Authors and Their Pets day 5 with Sam Cheever and her pets

Bitten Pet Week Post – May 10^th

Help a Pet Hint: Do you love animals and want an easy way to help those who haven’t found their forever homes yet? Both Petco and Petsmart allow you to donate a small amount to shelters each time you buy something at the pet store. With the press of a button on the card scanner, I donate a few dollars each time and it definitely adds up!

ADDICTED AND LOVING IT!

Let me just get something right out there…I’m a dogaholic. Yup. It’s true. I’m addicted to dogs. But I don’t need an intervention. I’m perfectly happy with my addiction. I have 11 dogs and at any given moment my husband and I are in danger of adopting another. We don’t go on vacations. I don’t crave jewelry. My husband doesn’t collect machinery or spend money going to sports events. We spend our money on our two daughters and our 11 fur babies.

We’re pleased that we’ve been able to rescue dogs who needed a good home and we feel lucky that they’ve found us. Our fur babies are a labor of love, pure entertainment, and part of our extended family. 

And I’m also happy to say we’ve passed the addiction on to our girls. My oldest daughter has 3 

fur babies and my youngest has 2. 

Now I know that many people have multiple dogs. We’re not all that unique. However, most people with over five dogs are breeders or run shelters. LOL My husband and I hoard our babies. We don’t let them go once we get our greedy hands on them. I realize we’re lucky that we can do this and we’re very thankful. We have a hobby farm so there’s lots of room for our dogs to run and play.  

We’re both fortunate to work from home. And, though we occasionally travel with our jobs, we’re mostly able to stagger our travel so that one of us is always home with the fur babies.

Aside from the many joys of having so many dogs, there are, of course, challenges. Feeding time is interesting, yearly visits to the vet can be a challenge, and keeping track of all the little furry heads is a near impossible task. I find I’m constantly doing head counts to make sure I haven’t lost anybody. Especially at night, because we have lots of coyotes around here. Ish! But our biggest challenge is finding room on the bed at night. We have a king sized bed but, when you add 7 to 8 dogs to the space, there isn’t much room left for the human-type critters! Despite my whining though, I don’t think I could sleep without all those soft, warm bodies draped around me every night. They’re very cuddly. #:0)

I created a video of what it’s like to spend a day with so many dogs and I’d like to share it with you. As a bonus, if you can find the typo in the video (Yes, I know it’s there but I’ve changed software since I created the video and I can’t fix it without redoing the whole thing, LOL), just send me a note telling me what it is and I’ll add you to a drawing for one of my books, winner’s choice. Send the email to samcheever@samcheever.com, Subject: Typo. I’ll pick the winner on May 24^th. Good luck!

Here’s the link to the video: http://www.samcheever.com/bio.html  It’s on my bio page so just scroll down a bit and you’ll see it. I hope you enjoy my fur babies!