Saint Bernard – PowerPop… An Eclectic Collection of Pop Culture

Martha + Squirrel + Theo + Max post

Hope you don’t mind if I post something about animals and not pop culture on this post anyway. Sometimes it’s nice to have something different. Martha is my dog, the squirrel…I never caught his or her name, and Theo is a Prairie Dog.

I always liked squirrels since my dad told me he had one as a pet. He had found an injured one and nursed it back to health. He said he let it go when it was well but it kept coming back and would jump on his shoulders. He had it for years…it lived outside in the wild but loved my dad.

Well with that in mind…I was at home and I let Martha out on our screened-in back porch. It’s something between dogs and squirrels that doesn’t mix…oil and water or whatever you want to use. I looked around and Martha was going beserk…barking and looking up high on the screen. She was jumping up on it and I was afraid she would rip it so I stopped her…she then walked around and came back and done it again. A poor squirrel was frozen high on the screen.

I took Martha back in for around 30 minutes. We went back out and that squirrel was still in the same place frozen and looking at me. Of course, the thing was scared to death so I had an idea. I took a flimsy plastic stool and turned it upside down and lifted it up to the squirrel. I’ve never had a wild animal look into my eyes like it was deciding whether to trust me or not but…it did. It walked on the stool and looked down at me like…don’t give me to that giant ass dog, please! Our porch is not high so I gently tipped it a little while holding Martha back …and the squirrel took off.

Around an hour later Martha and I went out again….we went underneath our back porch to check on something…yep…that squirrel never left! He or she jumped up and Martha was on the chase…again I held Martha back and looked at the squirrel and him at me again…with a loud “GO GO GO” (me saying that not the squirrel…I think) it took off and hopefully will not come back…at least if Martha is outside. With me, it can come back if it wants to…but don’t chew the wires in our cars like one of its relatives did a few years ago. Of all times I didn’t have my phone with me.

Martha has a piece of pizza in her mouth in the car.

I’ve told people before that I want a prairie dog one day…a lady who works at my work has one and she brings it every Tuesday and Thursday just for me. I keep it in my office and take it out every now and then…call it practice…although I’m not sure Martha + Prairie Dog will mix. Theo doesn’t stay still long enough for me to get a good picture.

Theo is only around 10 weeks old. The last prairie dog this lady had bit me and they bite hard! This one doesn’t bite at all…it’s very sociable. The other one was not socialized.

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Quick Martha Update part 2

We got her October the 4th and she was 7 months old March 18, 2020. She is like a teenager right now….a big body with a toddler’s mind. She loves grabbing a shoe…not both but one…taking off with it. Many mornings I’ve had to search for my other shoe because of her shenanigans. She is getting much better about chewing…she doesn’t do it much if any now.

She wants to play 24 hours a day though. Our other Saints were much calmer when they were her age but she is starting to slowly calm down just a little bit. Sometimes though when she is full of energy you brace yourself and get ready for the adventure. She still has a lot of growing to do and so far so good.

I will update again when she is a year old.

Martha at 2 months old…Oct 4

Martha at 3 Months old

Martha at 4 Months old

Martha at 7 months and 8 days in our driveway…March 26, 2020

Quick Update on Martha

Some people have asked me to post an update since I posted about the new puppy we got on October 3rd…Martha…here you go. She has been the most active puppy (and the most clumsy) we have had ever. She is growing into her paws… She will walk through things rather than walk around. Everything has to go in her mouth to chew… but she is fitting in just fine.

When we got her in October I could pick her up with one arm…that is not happening now. She has much more growing to do.

Martha at 2 months old

Martha at 3 Months old

Martha at 4 Months old…Now

New Addition

Things will not be boring around our household for the foreseeable future.

After losing Molly last November we decided we were finally ready for another dog. We got her Thursday night and she has more energy than we do by a mile. It’s going to be cool watching her grow and becoming one of us. Her name is Martha and I’m trying to keep up. Hard to believe that one day she will weigh more than some people do.

It’s fun to pick her up and carry her…knowing that won’t be possible in a few months/weeks. We are trying to find every wire, shoe, piece of anything, book, anything she can possibly put in her mouth and chew to bits out of reach.

I hear “no no no no” echoing through our house…that is how I know exactly where she is at that moment. Here are a few pictures…some are blurry because she doesn’t stop moving.

Remembering Molly

This is will be out of the norm for me and may be boring to some people so you may want to click the back button…but after talking to another blogger I wanted to write it down.

When I was a kid my mom would not let me have any pets in the house. She was a great mom but no pets at all inside. I had outside dogs but none inside. I knew when I got older I wanted a dog in my house…Not just any dog but a great big dog…I guess it was my way of rebelling against those earlier rules.

In 2009 I saw a local ad on the internet for a Saint Bernard puppy. It was the first puppy I ever had in my life. We did have one Saint Bernard before this that we got from a rescue when she was 8 months old. She passed in 2008 after 9 wonderful years.

We named this 6-week old puppy Molly and she was the runt of the litter. We took her home and she would not interact with us in the first two days at all.

On that third day…different story. She took off running through my wife’s flower garden and from then on she was ours and we were hers… She had one bad mishap. After a lengthy rain she wanted to go outside and she ran and while running caught her front right leg in a hole…it stretched her tendons…the vet put a cast on her leg for a month but her leg never looked the same but it didn’t stop her from running the rest of her life.

Molly was THE family dog and was one of us. She gave love but she wanted it also… when she thought she was being ignored… out came that giant paw pretty much making you pet her. She never hurt a living animal except for Bees…which she would catch with her mouth and quickly get them out…She didn’t like toys with squeakers because she thought she was hurting something so I had to take the squeakers out of every toy.

She grew very fast like Saints do and Molly was not a runt anymore. She looked after my son like he was her own. My son’s friends would be careful not to play too rough with him or each other…if they did they would get an earful…and Saints bark loud. Scared the hell out of some of them but she was never aggressive…just barked loud at the kids to stop. You could play but no shoving or hitting or she would referee really quick and wanted order.

She had the run of our house and many utility people were scared to come in but some braved it and were rewarded with a new friend. It was rare but once in a while, I would wake up with a snoring Molly beside my wife and me in bed. She would lay in the busiest part of the house so you would have no other choice but walk over her.

Last Thursday night my son and I went to dinner and came home to a happy Molly…she was happy because we were all at home safe and sound. She didn’t like when one of us was missing. She was demanding our attention that night and she got it.

The next morning she was breathing heavy and something seemed wrong. She would drink but would not eat. It just kept getting worse over the weekend.

I took off of work Monday to take her to the vet. She had been so lethargic that I thought we would have to get a mobile vet. To my surprise I said the magic words “car ride” and she came to life and followed me to the car…She got in the car and off we went. That was the best she looked in 3 days. We took her in and the vet said she was in poor shape but he wanted to do X-Rays and blood work. After that, he told me to go home and he would call. I foolishly let a little hope creep in.

The call came at 1:30 that Molly had cancer all over and failing kidneys. I don’t like playing God but he said that Molly had put on a brave face for us that morning and showed me the X-Rays and I knew we had to make THAT decision. He said it was a miracle she was walking around at all and she was in extreme pain. We waited for my son to get home at 3 and we traveled to the vet all together to say our goodbyes to our beloved Molly.

It was horrible to see my son hurt so bad and it wasn’t a damn thing I could do. We all hurt but we tried to make the ending happy for Molly. It will be a little while before we get another dog…but when we do we won’t be replacing Molly…it will be to add a new member to our family…Molly will always have her place.

My son will never forget his companion of nine years for the rest of his life…and neither will we.

My 9-year-old son and Molly at 6 weeks old…the day we got her in 2009

My 18-year-old son with Molly at 9 years old sitting close to him.