Our cockatiel, Hanabel died yesterday. I don't know how old he was. My son's girlfriend found him in her yard and she had cats - so she offered him to me. I took him, because I am a push-over for critters needing homes, and that is what I do. He was a great bird. He was friendly and sweet and he didn't yell at me like some birds (namely, our Nanday Conure, Bogey) who thinks he is some sort of king of our castle. I kind of think Hanabel was old. He was missing feathers on the back of his head. He was like that when I met him. The feathers just never grew back, but other than that he was a handsome bird.
I will miss Hanabel. He was a happy little guy, always offering a happy reception to us. He stopped perching yesterday morning and seemed to prefer eating from the seed he had knocked out of his dish. I put a small dish of water down for him and a soft towel with some seed. He ate a lot and then, sometime between 10:30 AM and 1:00 PM he just lay down, closed his eyes and died. I guess when it it time to go, that would not be the worst way to do it. I cleaned his cage and thought about passing it on to the parakeet, maybe after some of the memories have faded.
The UPS man brought us a package yesterday. One of the items is a new bed for Spirit. It is an air mattress called a "Snoozy Bed". We have another one that I got to replace Spirit's saggy foam rubber bed that no longer gives him enough support. Pirate likes that bed and Spirit was happy to keep his old bed.
I opened the package and located the little mouthpiece that I am supposed to use to blow up the bed. I got the bed layed out on the couch under the watchful eyes of Quest, Pirate and Journey. Spirit was comfortably asleep on his blue cot. I inserted the little mouthpiece thing in the mattress and started to take a deep breath to start blowing it up. I did not accomplish much as when I took my first breath, all three dogs tilted their heads in sinc. That made me laugh and I had to start again. This time I did not look at them. I began to blow into the mouthpiece and all three dogs suddenly jumped on top of me. It seemed they were trying to sit on my head and put their noses in my mouth and just going crazy about what they seemed to consider my odd behavior. I told them to sit and they did so - still in sinc - heads tilted to see what I was going to do next. The situation seemed impossible and I would have put them outside, had it not been raining so hard.
Journey, Quest & Pirate
I tried to act a little more stern and sent them to their beds in the window corner of the room. I made them stay there while I blew up the mattress. It is not as firm as I would have liked, but it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I put the sheepskin type cover on it and put it in our bedroom. Quest decided it was something he had always wanted and Spirit stayed in his favorite saggy foam rubber bed. Well, so much for Spirit's new bed.
A couple weeks ago I switched Journey's wire crate for a soft crate. It looks a little nicer in the bedroom, but best of all it does not hurt as bad if I stub my toes on it. The soft crate has zippered doors - one at the end and one at the side. Journey knows how to unzip the door. He doesn't open it at night, but in the morning I hear a soft little "zzziiippp" and in a moment a soft, warm puppy joins me in bed. I love it. Sometimes he goes out his doggy door first, then comes back inside and we go back to sleep.
Around 6:00 PM I remembered that I needed a few things from the store, and I wanted to pick up Spirit's prescription at the same time. The dogs were muddy and I took each one into the shower and sprayed their legs and feet. After towel drying them, we were ready to go, without much time to spare, as the pharmacy closes at 7:00 PM.
My dogs all love to go anywhere in the car. They normally line up nicely to get in the car. If they even suspect we may be going somewhere I cannot keep them out of the car. This time one of them started to go out of the garage. I called him back and instead of him coming back, all three somehow thought they detected something in my voice that indicated they should run down to the muddy fence race track, in the rain.
I helped Spirit into the car and started the engine, just so the others would know what they were going to miss. They all came flying back and I shut them in the pool house while scolding them. I was SO mad at them.
Spirit and I left the bad boys home and we went shopping. First we went to the pharmacy drive through, so the woman in the pharmacy could say hello to Spirit. She likes him. He sort of pretends not to notice that there is a woman on that small screen who knows his name. When he is in the car he is on "guard mode" and he considers it undignified to respond to a woman on a tiny screen who knows his name. That tickles her and she keeps talking to him. He eventually turns his back to her, but he ocassionally rolls his eyes back to see if she is still there.
Next I picked up a few groceries and made sure Spirit got some treats so the other guys would be jealous. When we got home they were just so glad to see us, they seemed to have no memory of anyone being bad. It has always seemed to me that once you teach a dog something and he obviously knows it well, you should not have to re-teach it. I was wrong. Like kids, if the lesson is not reinforced occasionally, they think you don't really mean it.
We are now waiting for another package from the UPS man. I ordered several long lines, in graduated lengths. We will be practicing recalls until they come as if their lives depend on it. You never know when that may be the case!
