with delight. the goats were very friendly and enjoyed the attention!

Ninapearl, I’m sorry that your husband get dx’d so late. That is awful. Indeed you must have been so distraught and flat out. I’ll watch that pig forking video when I can. New to me.

Love the goats and the church kids story.

Just found a new one from our current guys - we've lived with Aussies for 26 years and these two boys are our 4th and 5th - probably our last because we're in our mid-70's now...we'll all hit 80 at the same time???

@petalique the diagnosis was definitely a gut punch. gary fought it for 21 months but that whole time he was so so sick from chemo and radiation.

lol, i seriously doubt many people have ever heard of pig forking. you can find several videos on youtube. i found out about it on an online pig forum and was shocked at how it worked. it actually acts like a tranquilizer. i often wondered who thought poking a pig with a plastic fork would be such a genius idea!

That was hilarious and truly amazing!!

@murraysmom being a horsewoman yourself, you know about "mutual grooming", right? you'll get a kick out of this...

i used to ride tuffy around town occasionally before i moved to the country, almost always bareback. back in the late 70s, when the illinois river was on the verge of flooding, there were troops of national guardsmen here to help with sandbagging. they stayed in one of the local church basements. many of them were city guys who had never been up close to a horse. i was riding by the church one morning and several of the guys came out wanting to pet the horse. i told one of them to stand with his back to tuffy's face and he'd get a back massage. while he stood there wide-eyed wondering what was going to happen, i started scratching tuffy on his withers. he promptly stretched his neck out and started nibbling at the soldier's back. the harder i scratched, the harder he nibbled. much laughter ensued and before i knew it, there was a line of men waiting their turns for a back rub. tuffy didn't disappoint, he was truly in his glory getting so much attention. 😂

Ninapearl! That’s amazing. I wonder why it works? Who came up with this idea?

There is something that people can do to live lobsters. Who know if it actually hypnotizing them or what it does.

First, you cannot be afraid to pick up a live lobster. No Annie Hall hysterics.

On a level, stable surface, stand the lobsterin its head, its arms and claws positioned ventrally. stroke the lobster’s back. The lobster will stay in this position.

ETA Put something nearby so that if lobster moves, it does not fall over or crash to the floor.

too funny! that's another one of those things that makes you wonder how it was discovered.

horses practice mutual grooming often. you will see them standing next to each other facing in opposite directions, nibbling on each other. i think it's mostly a sign of affection among herd mates. but if there is another animal or person close enough for a horse to reach, they will automatically try to "groom" them. any time i was paying attention to tuffy, the goats would gather around wanting their ears scratched. oftentimes, tuffy would nibble them if they were close enough.

Petalique, actually we drove to Ohio twice to enter goldfish....Akron, Ohio had the largest all species fish show in the US...at least at that time...in the mid to late 1970's.

I got interested in goldfish and koi about the same time I got interested in water lilies. Around 1967. I am an all or nothing person....I am either crazy beyond all comprehension about something, or have no interest whatsoever. I collected varieties of fancy goldfish. I had 16 varieties and 22 aquariums. I had a "fish house"....a building in the backyard where most of my aquariums were, Also a few inside the house. I raised commons, comets, and shubunkin goldfish in my lily tanks. Years later I had a greenhouse with lily tanks and raised telescope goldfish...like black moors, but I also had gold, red and white, bluescale, black, solid white, calico and even a couple of albinos.

I raised mostly orandas and took some orandas I raised to Ohio. Didn't place, but I showed mine because I spawned them, and to me, that was important, because most fish, people bought theirs. Fancy goldfish are not cookie cutter fish like most tropical fish. They have to have perfect double fins. When you spawn them, you get a lot of fish that aren't perfect. I found homes for them, and I wrote a story about some I gave away called Grandma's Goldfish.

I did shrimp with Jody, but I never was very crazy about it. You have to get up too early. When we first got married I went with him to Louisiana to be his deckhand. We shrimped on the Gulf beach, and stayed out a week at a time. We anchored up near a bayou at night and town was several miles up a bayou. I had never gotten seasick before that, and I was pretty miserable. I got a ride home to get our car and he hired a 16 yr old boy to deck for him. His parents were running a boat for someone, and they left and went to Florida, and left the boy behind, but he was good help and I stayed in the bunk most of the time.

Mosquitoes were horrible and I sat up most nights... couldn't sleep. I look back on those times with fondness now though.

Instead of posting Wizard's story first, I would like to do The Impossumables, because I know where that one is, and I don't have to hunt for it. It would give me a few days to find Wizard's Story. It is a happy story.... Wizard's is sad.

My current ride. Tried to find a better picture but this is all I had on the PC. Last Halloween.

An example of mutual grooming that Ninapearl was talking about. This is Rita and Primo. Both passed over the Rainbow Bridge now. Primo was a huge horse. Unlike some of my horses, he got along well with all of the others.

Not mine, but I walk this dog every chance I get. I love him to pieces and vice versa. If anything happened to his owners I'd take him in a heartbeat

Marilyn, I look forward to reading your stories. Have you thought about trying to get some published? It sounds like it would be a project worth doing.

Not really. I had a FB friend who was an artist and wanted me to write a book and she said she would illustrate it. However she posted on her page, if you are Republican, unfriend her. I consider myself conservative....used to be Democrat. So I did. We had never talked about politics. I had sent her lots of very nice water lilies, and I am sure my politics didn't matter then.

Anyway, I don't have much interest in a book. I enjoy sharing the stories,

because hopefully people look at some animals a little more kindly. My favorites were always the least favorites of most people...like possums and armadillos and skunks. And pigeons. Really, I like all creatures. I grew up with a lot of pets...I had a horse, dogs, cats, a sheep, a goat, and my mother had chickens and all kinds of poultry. I was the youngest by 16 years... brothers and sister were grown and gone by the time I was old enough to notice, and tho I had friends, I spent a lot of time by myself and I have always felt close to animals.

Foxy was born feral, and we rescue him off the street. He's now nine years old.

marilyn, you rock!! i can't imagine taking care of that many aquariums all at once!

such a sweet photo of rita and primo. 💖

Charley at Christmas. The tissue is what wraps the ornaments in the tote. He loved playing in the paper. He was a soul mate. If I was at the computer, he was there. At night, he slept at my head. If I turned over, he did. He moved on 7-15-2019. We looked at each other for a week before I could get one of the rescue people to Petsmart to adopt. He was 5 months old.

Ninapearl, I am a shadow of my former self....I couldn't do everything I did back then, but also, I didn't have my daughter until 1980, after being married for 15 years.

But...we had a water well....unchlorinated, so the fish needed 20,% partial water changes every week or so, so I just siphoned the bottom of the tanks and topped them off. Except for adding a little salt, I didn't treat the water.

So many heartwarming stories and experiences you all shared. Here is my 40lb, so called mini aussie, Bewr. He was rescued in Bend Oregon, the he immigrated to Canada. The doggi beside him was Pasco, guess where was from? Pasco went over the rainbow bridge due to cancer and $$$ helping him through it. He was 8.

Though we love Bear, he has a bad habit of waking us up 2-3 times a night, we let him ot and he just stands at the door. yet, he is a perfect angel when he goes for sleep overs atDD.Where he sleeps thr night through by the font door. At home, he sleeps on our bed or jumps to the floor.

if anyone has ideas, much appreciated. Yes, he is active during the day, has plenty of exercise, we put him out at bedtime 10pm. He is 10yrs old

I am a shadow of my former self.

hooo boy, i can SO relate to that!! i'll soon be 75. there are days, especially the cold/damp ones, where every movement is painfully slow but as my dear husband used to say, at least i'm still on this side of the dirt!

this is a picture of a portrait i had taken when my 2 siberian huskies were young. they were great dogs but very work-intensive. i had a friend with malamutes and we used to take our dogs sledding any time there was sufficient snow. fun times!

Ninapearl I turn 75 in a couple of months too. This gastrocnemius pull I've been dealing with has really woke me up to how older I am compared to what my silly juvenile brain says. But I'm moving ahead. Found a great physical therapist to help and I'm optimistic.

oh for sure, things like that take so much longer to heal when the golden years sneak up on us. glad p/t is working for you. have you thought about acupuncture? that's the only thing that has given me pain relief for a QL muscle injury.

sometimes i think if i hadn't been quite so hard on this body in my younger days, maybe i wouldn't be dealing with all of the aches and pains of today. i guess i shouldn't be surprised that throwing around 60# bales of hay for decades would age me so quickly. but then, i would've missed out on so much fun!

Ninapearl, I am 79 and I thought as long as I handle these 50 lb bags of feed on almost a daily basis, I will always be able to. Wrong. It does get harder. Sometimes I can do it, sometimes I have to drop them on the barn floor and try to drag them to the feed barrels, prop it up and dip it out. I have a feed room, but I can't use it for that because it requires me to step up to get in it and I can't step up holding 50 lb. I have a wash area for the horses, which I don't use, so feed barrels are there.

Ninapearl, great story about the mutual grooming. So funny to see something like that with people in the mix.

Fellow horsewomen, I will be turning 75 this year too. I haven't hoisted a 50lb. feed bag for about 10 years but always considered that a badge of honor that I actually could do that. It's so hard to accept the physical limitations of getting older, when like Wildchild, my mind still thinks I'm 25. When my mom was 80 years old I asked her how old she felt mentally and she said 25!! It must just be the human condition.

Ninapearl, I think being "so hard on this body" is actually what has kept me being able to do the things I still can do. I'm definitely not a disciplined person so I am clinging to what strength I still have. Sometimes I pay for this stubborness with a sore back but it usually bounces back in a day or two.

It's good to know that I am in such good company and Wildchild, good for you for continuing to ride. I admire your pluck.

You ladies are an inspiration. I want to be you in 10-15 years. Role models. ❤️

Neighbor's dogs. I've known the Dalmatian (Wally-boy) since puppy-hood. The other (Miss Maya) is a rescue from the deceased neighbor next door to one of his rental properties. They love crunchy bonie-snacks at the fence.

76 here, live alone, burn wood to supplement oil; my hats off to you bag throwing ladies 🥰…acupuncture from physio is working well on knee joints. Recommend.

I would still ride if I had a dependable, gentle horse, and that was the intention for every horse in the last 15 years. Starting with Bane...who I was told was an Amish owned horse. As a paint, he was too flashy to be a buggy horse, but I thought maybe they trained him to sell. I know they are hard on their horses (to say the least) but figured he would have good ground manners. Ha! I don't know who did it to him, but he had been so abused that he was dangerous to be around. Afraid of everything. I worried that he would freak out and run into the bayou. I put him in a separate pasture and gave him a donkey companion. That really did help him. Not to the extent I would risk my life to ride him...if I got injured, I could end up in a nursing home, and my life as I know it, would pretty much be over.

I can't get the pic of Bane and Amos to load...will try it later.

See that mark on Bane's shoulder? It looks like a tomahawk or an axe. I have tried to find info on him by posting his picture on some FB pages that are for searching for horses to learn their background or to find a horse they may have sold in the past. So far, no results.

When I got him, he had a bad skin disorder. The vet prescribed medicated baths. The first time I went to bathe him, he totally flipped out. I wasn't willing to let him kill me...I knew once his overall condition improved, his hair coat would improve...which it did. One day I was filling the water trough and he was standing there, acting like he wanted a bath. I very carefully started spraying him with the hose. He loved it. Obviously had been bathed a lot in the past. He also loads in a trailer very easily....so someone at some time did things with him that makes me think someone cared about him. I care about him....he has calmed down a lot and he doesn't have to endure trauma any more. He can just be a horse and that's all required of him.

That is the greatest feeling in the world - to be able to give a horse the life of just being a horse. Even though I rode Teddy every chance I got, he spent the majority of his last 7 years being out in a 30 acre pasture with about 10-11 friends, 24/7. I worried when I moved him to that farm about his being out 24/7 at his age of 20, but I read up about it and found out that that was the very best thing you can do for a horse, especially a senior horse. We both were very happy.

teddy was a gorgeous boy! to my way of thinking, horses in their teens and even early 20s are the perfect age for both beginner and seasoned riders. as long as they have been well cared for throughout their lives, they have many, many good years left in them!

i bought chips when she was 16. she was a 4-H horse that belonged to family friends. when the kids outgrew her, she ended up being kept in a very small pasture with a bunch of farm pigs. when i found this out, i asked to buy her thinking i'd just put her out to pasture with my gelding and let her live out her life. to my delight, she was always raring to go and turned out to be the best trail horse i ever had.

she was unflappable, nothing scared her, she delighted in jumping over logs across the trails, was 100% responsive to leg cues, neck reined like a fancy cutting horse, walked through belly deep water with zero problems. i rode her bareback a LOT because she was so trustworthy. we once came to a ditch in the field and as she trotted across, scared up a whole covey of quail. she never missed a beat!

i could put a small child on her back and she wouldn't move a muscle but i could get on her and she would arch her pretty neck and prance like a princess all day long.

she was as gentle as the day is long. she lived to 38 and it was only during her last couple of years that i did not ride her. to this day, i miss her.

Just got a new grand kitty!!!

Looks like my Willie

Ischia – our first cat - she is named for the island of Ischia. She was actually born on the island of Ischia and was ‘smuggled’ in plain sight from Italy to NYC in the early 1980s. At the time, my future wife had a long-time-planned family trip to visit relatives on the island. She asked if I would house-sit her dog Sasha (female Akita) – I said ok – what could go wrong. While she was away the first of the Tylenol murders occurred – I frantically tried to contact the travelers – eventually letting them know about Tylenol. My honey then told me to prepare for some heavy-duty delousing – ‘I’m coming home with a cat.’ She was smitten by a flea-bitten stray kitten that followed her home one evening after dinner – her Ischian aunt swatted it out of the doorway with a broom. The Americans were going home the next day and she decided to take the cat if it was still around. One thought was to drop-off the cat at the Colosseum (tourists feed strays) but that didn’t happen. The kitten went into a shoebox – travelled to Naples - to Rome where the ticket agents had a good laugh (in Italian – look at what the stupid American has in the box). In the good ole USA – NYC - the customs official asked ‘what’s in the box?’ – ‘a cat’ was the reply – ‘OK, go ahead’ said the agent. The rest is history – we eventually got her cleaned up and she stayed with us a long time – she had a great appetite. This probably could not happen today.

what a great story and that's one lucky kitty!!

@Ninapearl – I also have a lucky story!

Lucky – named so because she was lucky. Long ago, we were out for dinner – the restaurant was located across from a bus barn. We parked right outside the restaurant – it had started snowing and we noticed a cute cat by the car. I bent down to pet the cutey and my honey said ‘don’t touch that cat.’ We had dinner and when we came out of the restaurant (still snowing) the cat was laying on the warm hood of the car. We grabbed her into the car and took her home – soon after we took her to the vet for a check-up and here’s where it gets really good – she was pregnant. We learned how to make a birthing box real quick and isolated her from the other in-house animals. The first thing I did every morning upon waking was check the box – several days later there were four little kittens with mom – I still remember the shock. Lucky!

What great story!

And that reminds me of a kitten I found that had abscesses on his abdomen. I took him to the vet, who lanced them....he already had maggots in them. When I picked him up at the vet, he was still groggy. I had to stop at Kroger's on the way home. I didn't want to leave him in the car, so I wrapped him in a baby blanket. A woman said to me...about my "baby", "Oh, that is a tiny one."

(I had him completely covered up....this was many years before 'emotional support animals' made the scene.)

I said, "oh, yes...

practically an embryo."

raymond kitties seem to find you like great danes find me. 😊

@Ninapearl - I think you are right - I posted a photo of our Big Foot earlier in this discussion - this is how we got him:

Big Foot - he was a stray cat that started showing up at our family-room sliding back door on summer nights. We were impressed as he would jump up under the house light and grab moths with his big paws. I said to the missus ‘we should take him in’ – ‘no way’ was the reply. Shortly after, the cat stopped coming around – I shamelessly shamed the missus – ‘he was probably hit by a car and we won’t be seeing him any time soon.’ Then one night weeks later he appeared again – we opened the door – he came in and lived with us a long time. He was the sweetest cat – he became mayor of the neighborhood – he would sit at the head of the driveway and let passing-by children give him a pet.

I found an estimated 4- to 6-wk-old hiding under the mower on my patio in Sept 2024. Grown up to be a beautiful kitty-girl. Named Grayson after actress Grayson Hall of Dark Shadows fame. Stays inside so she doesn't get re-exposed to fleas and such. She was diagnosed with uroliths/cystic calculi (bladder stones) at the yearly exam two months ago so is now on the $$ Hill's Prescription food. I have a history of kidney stones so maybe she caught it from me!

My sister was looking to rescue a dog and ended up with this instead. Super friendly but has some issues that might have contributed to an estimated 7 years or so in and out of ”the system.” Pictured below as I stopped by to feed him today. Unfortunately the first attempt at introducing him to my dog went absolutely horribly, he ended up on gabapentin so he could relax and pee again. A prior feline encounter left another cat with a stress-induced bladder infection. I’d like to work on this but I can’t keep sending cats to the vet while we try! Anyway here’s today’s kitty.