All About Me and My Wonderful Animals
I thought I would never be writing a page titled about me but how else are you going to find out about my love of animals. I have had many animals in my life. When I was 7 years old, I started out having a collie named King. He was multi-colored Merle. I picked him out of a litter of Sable and White puppies. He was very shy and my father helped me name him. Six months later I had to give him back to the breeder because my parents divorced.
Then my mother and I lived in a small apartment in Kenton, Ohio. I found a little black and white puppy wondering the streets, lonely and scared. I picked him up and carried him home. On my way to my apartment I named him "Charlie Rich", that was my favorite singer at the time. (I was 10 years old and it was the mid- 70’s). My Mom told me I could not keep him because she was going out of town to Florida for awhile and I needed to walk the neighborhood to find his family. So I asked some of my friends to walk with me. We walked many blocks, knocking on many doors. No one either wanted him or owned him. So I took him back home. My mother called our cousins to ask if they wanted him and so they did take him, but they told me I could come visit "Charlie Rich" (they kept the name) anytime and I did visit him. After my Mom returned three months later, our cousins’ asked if we wanted "Charlie Rich" for my very own. We did take him back and finished naming him "Charlie Rich Cornwell". Then we found out from our Vet that his breed was called a “Border Collie”, which was considered one of the smartest dog breeds on the planet. "Charlie Rich" was my best friend and companion, since I was an only child. He protected me and my mother from strangers and even people that played with me too rough. After a few years, my mother decided to marry a man that lived in Georgia. So my mother, "Charlie Rich Cornwell" and I moved to Georgia in 1978, I was 14 years old. My step-father got my Mom a small "Lhasa Apso" puppy which was a fur-ball. My Mom named him "Baby Bear". Then my step-father decided he wanted to get all of us horses. He purchased two horses at first, a mother which was a chestnut color named "Sugar" about 14.8 hands high and her daughter a buckskin named "Pepper" about 15.2 hands high. Everyone thought "Sugar" was going to be the best of the two, she was not. "Sugar" ended up being barn-shy, which means, she would run the opposite way of the stables and try to throw her rider. "Pepper" had the most wonder temperament and she was very loving to everyone. All visitors to our home wanted to rider "Pepper" and they did. Well my step-father sold "Sugar" and purchased two other horses. A small female Appaloosa for my mother that was only about 14.5 hands high. My Mom named her “Mandy” from the song by “Barry Manilow” which by then was our newest favorite singer. I still can't believe I'm writing about me! My step-father also purchased a very young green-broke neutered male Appaloosa that was beautiful, but was ornery as he was gorgeous. Since I was small stature and light weight at the age of 16, my step-father decided he would have me finish breaking the horse. The horse’s name was "Kujoe", that might tell you how mean he was to me. I would sit on the saddled "Kujoe" and my step-father Tony would lunge him (my step-father would stand in one spot and have the horse tied to a long rope, then have the horse run in a circle around him with me in the saddle, along with the bit and harness on the horse). My step-father would snap a whip in the air (I promise NEVER HITTING THE HORSE), just using the sound to make him move. Then, after the horse became used to my weight and all the gear, we got rid of the wipe and I would just begin using the stirrups as a normal rider would do, UNTIL one day.
My step-father unhooked the line so I could ride him with-out the lunge line, that’s when "Kujoe" realized this, and he began to buck. He tried to buck me off, but I held tight around his neck with my arm and around his belly with my legs which had come out of the stirrups. When "Kujoe" finally stopped bucking, he realized I was still on him and that’s when I sat back into the saddle and into the stirrups. I gave him a tap on his front shoulder and he began to walk slowly around the pasture. He never tried to buck me off again. But he did get me back later. One day, I let him out to go to his feed bucket which was outside the pasture. As I opened the gate and stepped to the side for the horse to pass, "Kujoe" kicked up his back end and hit me in both knees. Thank goodness I was not standing stiff legged or he would have broken both of my legs right then. Always make sure you never get on the back end of a horses business, because they will kick. My Mom’s horse "Mandy" had a baby named "Snickles". My step-father also purchased another white Appaloosa, later on. They sold "Pepper" just before I moved out in 1983, when I moved to Missouri in January of 1984 with my husband. Can you believe this is about me? This is where the animals really become interesting. I missed my "Charlie Rich Cornwell" very much because he stayed on the farm with my Mom, so my husband decided he would get us the perfect apartment sized dog that was a little bit like a Border Collie but smaller. So he asked me if I knew what a Shetland Sheepdog was? I didn’t, but when I saw them, I fell "head-over-heal" in love with them. So, my husband, Nigel and I went to a breeder to pick-out the perfect puppy. We were able to see both parents on the property too. We picked out the most gorgeous female, Nigel named her "Sherry" after his first dog at his own parents’ house. "Sherry" was AKC registered, her colors were Sable and white. Her full AKC name was "Precious Sherry Shereece". "Sherry" was such a loving dog. She was playful, sweet, affectionate and cuddly. But, she seemed lonely. So one day our neighbor’s kitten needed to be watched for a few days. "Sherry" played "hide and seek" with the kitten. They played chase through our small apartment. Nigel and I laughed the whole two days. Then, the kitten went back home and "Sherry" seemed lonely again. That’s when Nigel suggested we should get a kitten. I was so excited, I was never allowed to really be around cats, my mother was afraid of cats since she was a young girl, even though she grew-up on a farm. So, Nigel suggested that I search the newspaper for the type of cat we would like to have. Both of us loved the movie (Alien from 1978) which there is an orange Tabby male cat named “Jones or Jonesy”. So, that’s what we went for, but we wanted a female Tabby cat. I found one for free in Independence, Missouri, which was about a 50 mile drive from where I lived. Yes, I drove that distance for a 6 week old orange Tabby kitten. I drove home with her crawling all over the vehicle and me, wailing all the while. By the time, I reached the apartment, I was crying, the kitten was clinging to me and we finally made it into the apartment. When I let her down on the floor and she saw "Sherry", she ran to her, cuddled up, snuggled close to her. After awhile, I calmed down and "Jonezy" followed "Sherry" around like her baby. (We named the kitten "Jonezy Wales", because she wailed all the way home in the car). Then we got all types of fish including tetras, neons, guppies, black mollies. But we developed great fondness for two types of specialty fishes. Betta or Siamese Fighting Fish: I had a special female named "Elizabeth" - she was called a Cambodian, her colors were cream body and red fins, tail and cheeks. I wanted to breed her and waited for a male of the same breed. Our great pet store finally got one in two years later. I named him "Patience", he was beautiful, but a few months after we got the male, it was a holiday weekend and the fish got a fungus and died. The stores then were closed on the holidays. Sad, I know “Sorry”. Now, about me and our "Big Boys". These were "Oscars". The Tiger Oscar was named "Tic" and the Red Oscar was named "Ret". Please don’t let anyone tell you that fish can’t have personalities! When it came to these two, they had major attitudes, I don’t mean if you just tap on the glass they come up to the glass and look at you. When changing the tank for the "Big Boys", we learned that if I did not talk to them as my husband brought them out of their fish tank, (by the way of using a trout net that my husband had won at a Ducks Unlimited Silent Auction), but with me talking gently to them each, they would lay on top of the net and not make a fuss and they would just be good boys, until their tank was cleaned. Then the process would begin again to place them back into the tank. Meanwhile, my husband and I accumulated two more Shelties, a male we named "Sir Reginald Chilton" (Reggie) and his sister we named "Lady Teela Quietstar" (Teela), Teela was actually a miniature of Reggie and Sherry, so she was considered to be a toy. Unfortunately, Teela was a chewer, she chewed up my shoes that I wore in my wedding. So, now we had in a small two bedroom apartment-3 Shelties, 1 orange Tabby cat, a 33 gallon fish tank with 2 Oscars about 5 ½ inches long, my husband and myself. In three months our family began to grow. My husband came home one day from work and asked me if I had ever heard of a Ferret, I told him I had not. So, we decided to find out more information about them as pets and then we searched for a breeder in Missouri. They were legal in Missouri, but not so in many other states back in 1986. When we found the breeder, she had a whole litter of young ferrets, but the one we picked out was the runt and the busiest. As we drove home, her little body curled up in my lap and she looked as if she were dead because I picked her up to carry her into the house and her body just went limp in my hands. Ferrets sleep 16 hours a day when they are babies or kits. But, here comes the fun Ferret stories and believe me, we have a lot of them. We named her "Missy Amoreena" or "Lil Am". She actually got along quite well with all the other animals in the apartment except for one and that was Teela. She taunted her constantly, only because she knew she could. One of Amoreena’s favorite games to play was “Blown up Balloons under the couch”. We would blow-up round balloons and watch her grab the tied end of the balloon and begin pulling it under the couch. The balloon would pop-out of her mouth and she would get angry and start doing the famous Ferret “War Dance”, then start screaming at the balloon. Also, Amoreena had her favorite toys, when we need to find her, we would squeak her cat toy porcupine and she would come running or if we figured she was sleeping with her other favorite soft cat-mouse toy, she could be found sleeping beside it in my husband’s underclothes drawer. Also, every two weeks we would have to shake the couch out to find lost items, which contained dog and cat food (since this was before there was ferret food). Ferrets are notorious for being hoarders. We thought the Ferret was our last apartment pet for awhile, until one day when my husband walked out to his car in the parking lot near the trash dumpster, when he spooked a mother cat carrying on of her young kittens. She dropped the kitten behind the apartment buildings in the grass. My husband walked over to look to see that it was okay, it was. He came to get me and asked me to keep an eye on it, to make sure no predators or other cats would not kill it and so the mother cat can come back for it. I went back to check on the little black kitten as it called out for it’s mother, it’s eyes were still closed, but it was an ugly little thing. But by the time night fell the mother cat had not returned so I brought the kitten into the apartment and my husband picked up a kitten can of kitten formula and bottle from the Veterinarian hospital in our town. We learned how to feed a new baby kitten and how to take care of it in other ways a mother cat would do. We named her "Sootie Saphire". It took our older cat "Jonezy" a while to get used to "Sootie". But when she did get accustomed to her, she treated her just like her own baby. I will have more about me later on about me, thanks! You can E-mail me with questions or comments about my website or pets at: sheila@mama-knows-pets.com
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