So I guess I didn't do too well with the unplugged part

Yes, I know that tonight was to be one of my unplugged nights. So was last night. Needless to say, I was plugged in both nights, last night to the TV to watch this movie (better than I thought it would be) and tonight to blog.

What's been going on? Not much really. More snow is on the way tomorrow which made me glad I snapped this picture earlier today. Can you see the buds just waiting to pop? It's been a tedious winter this year with snow, ice and cold temperatures. But the sight of this tree hoping against hope that Spring is on its way showed me that there is a teeny, tiny, pinprick of light at the end of this long, cold, dark tunnel.

Did you all see the lunar eclipse last night. I tried to take some pics of it but my super powerful 6x zoom was no match for 238, 900 miles between me and it. Some people did get some great pictures of it, though, and you can see some of them here and here. Beautiful and amazing.

I'll leave you with a short video of Pogo's daily workout. All it needs is "Eye of the Tiger" playing in the background! ;)

This might sound counter intuitive...

But, I was reading through Rebecca Sower's latest post on her blog and thought it was a great idea. So I've decided to go unplugged on the evenings of 2/20 and 2/21. I can't unplug at work - wouldn't be able to do anything - but I like the idea of spending two nights without turning anything on! Won't you join me? Leave me a comment letting me know!

Pictures of love, food and berries.

Some beautiful handmade mittens from Mom.


A delicious cherry pie made by me.



Last fall's bittersweet taken on my morning walk with Jack before the clouds rolled in.

Let's play catch up

When we last saw our intrepid hero, Pogo, he was fast asleep...





No, seriously, sorry I haven't been posting as regularly as I would like. So let's play catch up. Well, the snow I mentioned in my Wednesday post turned nasty especially up in N.H. where I work. We ended up losing power on Thursday at work because, I think, ice build-up was causing downed limbs. It was a nice Valentine's Day treat to get out of work early.

My sweet I. bought me the best Valentine's gift - a Matryoshka softie doll from Ella on Etsy.com. I have five that I've bought myself because they are so perfectly crafted - beautiful sewing, stuffed full of wool and made with the most colorful fabric. So what arrived for me from my sweet I.? Another beautiful Matryoshka - Godava. She is as perfect as the rest, but with two wee hearts sewn on the bottom of her since she was part of Ella's collection for Valentine's Day. Here she is with her five sisters.

If you're not familiar with Etsy, it's a terrific place to buy handmade goods. I have bought many things from various vendors from Etsy and all of the items have been of excellent quality. This is a picture of a softie dinosaur that I bought for I.'s niece for her birthday.
It came all the way from Scotland and couldn't be of better quality. Too cute!

So what's up with the pupperkinses you ask? Would only make sense that I give you an update since that's what the blog's about, right? They are all well, thank you.


Let me introduce you to Poochie next. I'm jumping around in acquisition order, but I'm trying to introduce them in order of most recent medical or behavioral issue. Some background on Poochie. We adopted him from PRNE in November 2006. Initially we were just his foster family. He had a sad story - he had been brought up from a shelter in South Carolina by a woman in MA who, at some point after she got him up here, gave him to an elderly friend/neighbor/acquaintance to care for. L. from PRNE was desperate to find a foster home for Poochie because the elderly gentleman who now owned him had placed an ad in the paper to sell Poochie. PRNE had been in contact with the owner since the Spring to try to gain ownership of Poochie and had gone back and forth with him about it. Finally, the owner agreed to give Poochie over to PRNE but there was some urgency in getting him out of the home ASAP so that someone else would not buy him through the newspaper ad. We had just put our Alex to sleep a month before hand and were not ready to adopt another dog but fostering sounded like a way to help out a dog who really needed some help.

When I met L. to pick up Poochie, she warned me that he had nipped at her when she went to the owner's house to pick him up. I tried to explain to L. that we had no experience fostering a dog with behavioral issue but since the situation was so dire I took him home anyway. After much help from a trainer and the wonderful folks at Tufts Behavior Clinic Poochie eventually came to be comfortable enough with us to become a permanent member of our family. He has very poor vision because of cataracts and sees a specialist for that. She is terrific, too. Anyway, recently Poochie has increase the frequency of biting us. He never really stopped nipping but the frequency of it goes in cycles, it seems. When he gets either scared or overwhelmed by the other dogs barking at something he lashes out. He bites I. more frequently than me but I am not spared his wrath. I. and I need to be more consistent in talking to Poochie when we're going to approach him and do so more slowly I think. Plus we need to give him more frequent positive reinforcement when we open the sliding glass doors in the kitchen (which is a major trigger for biting) and Poochie doesn't go crazy. It's the consistency that's important. We need to commit to that. He's on medication which does help but I'm thinking that we need to work on some behavioral methods before we start looking at changing his medications. Anyone have any other suggestions?

We'll be up to date as soon as I tell you that today Mom, Dad, I. and I had a delicious Valentine's Day lunch at the Jenkins Inn in Barre, MA. The food was delicious. I had the Russian Tomato Cabbage Soup and the Lobster Ravioli followed by the Chocolate Tapioca Pudding. All of it scrumptious.

Well, there we are. Thank you for bearing with me as I gave you the update and with all the pictures. Still loving my new toy!

Thank you...

I really can't thank you enough for all your visits to Pogo and Friends and for your kind comments. And A.C. out in S.D., I don't think your leg looks like a string bean! :)

So, in one of the comments someone wondered about how long we had been rescuing dogs. I guess it's been since 2002. I've had four rescue dogs in total, not including Jack who showed up in the back yard, all through PRNE. Charlie, aka Mo Mo, was my first rescue dog. I don't have any pictures of him on this computer but if I find a digital one of him somewhere in my disks from my film camera, I'll post it. Charlie was found walking on the side of the Mass Pike. He was pretty much totally blind, deaf and had sustained a hind end injury at some point in the past, leaving him with impaired mobility. However, his spirit was intact and he couldn't have been sweeter. Just give him his snuggle ball, food and keep him warm and he was content. I had him for about a year and a half when he suddenly developed seizures which the vet believed were caused by a brain tumor. Rather than put him through surgery or other treatment, which had no real guarantee of working, I made the hardest decision and had him put to sleep. It was terrible but I knew I had no real option.

Since then, I've adopted Pogo, Alex, and Poochie. You'll get to know all of them in time. Rescuing these dogs is about the best thing I've done in and with my life. They are grateful in so many little ways that you can sense when they look at you or climb up on your lap. Truly, they are all gifts.

Look what other gift showed up on my doorstep last night in the snow! A plate of my favorite-of-all-time cookies! The cookie fairy must have been working overtime yesterday. They are delicious. Thank you, cookie fairy! Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of them until I had already devoured two of them!

Happy Valentine's Day Eve. Wishing you all love and kisses - human, dog and chocolate.

Wow, did it snow!

Just wanted to put up a picture I snapped on my way up to work today. The snow squalls from yesterday laid a blanket of snow on Mt. Monadanock. I've never seen it entirely covered with snow, although I've only been working in NH since July. Even with the bigger storms we had, though, just the top looked covered. The snow must have clung to the trees this time around, leaving it draped in white.

Thank you for the comments you've left. Good questions for my next post. Dinner's almost ready tonight so I have to sign off but I'll be back with answers to your questions tomorrow!

Night. Keep warm.

My new toy and a new treatment for Bear

I. bought me my first digital camera a year or so ago and I loved it. It is a Cannon Elf. I've been trying to take pictures more frequently and so started using it regularly and came to find that without a tripod, it was very difficult to get a good quality picture because of the motion of the camera. So last weekend, I bought myself a Sony Cybershot with Super SteadyShot. LOVE it. The SteadyShot makes a huge difference, as do the 12.1 mega pixels. Plus, I'm finding that the Sony picture software is superior to Cannon's although I use Picasa almost exclusively. Today, I bought a Memory Stick Reader so that I can plug the camera's memory disk into it and take it anywhere.

Weird weather this weekend. Yesterday started out sunny and later, it snowed. Today started sunny again, then a brief but fierce snow squall followed by more sun. It was warm enough so we were able to get the snow off the driveway and sidewalk but by the time we did, it was so wet as to be incredibly heavy. I. and I are now exhausted from it and I imagine I will have very sore arms tomorrow. A good reason for some lovely hot chocolate with nonpareils.

I thought I would also take space in blog posts to bring you up to speed on Pogo and his friends. We'll start with Bear. Bear is an apricot miniature poodle who I've had for over 9 years now. Before I knew better (or at least knew how horrible the conditions can be in puppy mills) I bought him from a pet store in Leominster. He was four months old when we brought him home which was very old for a puppy in a pet store. His birthday is June 10th and this year, he'll turn 10. Not that you would know it to look at him or watch him run around.

We have been very fortunate that all of our dogs, especially Bear, are in excellent health. Bear's only health issue is colitis which flares up from time to time. He had taken metronidazole int the past which had did great things for his colitis but which also, we believe, caused him to have jaw tremors. He was having colitis issues again so we took him to the vet last Monday and Dr. O'Neil gave him sulfasalazine which is an alternative medication for dogs that can't tolerate metronidazole. So far, it seems to be working well for him. Just something to consider if your dog suffers from colitis.

The wind has kicked up and it's rattling the windows. I actually like the sound they make when they rattle but certain members of the friends, particularly Jack, do not find it pleasing at all. I hope that it will not be a long night marked by barking and more barking. Wish us luck and peace.

The first post

I'm starting this blog as a way to share our day-to-day with anyone out there who might be interested. I. (my dear husband) and I have five dogs, yes, five. A mini poodle, Bear, a toy poodle, Pogo, a papillon, Maddie, and two "hybrids", Jack and Poochie. Pogo, Jack and Poochie were all rescue dogs.


It is my experience that sometimes conflicting and confusing information about caring for dogs can be found all around. I'm hoping that this blog will be a way of sharing information about caring for dogs. I'll post information about our dogs and see what the blogosphere can share back.

Just a short post for today to say "hi" to all of you. Pogo and Jack has a busy day today being the faces of Poodle Rescue of New England (PRNE) at Especially for Pets in Acton. Mom and I manned a table there, giving out information about PRNE and hawking PRNE wares. Didn't raise too much money but I felt like we did a great job connecting with the customers. Mom also acted as the Jack wrangler when he felt that two HUGE golden retrievers got too close for comfort. Can't say enough nice things about the staff at Especially for Pets - just great, helpful pet lovers. Thank you!