Stockwell, Angel

Baby Stockwell with Lucky

Christmas 1998

This past Monday, as Heather so aptly stated, Stockwell became the angel he never was while he was with us.  We're all in mourning as we had to say goodbye to a family member who happened to be a pet who spent 14 years with us.  I stop short of declaring him a good dog, however.  Because when I think back on all of Stockwell's antics, he was anything but a good dog.  He was, however, an animal with personality who always got a second glance by a stranger at his odd shaped body, and who was loved by all who knew him.  I can't begin to cover all of the funny Stockwell stories, so I'll try to hit some of the highlights.

Stockwell & Mom in their Christmas shirts

Food Stockwell has stolen over the years

• Baguette (read that story here)
• Haubstadt cake from Christmas Village
• My entire box of Valentine's Day Godiva truffles
• A smaller entire box of Schokolaud truffles
• Mass quantities of sugar cookie dough out of the trashcan (earning him the nickname "Sug")
• Countless other foods from counters and tables

Stockwell Sunbathing

Nicknames

• Precious (or "My Precious" as in LOTR)
•  Bull dozer
•  Stockily Wockily Broccoli
• Stocky
• Stockwell Angel (as in "Stillwell, Angel" from A League of Their Own)
• Sug (the sugar cookie dough incident)
• Little Heater
• Devil dog (the early years!)
• StockHELL (another early years name!)

Snuggling in bed

Quite possibly the biggest lapdog you've ever seen

Stockwell was a bassadore (half basset hound, half black lab) given to our family by Jenni and Tara Stockwell.  The Stockwell sisters picked him up free from the Brentwood Kroger, and then gave him to us when their parents told them that they absolutely could not get a third dog!  So they brought him over to our house where Laura and I fell in love with the adorable black puppy and reminded our parents that they had promised us that we could get another dog when we moved to Brentwood, several years earlier.  We named him Stockwell in honor of the family who was the reason we got him.  

The most graceful swimmer

He much preferred jumping in after frisbees to riding on the floats

Stockwell thought he was a lap dog from the get go, and even when he was 60+ pounds and full grown, he preferred to be laying on laps, and sleeping on top of legs in bed with you.  If you have ever visited our house, chances are Stockwell has climbed in bed to snuggle with you.  His shiny black coat smelled of Fritos according to Laura, and for the first four years of his life, he was a hyperactive dog who had to be given "puppy downers" who liked to steal shoes, socks, and hats and take off with them, dig up rosebushes repeatedly, chew speaker wires, hump and chew up throw pillows, and destroy pool cushions leaving a yard full of cotton snow in the heat of the summer.  He loved the pool, and his favorite spot was sitting on the top step in the water where he would sunbathe and help himself to a drink.  He would go swimming whenever a frisbee was tossed in the water, and would run the length of the pool barking whenever anyone would jump in.  You would think a black dog would seek the shade, but Stockwell always wanted to lie in the sun.

A lapdog from the get-go

Howling along to the harmonica

Stocky was true to his nickname, long and short to the ground, but the long body allowed him to stand on his hind legs and reach for food which he would steal and swallow quicker than you would even realize it was missing.  He had a major sweet tooth, and would sniff out candy or desserts throughout the house, and making him sick on occasion from over-indulgence.

Bed party - June 2008

A curious Bradley climbs on Stockwell

He was a cuddly animal who would let you lay on him, and snuggle his silky ears and meaty thighs and almost every picture we have of Stockwell is of him snuggling with one of us.  His favorite toys were a yellow bear, and Larry the Cucumber, and he sang bass in the trio of canines whenever anyone played the harmonica for him, Julius and Oscar.

I will share one funny Stockwell story.  When I was a senior in college, I lived in the Sugar Shack (an off campus condo), and mom and dad came to visit and they surprised me by bringing Stockwell.  I was so excited to see him, but the minute he ran in like a wild man into the strange condo, Stocky immediately saw this picture of Kramer on the wall and began to growl at him!  He was not a fan of the Kramer portrait!

Several days have gone by since Stockwell left us, and the gaping whole he left behind is still ever present.  I know he was just a pet but he literally followed us from room to room and went everywhere we went.  Though he couldn't talk,  you would swear he was thisclose to speaking English by the inflections of his moans and howls.   He was as close to being a person as a pet could be. Many have suggested he's in Doggie Heaven now, playing with Lucky, and swimming in that big swimming pool in the sky.  I myself would like to think he's found a nice lap to climb up in, and he'll be waiting for us with wagging tail someday.

waiting for his next lap to climb into

Repti-conned into Going

Saturday I took Bradley to this really cool, interactive, hands on, totally geared for kids reptile exhibit at the Factory.  No wait.  No I didn't.  That's what I thought I was taking Bradley to.

The Living Social deal I got the week before touted this Repticon exhibit as being a family event, and then later last week, an email was sent out saying Williamson County school employees were allowed in free to take their families to this family-friendly event.  Okay, so I'm not a WCS employee myself, but I am related to one.  And kids under 5 get in free, so Repticon, here we came!

The first thing I noticed when entering Jamison Hall in the factory, a place many brides and grooms hold their wedding receptions in (my sister included), was the overwhelming reptile stench.  I could not have told you what this smelled like before Saturday, but you walked into the place and this odor just knocked you back a second- not so gross that you'd want to breathe through your mouth, but enough to cause you pause and say "ohhh, so that's what a room full of reptiles smells like."

And then we stepped inside.  At 5 minutes till 12, we timed our entrance to the exhibit to make the 12 o'clock "show."  I was envisioning a goofy guy in a lab coat, or dressed like a zookeeper, a stage, and bleachers, where the emcee would show a group of fascinated kids different kinds of frogs, snakes, spiders, and teach the kids fun facts about the animals and at the end I would get some great photo ops of Bradley petting a snake which I would then show to my mother who is terrified of snakes, and snicker.

But instead I walked willingly into my mother's worst nightmare.  Let me just toot my own horn and say that I am good mom.  Because I took one look at the first table we came to, with one clear circular container after another, stacked on top of one another, with a live snakes in them, all of them moving around and hissing, because, well, they're alive, probably 30 on each table, and I didn't turn around and leave.  

I took a deep breath, and thought, okay, I can do this.  They're just snakes.  And we pushed through the people to find the "show" that would be starting soon.  When we found it, I realized this whole thing was a gross misunderstanding.  The interactive show was about chameleons, 4 of them to be specific, and Bradley was able to touch exactly one of them.  This was not an educational show for the kiddies.  This was a sales pitch to get you to buy a chameleon.  In fact the whole exhibit was a haven for reptile buyers and sellers; crazy reptile lovers with piercings, tattoos, and wearing black t-shirts.  People were buying snakes right and left.  Not me.  The guy trying to sell us chameleons ignored the fact that most of his audience was under 12 (hey, at least I was not the only fool in Franklin who thought this was a great Saturday activity for her child) and did his best to yell over the noise in the large open room in the little area where a few rows of chairs were set up, because he was too lazy to wear his head mike, while he educated us on how to keep a chameleon's tank humid.  

After the sales demonstration, I took Bradley firmly by the hand and led him through the exhibit hall.  "If we're here, we might as well see some snakes," I thought to myself.  We saw tank after tank of giant snakes (think Nagini), every kind of lizard, tarantula, giant cockroach, tiny frogs, all sizes of scorpions, and container after container of snakes.  I had a small humanitarian moment and felt sorry for the animals confined in such small containers, and then I started over-thinking things and watching them writhe and twist, and the longer we were in there, the more freaked out I got.  I envisioned Snakes on a Plane, but instead saw tables tipping over with snakes slithering all over the floor, and people panicking and running everywhere.  I held Bradley's hand tightly as he was mildly interested in looking at the different animals and asked to touch a few snakes.  And yes I let him, but it was not quite the cheery photo op I had hoped for.  Instead I never let go of his hand, calculating how fast I could whip him towards me if the snake he was petting decided to lunge at us.  It was all I could do to see a furry tarantula leg poking out of a small clear container, and silently curse the day my mother let me see Arachnophobia in the movie theater.

But I was a good sport, and we managed to stay in Jamison Hall a good 30 or 40 minutes when I was able to tell Bradley happily, that it was time to go.  And go we did, where we promptly scrubbed our hands with soap and water when we got home, and I tried to shake the willies for the rest of the day.  

Crestfallen

For my birthday I was given a selection of truffles from a local chocolate store.  These truffles were hand picked for me and my tastes.  A couple of days after my b-day, mom asked me if I had tried any of them yet.  I had completely forgotten about them- they'd been buried at the bottom of my bag with all my other gifts and cards.  After dinner that night, I went up to my room to try some of the chocolate and satisfy my after-dinner sweet tooth.

Imagine my dismay when approaching my room, and I spot a ripped bag, and an empty container on the floor with tiny empty papers where chocolates once were nestled.  Crestfallen.  That's the perfect word to describe that moment.

Stockwell had struck again.  Yep.  About ten years ago for Valentine's Day the canine chocolate connoisseur ransacked my brand new box of Godiva truffles leaving me with a shiny gold box and no chocolates to enjoy.  And darn it if history didn't repeat itself!

the bite is definitely worse than the bark

Whoever said its bark is worse than its bite was obviously not a mother.

I can tell you from personal experience today that I would much rather have watched in shock as the dog barked at Bradley instead of bite him! Yep, Bradley survived his first-ever dog bite, and lived for me to tell the tale. We were over at my friend's house this morning hanging out and letting our boys play when this unfortunate event happened. I have always assumed that dogs who live in houses with small children are good with kids in general, but I guess I had to learn the hard lesson today that you can never be too careful! Just because a dog is used to their own "siblings" doesn't mean they are used to other kids.

I was sitting on the couch when it happened, and ironically, keeping a close eye on Bradley to make sure he was being gentle with the miniature pincher, since B tends to be rough with Chandler. Bradley was offering the dog some plastic play food, and reached forward to give the dog a hug when out of nowhere the dog barked, and bit Bradley right on the forehead. Bradley cried, I was stunned, and my friend was almost in tears herself! Her dog has never bitten anyone before, so I'm not sure why my kid got to be the first! We put the dog up and put ice on B's head and gave him some Tylenol to help with the swelling. We will just be more careful in the future, and keep those two separated from now on!

Meet Chandler

Please allow me to introduce you to our newest family member, Chandler Bing Vilendrer!

Chandler (formerly Horace) is a 33 pound, 5 month old male retriever/labrador mix. I call him a mutt. He has light green eyes, and so far has been a welcome addition to our family.

Brian brought him home yesterday afternoon, and thankfully the weather here was mild enough that we could all play in the backyard together before bringing Chandler inside. Check out all that luscious green grass in our backyard, too!
He's already playing fetch. Bradley likes giving him treats, which he gets every time he goes potty outside. So far we've had one slip up in the house, with more to come I'm sure. Thank goodness for hardwood and tile floors!

So why the name Chandler? Or rather, why not keep the name Horace? Well, while Horace is certainly a unique name, H sounds are hard for little kids to make. Also, there's no way to shorten Horace without it becoming Hor, or sounding like Horse. So we chose a character name from the tv show FRIENDS that is very near and dear to us, and there you have it!
Yep, he's already made himself at home!

And this morning, I realized just how quickly Bradley and Chandler could become partners in crime. I walked out of the room to go to the bathroom, and upon entering back into the living room, I found Bradley in the cabinet where we keep all the candles, with candles spread out all over the floor around him, and Chandler up on the couch with a tasty candle he was demolishing with his teeth. Oh well. I needed a reason to learn how to use all my vacuum cleaner attachments anyways.

Horace, the ugly puppy

Holy Moly Batman, is Christmas really less than a week away? Yes. Yes it is. And do you know how I know that? Because I was stupid and I went to Walmart today, on the Saturday before Christmas, and have never seen such a jam packed store in my life. It was atrocious. We had to go though because we had to buy supplies for the newest member of our family, Horace, the ugly rescued puppy that we adopted on Friday! We get him in 2-7 days so we had to be ready for him to come at any time.

Getting a dog is a big decision that one should not rush lightly into, so of course there is a story behind us getting Horace (or whatever his name might ultimately end up being).

Brian and I have been talking about getting a dog for forever... or at least the last two years since we've been married. We wanted to wait til Bradley was old enough (aka not a newborn helpless baby), and decided that a good time frame would be Christmas of this year. We discussed breeds, and agreed on a male yellow (his choice) or black (my choice) lab puppy.

I pictured in my head getting a puppy on Christmas morning. Specifically, a tiny back lab puppy with a red bow on his collar. Yes, I had specific expectations in mind, and perhaps the fairytale part with the bow on Christmas was a tad unreasonable, but I think I'm just a girl who knows what she wants. Brian made me see that getting the dog right at Christmas would be next to impossible to pull off. Someone would have to have the exact puppy we wanted and be willing to hold him until Christmas Eve, and where would the puppy sleep the night before we presented him as a Christmas gift the next morning? Okay, so maybe all that pomp and circumstance wasn't important after all, and so I resigned myself to waiting until after the holidays to look for our newest member of the family, after all our travels were done.

However... On a whim Friday, Brian calls me from work and asks me about getting a dog now, sends me a website to look at, and tells me he's found one on there he likes- a dog named Horace. I checked the site, a humane society in Ft. Walton, and see none of the specifications about a dog that I want, and so as we discuss our options looking at available dogs at other places in the area, I realize matter-of-factly that no place has small male lab puppies, and so I'm prepared to wait to get exactly what I want. If I can't have him on Christmas with a big red bow, then why settle for just anything? In the end, I ended up putting my foot down and telling Brian that I would wait as long as it took until someplace had the type of dog we were looking for, and that was that.

Only it wasn't. I caved and let Brian go back to the shelter on his own that afternoon and play with two of the puppies we had looked at earlier that day. One was a precious little black lab 8 week old female named Mistletoe. The other... was Horace, a light-eyed, yellow lab 6 month old mutt. I swear to you, out of all the sweet dogs we looked at that day, Horace was the least cute of them all, but for some reason, he struck a chord in Brian's heart, and Brian got a good feeling about him. And then I got a good feeling about him too, so we'll see if our good feeling gamble pays off. Horace will join us in 2-7 days after he gets his man-parts removed so there won't be any other ugly puppies running around.

I know you're just as excited as I am to meet the newest member of our family as I'm sure he will grace the pages of this blog with many horrible and funny tails. Pun intended.

no room for a pea in the POD

Last night I left 1400 Devens Dr. for the last time. After living in a home for 12 years, you get sort of attached! But the move was successful- we have finally transported my parents, the 2 dogs, and all their stuff from Brentwood to Franklin! I was sort of the cheerleader/taskmaster of the move, dubbing myself the "Box Nazi" when it came to clearly affixing brightly colored labels in the top right corner to each side of a box. I did whatever I could for mom & dad to make things run more smoothly, and one of my duties came in handy on Monday, the closing day.

The POD people (portable on demand storage- a brilliant invention) called my cell with a strange request. They had my cell number listed as the primary contact number. A lady identifies herself as a POD employee and says, your neighbor called us and said that her cat is in your POD and would like us to partially unpack the POD to try and locate the animal. My first instinct is to laugh, but then the confusion sets in. Wait. Which neighbor, I asked her? From Devens Dr. or Southhampton?

There is a complex system in place with these PODs and the details of moving where timing is everything. The former owners of the house mom and dad were moving into also had a POD. Theirs had to be picked up on Sunday, our POD would be transferred from the Brentwood house to the Franklin house sometime on Monday, we would unload the POD Monday night after the closings, and then the POD people would come and pick up the POD on Tuesday in time for the moving truck to be able to fit into the driveway on Tuesday morning.

So obviously, there was no way this lady's cat was in our storage unit. The unit had only been there for a few hours if that, plus my dad is the Master Packer, and I am his little protegee. He packed that POD tighter and more efficiently than anyone at that storage place has ever seen I'll bet. There was no way a cat was squeezing in anywhere. Plus, the storage unit has been locked, again, preventing the possibility of a stray animal making its way into the unit.

The lady on the phone tells me it's a neighbor on Southhampton who has called, and when I ask if she's sure if it was our POD in question, and not the previous owners', the POD lady assures me the neighbor has written down our POD's storage ID number and called in. Fine, I say. I'll call her, but I promise you, there is no way there is a cat in our storage unit!!

I laugh at the absurdity of the situation, but am nervous as the phone rings because I don't want things to start off badly for mom & dad and their new neighbor. I don't know what she will say to me when I tell her confidently that her pet is not inside our POD. She sounds frazzled when she answers. I tell her who I am, and that my parents are her new neighbors. She has already realized her mistake though by the time I call her- it is the former owners' POD that is in question, and she is frantically trying to get in touch with them to find her black cat which may or may not be inside the POD. The rub here is that these people are not unloading their POD immediately- they're building a house, leaving their stuff in the POD and living in an apartment in the meantime. Again, I hate to laugh at the ridiculous nature of this story, because I do feel bad for the lady and her cat, but I giggled as soon as I hung up with her.

I have no further update on poor little Benjamin (Laura saw signs posted in the neighborhood yesterday- what an odd name for a Cat, don't you think?) but if that Cat is indeed in there, he will need all 9 of his lives saved up to survive this situation!

Stockwell’s long-lost cousin

It’s been a fairly boring day here at work. I got very near to pulling a George Costanza and taking a nap under my desk! However, my mid-afternoon lull came to a screeching halt after this last customer I just talked to. This sweet guy from Pulaski, TN called in to order hymnals for his church. After placing a pretty big order (which was enough to cause me to perk up), we then were discussing various shipping options for him.

Mr. Pulaski Man remarked that either UPS or FedEx would be fine, as they know to leave it there, even though he has a dog in the yard. Starved for friendly human interaction, and being the consummate dog-lover that I am, I said,

“oh really? What kind of dog do you have?”

“Well,” said Mr. Pulaski, “he’s Labrador and Wiener dog.”

“Well that’s funny,” I said, “I have a Labrador and Basset Hound mix.”

“That’s what he is- Lab and Basset!” he exclaimed.

(I start to get really excited at this point)

"You have a Bassador?!" I inquired in disbelief.

“Is that what they’re called," he asked?

“Well, that’s just what we’ve always called ours for the past 6 or 7 years,” I said as I laughed.

“The only part of him that’s basset is his short legs,” Mr. Pulaski commented.

“Same with mine,” I said! “And he’s got bigger ears than a lab,” I continued.

“You’re exactly right,” he said.

At this point I am cracking up! Mr. Pulaski is amused too, because neither of us has ever met anyone who had this strange breed of dog before. His dog’s name is Duke. I tell him that my dog’s name is Stockwell. We have a good laugh and I get off the phone wondering why I ever even asked him about his dog in the first place, and feeling very pleased and amused that I did.