Las Vegas Reptile Show

Melissa, Nichole, Zoey and I went to the Santa Fe Station for the Las Vegas Reptile Show. It was only eight dollars to get in.

There were tons of vendors. LLL Reptiles, the Snake Keeper, Sin City Geckos, Eccogeckos, and even Petsmart.

The reptiles were beyond amazing. Definitely more variety and exotic species than we could ever get from a pet store in town. There were so many morphs of crested geckos and leopard geckos. But sadly I didn't fall in love with any crested geckos. Most of them had snub tails which meant they were either being handled improperly or kept too crowded. Kinda depressing. I loved the color varieties in the leopard geckos but I don't need any more than the six I got. Was sorely tempted to get a gargoyle gecko female which I could breed to my crested gecko males supposedly and get a hybrid. That's going to happen. Just not this reptile show. There were so many boas, pythons, monitors, skinks, geckos, and more.

I couldn't pass up on a female rosy boa though for forty five dollars. Gotta think of a name though. Nichole got a blue tongue skink and a breeding colony of hissing cockroaches. Melissa wound up taking home a tarantula. Not to mention all of our free stuff. We won critter keepers from the Petsmart booth and had them stuffed with calcium and water conditioner free samples.

The dogs

My first dog was Shadow the bassett hound, chaos incarnate. He loved to steal my sister's bottles and pacifiers. Then he escaped several times and had Dad chasing him across the 95. He was a handful.

Mama Dog was rescued by my uncle from the side of the road with three puppies. The name Mama Dog stuck. She was loyal and followed me around everywhere. She was also intelligent and could learn whatever goofy agility course I would set up in the backyard despite her football shape.

Gregory was our fifteen dollar rescue from Lied Animal Shelter. He was past his expiration date so his adoption fee was only fifteen dollars. But he came with all his shots, neutered, and microchipped.

They each died of cancer...




Tuxi and Chesi are the corgis. They were rescued from Utah the day after Christmas.

Tuxi is the five year old papered Pembroke Welsh Corgi. His registered name is Shorty's Little Roper. He is a chunky little tricolor snausage of a dog with a block head and fat nose and tongue. He's adorable. But he has his faults... He's also a chicken. Took him months before he would use the dog door. He's afraid of spoons. No matter how many treats you place on a spoon, he will not touch it. Also afraid of rolling suitcases. The worst parts... He passes gas and needs his butt wiped after he goes to the bathroom.

Chesi is our four year old fawn and white Corgi. She may be part fox, it's rumored. She has huge bat ears. She would make a great agility dog demonstrated by the way she leaps and bounds over the couchs. She is a bit rotten when it comes to her dinner though. She hates the food. We switched her from Kibble's N' Bits to Natural Choice and she hates it. She lays beside her food dish with this miserable bored expression. She's also a demon when it comes to coming when called.

But I love them. Now that I have them, I couldn't imagine life without them. It would be boring, that I can guess.

Halloweiner!

Today was the Halloweiner party. And yes, it's exactly what it sounds like. Unless your mind is in the gutter, then it's not. It was a party celebrating daschunds in Halloween costumes.

John and Cherryl invited us and our Corgis. Mom wouldn't let me get the cow and chicken costumes for the two corgis, not that that would have helped them blend into the sea of costumed Daschunds any better. Our three daschund friends came. Zero, Sophie, and Chewy. They looked adorable as Superman, a lady bug, and a pumpkin. It was pretty fun.

There were daschund races, raffles, food, treats, and doggy fashion booths. We discovered doggy ice cream which Chesi wasn't impressed with so Tuxi ate his, hers, and part of Sophie's. He was incredibly spoiled. But he deserved it. They both behaved surprisingly well off leash with so much going on. Tuxi did have a near panic attack when the loud speakers crackled. But he calmed down and stuck close to us. Chesi was as unfased as always, trying to find people to take her home that had better food. But she came when called.

We did somehow manage to spoil the cats while at the dog event. Found an incredible cat tree from Puppy Huts for less than any Petsmart cat trees. It's huge, made from trees with two huts and a lounger area. I will post pictures once it comes Wednesday.

The dogs are now exhausted and asleep on the floor.

This is why wild animals should remain wild... Or at least properly taken care of by zoos.

After dozens of animals escaped a 73 acre zoo today, October 18, 2011, in Zanesville, Ohio, 48 have been shot dead after their owner died and the gates to their enclosures were opened. These animals, at no fault of their own, have threatened the safety of people and domesticated animals in the surrounding regions and had to pay for this with their lives.

Ohio has some of the most lax regulation of exotic pets, and after this disaster, it is apparent that this lack of regulation has been a threat to public safety and the welfare of the animals for too long. The collection of animals had been considered a bad situation for a quite some time by local law enforcement, but there was nothing that they could do to stop their owner, Terry Thompson, from keeping the animals nor to push preventative measures onto the property.

And these animals aren't the only ones, hundreds of exotics are currently being kept as pets in the state without any regulation. Ohio is one of less than 10 states in the US that do not regulate the ownership of exotic animals. Owning a wild animal is difficult and causes them suffering with a lack of proper knowledge as to the handling and care of these animals by their owners. Wild animals have been known to attack, maim, and kill humans and domesticated animals without any warning and due to these circumstances, law enforcement have no choice but to destroy them.

The best thing we can do for the exotics and ourselves is to keep them in their wild, natural habitats where they belong by outlawing their sale and ownership in Ohio and any other state that doesn't have laws against keeping wild or exotic animals.

-stolen from petition

Volunteering at the Feral Cat Spay and Neuter Clinic

Heaven Can Wait does a monthly Spay and Neuter Clinic for Feral Cats. As part of PAWS, the pre-veterinary club at UNLV, I was invited to volunteer.

10-16-2011. The cats were brought in that morning. There were a total of 426 cats brought in. Each cat was given an identification number. The cats were checked for ear tips which indicated whether or not they had been through this experience before. They were then sedated in their cat traps, possibly the hardest part because they are wild animals. Sometimes the cats were scared stiff which made injecting the sedative easy. Others were fighting all human intervention. There was a large gray tom cat that sounded like we had caged a lion. Once sedated, they were moved into the next room where the sedative took effect. The cats were removed from the traps and checked for gender. The females were placed onto a table where they were shaved, bathed, and sprayed with betadine to prep them for their spay. The males were prepped for the neuters. The females were taken into a sterile room where they were cut open. The fallopian tubes were tied off and then cut from the uterus. The males underwent an less invasive surgery where the scrotum was sliced open and the testicles removed. After the surgeries, the cats were taken to a separate table where they were inspected for any issues. Mites, fleas, and minor wounds were taken note of and treated. The cats were then vaccinated, including rabies vaccines. The cats were taken to recovery where the fae was washed, ears were cleaned, and coat was brushed out. Some of the young kittens required stimulation to revive them after sedation. Once the cats were beginning to wake up, they were placed back into the traps before they were fully conscious. By the time they woke up, they were back in the same traps withe some fur missing and a funny smell to them. They were very ungrateful to what we had done for them.

But if not for this, there would be more kittens to suffer the life of a feral cat. Feral cats live an incredibly hard life without stable food sources or shelter; not to mention the dangers of diseases like rabies and feline leukemia, animal attacks from other cats and other animals, and cars.

Total there were four hundred and five cats fixed that day making our goal. And a happy ending. One of the feral cats had a collar and when the number was called, they informed us that Camo had been missing for three years.

If every cat had a home, we wouldn't need feral cat spay and neuter clinics. But we can at least stop the number of kittens that grow up feral. 

The Cats

Tom was my baby. Well more of my mom's. I picked her out when I was four. She looked black with a little cream stripe on her nose. Not the cutest kitten, my parents tell me. But I insisted on her and then naming the little girl, Tom. From Tom and Jerry. She turned out to be a beautiful tortoiseshell as she grew up into an adult. I don't remember much of the years when she was young. She did have this yellow crocheted bird that she would fetch. She couldn't let you do anything on the couch either. She would crawl between me and a book or lay on the laptop. She had this way of demanding things, either by stomping her feet near her food dish or tapping your arm while you sat on the couch eating something. When she got to be seventeen, arthritic and blind, she got everything she wanted. Makes up for how we never remembered her birthday until a couple days after it. Canned food every morning and all the snuggles she asked for. She passed away in her sleep. Mom and I got matching tattoos of a drawing of mine that showed Tom at her best.

Maui was a mistake. Oh yeah, I'll admit it. He was a failed attempt at fostering. His parents and two of his siblings had been adopted out. But then his brother and him got sick from coccidia, an intestinal parasite. We lost his brother to it. Maui pulled through. He somehow then got stuck. Stuck at our house, much to my dad's displeasure. Not sue how it happened but he's here. A heavy siamese mix with a bipolar attitude. And he can be quite dumb. There are times he'll give you this meow-pur demanding pets but the next moment he'll be threatening to slap you. He also can't walk in a straight line.

Princess has the most interesting story. She was a feral cat living behind my grandparents house. She had been captured, vaccinated, and fixed by Heaven Can Wait before being released again. She then suffered a tragedy. Somehow her tail had been ripped off, we're guessing during a fight with something. But it was a bad wound. We had to catch her before she died of an infection. So taking a feral cat trap, I tossed all sorts of bait in there. Canned cat food worked to catch some of the colony but not the one I wanted. Ham, hot dogs, eggs? I tried everything. And then decided to try cheese. I was running out of ideas. With the cheese, cats began coming out of the woodwork. Including Princess. Grandma had already named her Princess even as a feral cat. Once captured she was taken to the vet to finish the amputation. We acknoledged this was a cat that we would probably never be able to touch, but couldn't let her go again. She lived in my closet while finishing antibiotics. Then spend a year confined to my room. One vet visit to work with some issues, we kept her in the downstairs bathroom for medication. Out of nowhere, she decided my mom was incredible. Princess would crawl into my mom's lap and be pet. Mom probably regrets that Princess chose her cause now Princess can't get enough of her. No matter what time of night, if mom moves, that must mean she's awake and needs to pet Princess. Princess also has a fun issue. Demented Easter Bunny. At first, she dropped hard little balls of poo everywhere. Now those were kinda fun to kick at eachother. But after several trips to the vet visit with no results, we finally went to Dr. Mason at the Veterinary Specialty Center. Her colon had lost muscle tone and was removed. Downfall, now her poo droppings are like sticky tar poo. Not so much fun to kick...