Gretchen has left us today!

[DreamingLikeSarah0423]

Gretchen was one of our Silkie hens. She was a bantam hen, very pretty, born with a small heart. It made it hard for her to breathe properly. It's been cold lately and we knew she didn't have long. Yesterday I tried putting extra straw over her to warm her up, everyone else was doing fine but she was shivering. Today I found her gone beside the feed dish. We LOVE animals here and even the loss of a chicken makes us very sad. We tried to help her, we had cured another in our back porch but we couldn't save our little Gretchen. God cares about all the animals, and I hope He let our girl go without any pain.

 

[servant of Merciful Love]

Awwww I'm sorry

I love animals....but we have too many wild predators here....so I must be content with my little beta, dog, and canary (pics are in my profile album).

 

[DreamingLikeSarah0423]

We have a Beta fish that we bought last March for our little Sophia (our twin in Heaven) and one of her favorite nurses named him Oliver...she just blurted that he looked like an Oliver and we kept that name for him. He's a lovely emerald green and he is in the middle of our table in a huge vase and loves staring at us during dinner and table gatherings. We do have a coyote issue in our neighboring villages so we are building a new barn in hopes that God will grace us with the finances to do so and it will be a much better set up for our ducks and chickens; our little Gretchen was just in general poor health as she developed so we put her in with the quail so she wouldn't be canabalized as is very unpredictable with chickens and did great but she just wasn't strong enough to withstand the cold. We tend to take in unwanted animals too; all the quail we have were going to be thrown into the woods randomly so we took them in. They're all cute.

 

[servant of Merciful Love]

That's nice (Oliver)
I never named my betas...but we did have a horn pout in our aquarium we named SAM once

I love quail....we had a pet pheasant once (Fred).
Hubby used him to train our English Springer Spaniel for bird season.
It was a riot...because the two became friends!
He would let Fred wander near the woods, then Nikki would set out after him.
Fred would LIE DOWN as Nikki got closer, then she would SOFTLY pick him up in her mouth and bring him back to Jim .

Sadly Fred became a meal for a Fox with Kits one spring when the frost messed with the latch on the kennel he stayed in and the fox got in

But we have lots of great stories to tell about him

Fox and coyote are very cunning, and we must watch my little Penny carefully when she goes out to do her business
(even the owls and hawks are a concern here)!
We keep her on a runner/leash and are very close to her at night and early AM when she goes out (she NEVER runs free in the yard).

 

[DreamingLikeSarah0423]

Sam is the name of our Fahaka puffer; also a gift that Sophia got....this time from the Make A Wish foundation. He's one handsome fish. She was alive to see Sam first, then Oliver as our surprise for her in the hospital during a blood transfusion and our Welsh Harlequin ducks. Their names are Alec, Felicity and Cecily...named after characters from the TV series Road to Avonlea, the spinoff from Anne of Green Gables. They're 9 months old now and finally laying eggs, Alec has discovered he's a boy and has become a bully...rushing me when I feed or put water in their little pool. The rest came after she had left us and none are going other than by loss of life. Don loves his bunny, she's so cute, that's BunBun, what a managerie we have. We did have 2 dogs but they had to be rehomed due to the stress of us being gone most of the time in hospitals for a year. We are praying for the right dog for us, Don wants a Shih-Tzu, I want a Border Collie to run with me like my Cassie used to do. She glued herself to the back door waiting for one of her herd that would never come home, her eyes looked like crying eyes and she'd have sat there forever so now she's in a home where she has a boy that plays with her and he is healthy; I told her family that they had to stay healthy...I don't want her to suffer that kind of loss again. Cancer affects EVERY family member, we found that out in many painful ways!

 

[servant of Merciful Love]

Love the names...
We adore our shih tzu our dog breed preferences changed as we got older for sure.

It is tough re-homing an animal; we had to do that when my son was born a 12 week preemie with major medical problems.

Whatever the illness, it is hard on the whole family..including the pets!
When I was in the hospital in '95, our Springer became so ill Jim was going to get her to the vet.
That day I was able to talk to her on the phone and she suddenly perked up

Amazing creatures ....dogs are

 

[cat711]

Love the names...
We adore our shih tzu our dog breed preferences changed as we got older for sure.

It is tough re-homing an animal; we had to do that when my son was born a 12 week preemie with major medical problems.

Whatever the illness, it is hard on the whole family..including the pets!
When I was in the hospital in '95, our Springer became so ill Jim was going to get her to the vet.
That day I was able to talk to her on the phone and she suddenly perked up

Amazing creatures ....dogs are

Hi Gail I thank God that your Springer is doing a lot better!

 

[servant of Merciful Love]

Hi Gail I thank God that your Springer is doing a lot better!

Hi
She passed away in 2001; I was speaking about 1995 in my post
But yeah...that was a big relief at the time!

 

[cat711]

Hi
She passed away in 2001; I was speaking about 1995 in my post
But yeah...that was a big relief at the time!

Oh I'm sorry that your Springer passed away, it does hurt losing a pet I have experienced that way too much during my lifetime with birds, fish, and hamsters.

 

[DreamingLikeSarah0423]

Update: Since we lost Gretchen, something got into our barn and destroyed all of our female quail, very heartbreaking. That was about 3+ weeks ago. This past Monday I was finally able to go to our local shelter and we looked at a Hound X female that we'd been looking at since January but I wasn't sure if I was ready for another dog. We found another dog that I believe was going to be euthanized, a toy poodle. He has hardly any fur on him and he's in pretty rough shape. I'm praying that he'll heal up well with lots of TLC and prayer and the right homeopathic remedies and that by Christmas he'll have a nice coat of fur. He looks like a burn victim right now, he's got an overgrowth of skin that is very painful for him. We're planning our bigger barn and more laying hens and lots of fun in the spring.

If any of you would like to pray for our little dog's healing we'd very much appreciate it! Thanks!

 

[ChasingADream]

Praying.

How is your dog doing now? What's his/her name?

My dog passed away on Easter Sunday this year. Hardest thing I've ever had to deal with.