It's A Kind Of Russian Cheese Bread, My Third Installment In A Sob Story About Dogs

I know this post is long, but hey stick with me.

So where was I.... ah yes, India had just died, and we were in America. So yet again it came time for us to move back to Russia (MK life is exciting huh, all this moving around) we needed to find a new house, so we lived on the streets for 2 months.

Yeah, Im just kidding, nott funny? Okkk...erm anyhoo, our friends the Brobergs let us stay in their house since they were still going to be in America for another 2 months. Which was totally awesome, it would have been such a hassle to try and rent an apartment for 7 people O.o.

The Brobergs have this amazing dog named Jack, like Jack Sparrow, Jack the Pumpkin King, Jack and Jill ran up the hill- you get the picture. While they were in the States (yes I very often call it The States instead of America, hey your talking to a person who thought Maine was next to that glove state. Don’t judge me) they left Jack at their house, yeah he babysat himself for 5 months, he's cool like that. Yes they did have someone come and feed him you silly goose. He's an outside dog, so he has total and utter free range. They have a huge yard, but enough is never enough right? He gets out ALL the time. And while we were there it was to hang with his lady friends.

yup.

thats Jack, Haillie Broberg, and my little sister Aubrie

So I'm (that’s me Madi) just sitting here, minding my own business, doing school and all, OK FINE, you caught me, I was secretly reading Inkheart, (you know the old hide your fun book inside of your boring science book) what can I say, I was hooked, that series was awesome! So I'm reading when all of a sudden I see a brown fuzzy thing slide across the floor out of the corner of my eye.

Heart attack, and of course think OH MY WORD ITS GWEN. I READ HER OUT OF THE BOOOK!!!!!! (Ferret like character in inkheart, a book about a girl reading things out of books yaddayadda)

It was a little brown splotchy puppy, eyes only just opened, I have got to say cutest thing ever, and it just fell out of the sky, I mean literally, how the stink did it get in my room? (Or rather Haillie Broberg’s) Dad walks in laughing, and saying, “There's more where that came from!” Me and my sisters rush outside trailing behind him like, well, puppies! (oH man AM I CHEESY!) Inside of the drainage pipes that runs under the dirt road, were 4 puppies all curled up, you know that awkward dog pile puppies do? you know what I'm saying.....anybody?

that little fuzz ball.

Turns out these 5 puppies were Jacks, way to go buddy.( we later found out there was one more way back in the pipe, but he had died) The mom, was, I am not even kidding, a three legged dog. She was missing one leg, and part of the other. And she was now going to have to deal with 5 puppies, talk about a stay at home mom.

I have more pictures of all of them on a hard drive in Russia.

So we took care of those puppies every day, it was pretty fun. We had boxes and boxes of milk that was going bad that we could feed them, so that was no prob. Me and Tasha Wilson even built a fort for them, that if we laid down we could both fit in as well, it was pretty sweet, until it rained….and the fort fell apart, us being forced to run back through the rain hauling 5 puppies.

And we named them all! The one (they are all mutts so they ALL looked different) that looked like a German Shepard; we named her Lucy, like Narnia, or Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. The yellow one, (or should I say blonde????) we named Lemony Snicket, like the Author. (I was a little obsessed at the time). The grey and white one, he looked kind of like a husky, we named Wolverine, Duhhherrr. The Reeses colored one with a stub of a tail, who looked like a bull dog...hahaha she really did, we named her Indiana Jones. BOOYA. Dude these dogs had amazing names, well, all but the last one, the last one was a bit of a calico. And adorably fluffy, so we named him Mr.Fluffers....no, no one would go for that ( I KNOW, it would have been awesome) it was taking some time to decide his name, and we'd basically decided on Chewy, short for Chewbacca, when the Brobergs came back. We all lived in there house like one big happy family for another week or so, yes, that would be 9 kids, can you spell hectic? Me either....

Lemony Snicket

Chewy

Soon after came Jimmy. Jimmy started a lot of things. Like refusing to let me, Haillie and Noah Broberg cook our pizza on the road when the power was out. So we resorted to licking all the slices because we thought he was being unfair. HAhahaha, yes I laugh, THAT DOES not mean I am proud of what I have done (hehehheh :D) Another thing he started, was calling the dog Duncan khachapuri (Hot chee pori) Khachapuri, is a Russian cheese bread. Haha, that’s not random at all. So in his maniacal ways, he got every child under the age of 10 (that would be all but 3 of us) to chant Duncan KhachepurriiiiiIIIII!!! In a sing song voice kind of like "NacchhoooOOOOOOOO" From Nacho Libre. It was even more obnoxious then getting told that we don't know how to build an A frame and aren't a loud to use our creative means of heating pizza -___-

So the dogs were named, and we were all one big happy family.

THE END.

What do you mean I said it was a sob story?

Well, fine if you want it to be one, I'll finish the story.

(I gotta wrap this up its getting long O.o)

It came time to give the puppies away before they were grown up and really looked like mutts. Indiana Jones (my fav. girl) and Lucy, went to an American couple in Nalchik. Lemony Snicket went to our friends the Behimers they have 4 kids, so that was perfect. Wolverine, was hard to give away, he was the one I wanted to keep, but rest of the family liked Mr. KhachepurriiiiiII. We gave him to some Russian guy.

We kept Duncan, and officially named him Chewy, the Behimers couldn’t take Lemony yet so we watched him too. And, we got a new house! Everything was going great, it was a perfect sized house that we managed to live in for 3 years (I believe that’s a record) the first year there were workers living in the back house, and junk ALL over the yard, it was a total mess, they even dug a huge hole in the middle of the front yard, why? So that they could BURY all the garbage, gee that made gardening an adventure -_-

Chewy at our new house.

lemony at the new house

Dad even found me this great blue bookshelf out near a dumpster! (um helloooo, that’s cool) Unfortunately, that is what led to the sob story. Chewy had been missing for a while, so we’d asked the workers to tell us if they saw him, they told me and mom that they’d found him. When we came outside the bookshelf had fallen over, and Duncan was trapped underneath. But it was too late, his arm had been trapped in his mouth and he couldn’t breathe. Story goes that Lemony had jumped on top of one of the many pieces of the workers equipment sitting near the bookshelf, climbed up on that, and toppled it onto Chewy. I was glad my sisters hadn’t come outside with me and mom. It was kind of a sad sight. We wrapped him up in a box, and mom took him away. Took the girls awhile to get over him.

Hey, you asked for the sob story.

India Opal, The Weasel? The Second Installment in a Sob Story About Dogs

So after the Buddy ordeal,

 We moved back to Russia, this is 2005, only this time we moved to Krasnodar Russia, before this, we had been living in Moscow, the City of Always Winter Never Summer.

 I came home from a friend’s house one day, and the first thing I’m asked to do when I walk in, is to go flush the toilet because my little 5 year old sister was still potty training and had forgotten. Groan, Cady and Aubrie grinned at me elfishly and giggled (yes elfishly, just play along ok?). And they all followed me as I trudged to the bathrooms, Why doesn’t she just flush it herself?!. I open the door, and there sliding all across the floor on wrinkled up paws is a little Dachshund, aka wiener dog. I've never been a very big fan of little dogs, what can I say, I like big dogs and I cannot lie. But this thing was still a puppy, absolutely precious.

 And of course I wanted to name it coconut. Umm why, I don’t know, go back in time and ask 9 year old me. So after a big family discussion we all agreed to naming her India Opal, after the main character in a book I’d just read, Because of Winn-Dixie.... mom made me read the book before I could see the movie...up that's how it works in this family.

 For the most part she was a joy…..that is until she decided to eat 3 bags of butterscotch chips, yes the lovely kind from America that you can NOT get in Russia. She threw up everywhere. Mom to this day cannot eat butterscotch anything.

 I have this friend, and he used to call India, “My little weasel!” yeah I think he liked her…. I have to admit though in a way, the name fit. After all we did discover that she was also part Toy Terrier, the Babushka who sold her to us seems to have said purebred on accident, I’m sure.

 

 We lived in a duplex, which meant that our landlord’s house was connected to ours, so we all shared the same yard. One day while us kids were outside on Plum Patrol (that’s another story) the landlord decided to let Genevieve off her chain, now she was a huge Saint Bernard. So my sisters and I are going crazy because we think that this mammoth of a dog is going to eat India. We are yelling our heads off, Cady is crying, and Genevieve is slowly meandering towards us. We’re flailing our hands about totally freaking out; the thought of running inside didn’t even cross our minds. Then dad runs out screaming, “WHO’S HURT?! WHAT HAPPENED?” Yeah, he’s standing there in his towel; apparently he had heard all the screaming from the shower and thought one of us had fallen off something and broken our neck. He wasn't too happy.

  I used to make India dance, we could have started our own act, all you had to do was hold something edible over her head and she started dancing! Speaking of edible, once on Cady’s eighth birthday we set the cake a little too close to the side of the table, India managed to jump up there and eat half the cake…..Happy Birthday!

Before we were headed back to America, end of 2007, we were moving out of our second house in K-dar, another duplex. And a new American family, the Gardners, were moving in. So like a nice family we were showing them around and of course, the one day we have nice American guests who want to rent a nice none rat infested house, India does something obnoxious. She catches a dead rat, and places it in the middle of the carpet……

Wait maybe the cat did this….

I don’t really remember….

I just thought it was funny….

 Anyhoo, to wrap things up, we went to America for what was to be a year, and a few months into it, we got an email saying that India was bit by a snake, her nose swelled up she couldn’t breathe, and soon after died. Yes, very sad. There were many noses being blown in our household that day….

I couldn't help it, JUST LOOK, at this picture.....Ohhhhh it’s so great....

Stupid The Dog: The First Installment in a Sob Story About Dogs

I have had 5 dogs that were officially mine. It could be quite a few if you add the litters of street puppies me and my sisters have taken in. The first dog's name was Stupid; no we didn't name him that. We used to live in a cabin in the woods of Texas (we call them woods they're really just mazes of thorns, cacti ,and snakes) Driving up to this cabin you pass a small camp ground, that's where we met Stupid, every time we drove by he would chase after our car. He LOVED chasing cars. He was a pretty dog too, well, for a mutt. Black with a big white spot on his chest. Eventually dad figured that this dog would just get hit by a car if he kept going on like this, so he found the owners to ask them about the dog. They said that the dog's name was Stupid for a reason, and they could care less about the mutt. So later that afternoon Dad drove up to where me and Cady sat playing with the kittens (yeah we had about 15 of those, but that’s another story, and no I am not a crazy Cat Lady) in the front sitting next to him sat Stupid. They'd let dad keep him. So of course being the creative children we are, we named him Buddy. Buddy was amazing, and we loved him to death. He was the only dog I knew who insisted on eating cat food; I swear he wouldn't eat his dog food! But that’s fine enough, the cats didn't mind him eating out of their bowl, they loved him. I would often come up and find them all curled up together. Sadly one of the things that made him so great was also the reason we lost him. Buddy was a great dog to take fishing; it’s like he really knew what was going on! He would bark and play all the way down to the dock, but once down there he would lay down at your feet intently watching the water, not making a sound. Maybe that was him agreeing with me, that fishing was just about the most boring sport ever. We went to Fort Worth for the week and came back to hear from our neighbors that the original owners, Uncle, had come fishing and Buddy had tagged along. The guy was so amazed by Buddy he kept him. That was pretty crushing. I now understand that it was for the best, he has a good home, with a fence to keep him from chasing cars. And we were to leave for Russia months after we lost Buddy. What would we have done with him then? Thanks Mr. Original Buddy's Owners Uncle, for taking my dog. Even though you didn't ask. Man that’s sad, he should have asked. P.S. sorry I don't have a picture of him, I know we have one somewhere....but that’s most likely in a galaxy far far away.