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This is likely to be a bit rambly, because it's a whole bunch of problems wrapped up into one bigger problem, and I need to vent a bit.
This morning, I had to interrupt my breakfast to rescue a puppy from being killed by its father. We put the puppy back with the rest of the litter in a semi-protected enclosure, but it still seemed to be in shock when we left for work... I'm not sure if it's going to survive.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Let me back up to the beginning. In early December, my (nearly) brother-in-law - we'll call him Duke - was getting evicted from his $1600/mo apartment in an expensive part of the state because he and his girlfriend - we'll call her Tina - couldn't afford the rent any longer. You see, he'd been unemployed for over a year, and his GF was now 6 months pregnant and unable to work long shifts to support them. She was still working 20-30 hour weeks, but that wasn't enough to feed two (and a half) people, one cat, three dogs, a snake, and two lizards as well as pay for utilities, rent, and other things.
So Duke asked us to let him move into our as-yet-unused front bedroom in our new house. After some deliberation (mostly over the fact that Duke is long on promises, short on follow-through), we agree that they can move in IF they pay $600 a month in rent, and we'll let them "pay down" the rent by doing maintenance, repairs, and upgrades on the house.
They move in, and as they're in the process of moving the last load, I ask about the first month's rent. Duke promises I'll have it soon, because he spent the last of their money on the moving van, hauling more stuff than we own, including a full kitchen suite of appliances (which are now rusting in our back yard).
I should have blocked them then, but I let it go, as he's supposed to be getting UI checks, and Tina is still working. And then UI says, "Wait a minute, you moved." They stop paying him until he attends a phone conference to explain the move. So we get nothing.
In February, Tina scraped up $400 to pay us, so we were happy for a while. But that's still not enough, and Duke is still wrangling with UI, and Tina has the expected miscarriage, which puts a sudden halt to her income. And then Duke gets into a shouting match with someone in a parking lot, resulting in the other person running him over, pretty much shredding his foot in the process. And now he has a new excuse for not looking for work, and UI won't pay him while he's disabled, and he's filing for Disability. How about suing the guy who ran him over? Nah, the "cops screwed up the report," and he thinks it's impossible to get anything done there.
And we still see nothing more from them through March, and into April. Tina went back to work in mid-March, but because she's on restricted duty still, just feeding the animals and keeping his car running is draining most of her funds. Our own bills are falling further and further behind, because our expenses are notably higher with them present, and our own income isn't enough to cover everything.
And then the female dog gives birth to a litter of eleven puppies. Despite his injury, Duke somehow manages to make a space in the overstuffed garage for the puppies. Momma Dog is glad to have someplace protected, but spends way too much time whining to be let into or out of the garage - because we're not just leaving it wide open.
In mid-April, we decide we've had enough, and give an ultimatum to Duke: Get your shit together in 4 weeks, or move out in 6. I was prepared to drop a 3-day pay-or-quit on them if he started to make a fight about it, but astonishingly, he didn't. And then a crew of repo men show up on our doorstep to repo the car that Tina's using to get to work. We block them, with some misgivings, but the repo men made themselves the unequivocal bad guys by threatening the dogs.
Astonishingly, Duke stops being a total putz, contacts a cousin of his in Arizona, and makes arrangements to start working for the cousin. The cousin puts up the cash to get Duke's lienholder to call off the repo men. And Duke and Tina make plans to go to Arizona for just a week, scope out the situation, do some work for the cousin, then come back, gather their stuff, tie up loose ends with friends and such, and do a big move to Arizona.
As part of the preparation for them being gone for a week, he hijacks a Dogloo from one of his friends, and we put that in an enclosed area at the far back end of the yard, behind the garage, and we move the puppies in there. We can't really keep momma dog in there - she knows how to climb the fence to get out. So we let her in a couple of times a day, and she's much happier with that arrangement.
Just before they leave, they need a battery for the car. It's not holding a charge, and Tina has been borrowing a portable car charger from a co-worker for the past few months, but that's not going to work with them moving to Arizona, because she needs to give the charger back to the co-worker. So we reluctantly pay $108 to have a new battery put in, which Duke swears up one side and down the other will be paid when he gets back from Arizona. He's also promising that he's got a $400-something check from UI coming soon, and he'll sign that over directly to us.
They leave on last Saturday. And on Tuesday, we get a call, saying they won't be back as planned, because the cousin isn't giving them money to come back - he's making them pay off the $900-something debt incurred to get their car out of jeopardy before anything else, and since he's paying them for work, he's taking his debt off the top, and leaving them just enough to live on. At the same time, we get a letter from UI, saying that he has an Appeals hearing to attend next week. We relay that information to him.
Of course, that means that there isn't any $400 check incoming after all - that was a blatant, bold-faced lie.
And then, this morning. The puppies are healthy, active, and starting to get rembunctious. And a few have figured out how to squeeze through gaps between the fence and the gate. We try to block it up, but they still get out. And then this morning, I start hearing panicked squealing from one of the puppies. I look out the kitchen window, and see the mother dog trying to get the eldest away from a puppy that he has pinned to the ground, with several other puppies milling about. I run out, and the eldest tries to slink off with the puppy to a sheltered spot under an overgrown sugar cane tree. I chase him down, he drops the puppy, and I recover it. I put the puppy back into the enclosure, shoo the rest back in, and block up the holes again. After a few minutes, we notice that the puppy that was attacked is sitting in the middle of the enclosure, not moving, just kind of... dazed.
I'm not really sure what exactly happened. I THINK the eldest was trying to defend the momma dog from an "attack" by the over-eager puppy, but the end result is that he was trying to kill the puppy, while the momma dog was ineffectually trying to stop him.
The puppy looks like he's in shock, and totally not processing anything going on around him. Momma and the herd of puppies pass close to him, and he gets knocked over, and just stays laying on his side, as though he didn't even notice that he was knocked down. So we get a box, and get ready to take him to a local Humane Society and claim we found him as a stray. We have no funds to get him properly taken care of.
And, just as we're about to leave, the pup vomits, and then starts whining and looking around... so we think he's "rebooted" his brain, and we put him back in the enclosure. I hope he's okay, but we really can't deal with this.
And we have no idea when, or even if, Duke and Tina are going to be back to collect the animals and the rest of their stuff. Our front bedroom still has a ton of stuff, including their bed. Our garage is overflowing with their stuff, and we can't really get to our stuff (some of which we DO need).
I'm very tempted to call Animal Control, and have them take all of the dogs away. The only thing that's stopping me is that the momma dog and the younger male belong to Tina, and she's a lot easier to deal with (and more reasonable) than Duke.
...
So how was your morning?
This morning, I had to interrupt my breakfast to rescue a puppy from being killed by its father. We put the puppy back with the rest of the litter in a semi-protected enclosure, but it still seemed to be in shock when we left for work... I'm not sure if it's going to survive.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Let me back up to the beginning. In early December, my (nearly) brother-in-law - we'll call him Duke - was getting evicted from his $1600/mo apartment in an expensive part of the state because he and his girlfriend - we'll call her Tina - couldn't afford the rent any longer. You see, he'd been unemployed for over a year, and his GF was now 6 months pregnant and unable to work long shifts to support them. She was still working 20-30 hour weeks, but that wasn't enough to feed two (and a half) people, one cat, three dogs, a snake, and two lizards as well as pay for utilities, rent, and other things.
So Duke asked us to let him move into our as-yet-unused front bedroom in our new house. After some deliberation (mostly over the fact that Duke is long on promises, short on follow-through), we agree that they can move in IF they pay $600 a month in rent, and we'll let them "pay down" the rent by doing maintenance, repairs, and upgrades on the house.
They move in, and as they're in the process of moving the last load, I ask about the first month's rent. Duke promises I'll have it soon, because he spent the last of their money on the moving van, hauling more stuff than we own, including a full kitchen suite of appliances (which are now rusting in our back yard).
I should have blocked them then, but I let it go, as he's supposed to be getting UI checks, and Tina is still working. And then UI says, "Wait a minute, you moved." They stop paying him until he attends a phone conference to explain the move. So we get nothing.
In February, Tina scraped up $400 to pay us, so we were happy for a while. But that's still not enough, and Duke is still wrangling with UI, and Tina has the expected miscarriage, which puts a sudden halt to her income. And then Duke gets into a shouting match with someone in a parking lot, resulting in the other person running him over, pretty much shredding his foot in the process. And now he has a new excuse for not looking for work, and UI won't pay him while he's disabled, and he's filing for Disability. How about suing the guy who ran him over? Nah, the "cops screwed up the report," and he thinks it's impossible to get anything done there.
And we still see nothing more from them through March, and into April. Tina went back to work in mid-March, but because she's on restricted duty still, just feeding the animals and keeping his car running is draining most of her funds. Our own bills are falling further and further behind, because our expenses are notably higher with them present, and our own income isn't enough to cover everything.
And then the female dog gives birth to a litter of eleven puppies. Despite his injury, Duke somehow manages to make a space in the overstuffed garage for the puppies. Momma Dog is glad to have someplace protected, but spends way too much time whining to be let into or out of the garage - because we're not just leaving it wide open.
In mid-April, we decide we've had enough, and give an ultimatum to Duke: Get your shit together in 4 weeks, or move out in 6. I was prepared to drop a 3-day pay-or-quit on them if he started to make a fight about it, but astonishingly, he didn't. And then a crew of repo men show up on our doorstep to repo the car that Tina's using to get to work. We block them, with some misgivings, but the repo men made themselves the unequivocal bad guys by threatening the dogs.
Astonishingly, Duke stops being a total putz, contacts a cousin of his in Arizona, and makes arrangements to start working for the cousin. The cousin puts up the cash to get Duke's lienholder to call off the repo men. And Duke and Tina make plans to go to Arizona for just a week, scope out the situation, do some work for the cousin, then come back, gather their stuff, tie up loose ends with friends and such, and do a big move to Arizona.
As part of the preparation for them being gone for a week, he hijacks a Dogloo from one of his friends, and we put that in an enclosed area at the far back end of the yard, behind the garage, and we move the puppies in there. We can't really keep momma dog in there - she knows how to climb the fence to get out. So we let her in a couple of times a day, and she's much happier with that arrangement.
Just before they leave, they need a battery for the car. It's not holding a charge, and Tina has been borrowing a portable car charger from a co-worker for the past few months, but that's not going to work with them moving to Arizona, because she needs to give the charger back to the co-worker. So we reluctantly pay $108 to have a new battery put in, which Duke swears up one side and down the other will be paid when he gets back from Arizona. He's also promising that he's got a $400-something check from UI coming soon, and he'll sign that over directly to us.
They leave on last Saturday. And on Tuesday, we get a call, saying they won't be back as planned, because the cousin isn't giving them money to come back - he's making them pay off the $900-something debt incurred to get their car out of jeopardy before anything else, and since he's paying them for work, he's taking his debt off the top, and leaving them just enough to live on. At the same time, we get a letter from UI, saying that he has an Appeals hearing to attend next week. We relay that information to him.
Of course, that means that there isn't any $400 check incoming after all - that was a blatant, bold-faced lie.
And then, this morning. The puppies are healthy, active, and starting to get rembunctious. And a few have figured out how to squeeze through gaps between the fence and the gate. We try to block it up, but they still get out. And then this morning, I start hearing panicked squealing from one of the puppies. I look out the kitchen window, and see the mother dog trying to get the eldest away from a puppy that he has pinned to the ground, with several other puppies milling about. I run out, and the eldest tries to slink off with the puppy to a sheltered spot under an overgrown sugar cane tree. I chase him down, he drops the puppy, and I recover it. I put the puppy back into the enclosure, shoo the rest back in, and block up the holes again. After a few minutes, we notice that the puppy that was attacked is sitting in the middle of the enclosure, not moving, just kind of... dazed.
I'm not really sure what exactly happened. I THINK the eldest was trying to defend the momma dog from an "attack" by the over-eager puppy, but the end result is that he was trying to kill the puppy, while the momma dog was ineffectually trying to stop him.
The puppy looks like he's in shock, and totally not processing anything going on around him. Momma and the herd of puppies pass close to him, and he gets knocked over, and just stays laying on his side, as though he didn't even notice that he was knocked down. So we get a box, and get ready to take him to a local Humane Society and claim we found him as a stray. We have no funds to get him properly taken care of.
And, just as we're about to leave, the pup vomits, and then starts whining and looking around... so we think he's "rebooted" his brain, and we put him back in the enclosure. I hope he's okay, but we really can't deal with this.
And we have no idea when, or even if, Duke and Tina are going to be back to collect the animals and the rest of their stuff. Our front bedroom still has a ton of stuff, including their bed. Our garage is overflowing with their stuff, and we can't really get to our stuff (some of which we DO need).
I'm very tempted to call Animal Control, and have them take all of the dogs away. The only thing that's stopping me is that the momma dog and the younger male belong to Tina, and she's a lot easier to deal with (and more reasonable) than Duke.
...
So how was your morning?
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