The New Adventures of Emo Dog and El Chupacabra
Once upon a time there were two people who didnt have a dog. They were quite happy in their dog free world until one of the people’s father decided that he was going to leave his great hairy mutt of a dog to them in his will. The two people, who’s hands were most definately forced at this point, decided to at least choose the dog that they were going to be lumbered with and raced into the first pet shop that they could find and discovered what they thought were two lovely staffy pups. Not having much to do with dogs, they didnt realise that there is a world of difference between “Staffy” and “American Staffy”. In their ignorance, they used their incredible wealth of knowledge about dogs and remembered what they had seen on the telly a few days before regarding the choosing of a pup. “Make sure to pick the pup that is interested in you”. Steve was very interested in a big boofy looking pup but the pup could care less about us. Sitting on the floor and Steve’s chosen pup took off running to check out the pet shop. The other longer legged boy was all over Steve and despite wanting the bigger boy, I suggested that he take this one, and on a hot summers day we brought him home.
This photo was taken on the day that we brought Bezial aka Emo Dog home. Steve soon grew to love him and he was his constant companion. Steve had always wanted a staffy since he arrived in Australia and he finally got one…pity it didnt stop growing and ended up weighing 37kg, somewhat more than a normal staffy!
A year later we bought him a little companion as we were going to Polytechnic and he needed something to take his mind off us not being there. We went back to the same pet shop and bought Qi, a teeny pup, half Jack Russell Terrier, half Staffy and from the moment that we brought her home she knew just who was the boss…she was!
Qi loved Bezial from the moment that she got home and followed him around constantly. Despite numerous attempts from our girls to change her into a handbag dog, she is the first to find anything dead and roll in it, and is always on the lookout for a chance to elevate herself up the pack ladder. She now rules the roost in our house in town and loves it when she gets the chance to come out and boss everyone around. She is one of those dogs who have ‘been here before’ and is the wisest and most clever of our dogs. Within a day of arriving she was tumbling in and out of the dog door despite being teeny. Steve has a very special place in his heart for Qi as Qi contracted canine cough the day after this photo was taken and he stayed up with her sleeping on him so as to make sure that she didnt feel alone…
We found out that Qi was born on exactly the same day as Bezial, a year after him. How is that for a coincidence? Again, she was the ‘reject’ dog, we seem to collect freaks, rejects and weirdo’s, that way we wont look out of place :o)
After my father died and we moved out to his place, we had to leave Qi behind because our daughters had become very attached to her. Emo Dog loved his new house but was becoming incredibly sulky and needy so we decided to add to our family. We didnt want to get a female as that would upset Qi so another male it was. We bought the new little fellow from a Kennel in South Australia. When he arrived, we had to drive down to Hobart to get him from the plane. We unloaded his carrier and opened it up to see the most scared and starving hungry little man around. He hadnt had much to do with people before he was tossed onto a plane and his whole world was turned upside down. It didnt take him long to realise that we were friendly and Earl arrived. He is the most cuddly and snuggly boy when he isnt maddly racing around the house, chewing on the furniture and eating plants. He has eaten his weights worth of electrical equipment and cords, twice his weight in plants. He is very selective and only eats plants that cost over $50 or that we took AGES to find or graft ourselves (and he ALWAYS chews them off below the graft….), he constantly has his nose in the compost bin and has learned to open the cupboard if its slightly ajar (thus gaining access to the compost bin…) He eats stuffed toys and grass with the greatest of joy and stands grazing on the side of the road whenever we go walking. We get the feeling that Earl didnt have a good start in life so we are making up for it now. Apart from being an alien in a dogs body, he is a lovely dog.
Its hard to reconcile this photo of a small 17 week old Earl who has evolved into the dastardly El Chupacabra!…
This photo was when he was 8 months old…he hasnt stopped growing…its all that green matter that he is constantly scoffing… You want to see what the boys are looking at?…
Meet Jacko on the left, and Pink on the right. Both boys we have now discovered and brought here by their feral mother Felix who after months of eating what we were giving her, watched us for 2 days solid and made her mind up that this was the place to bring her babies. Pink is timid, despite being much bigger than Jacko. Jacko has always been fearless and Steve had to rescue him from our deck when he decided to come visiting one night and got bailed up by Emo Dog and ever since then he has been almost tame, not quite…but almost. Pretty well fed boys means pretty well fed wrens and no chicken tail feathers floating up to us on the breeze…its worth what we pay in cat food to keep Serendipity farm in the way that the ferals have become accustomed to. We are currently working on teaching Emo Dog and El Chupacabra just who is the boss around here. They think that they already know, now they just have to teach us…
theroadtoserendipity 
Oct 11, 2011 @ 12:40:45
That’s MY dog! Don’t you say you ‘had’ to leave her behind, she WANTED to stay! Qi would still be FAT if she lived with you.
(P.S. See you Friday!)
Oct 11, 2011 @ 19:53:09
This is apparently the abject ranting of a homeless person. Who lets these people have access to computers eh? You have to be nice to them so I will allow them to comment but just this once Bethany! Just this once…..
Dec 28, 2012 @ 02:20:06
What a great looking family you have. I love the photo of Emo (Bezial)dog & El Chupacabra looking at Jacko & Pink. That look on the dog’s faces is what I so love about dogs, they are so present, so curious, so alive in the moment, such incredible teachers. Of course, there are other endless things I love about dogs, my passion. Really nice connecting with and taking a minute to get to know you. Most of the dogs in our extended family are all pits. They are historically known as babysitters, and are such a great dog. Too bad they get labeled and a bad rap, because of human’s stupidity, but that’s true with any dog that goes against its loving nature and gets vicious (my humble opinion at any rate). Happy day, friend.
Dec 28, 2012 @ 06:29:17
🙂 I agree…there is a dichotomy when it comes to the “bulldog” family in general that is an undercurrent even in dog lovers. We walk our boys every day for at least an hour and usually come across a couple of other dog walkers in the process and as soon as they set eyes on our boys the fear starts. The media has a whole lot to do with that reaction and the rest of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of the owners who are attracted to strong breeds. Rotties wear their shame as do all “fighting” breeds. I have found that our boys tend to be lovers rather than fighters. I have one very precious memory of Bezial when he was about 2. We were sitting on a bench seat in the middle of the city and a young woman and her little baby sat down in front of us. She didn’t show any fear having her baby so close to our “pitbull” and to reward her Bezial leaned close to the top of her babies head and gently licked it once and sat back. He had never had anything to do with babies before and this showed us that a dog is a dog is a dog…what you MAKE of that dog through your interactions is your fault, not the dogs. Fear is becoming institutionalised in our general populace and it is incredibly sad that so many people are being mislead into wanting these breeds banned. Ethnic cleansing of entire breeds of dog isn’t the answer, but I am preaching to the converted here ;). Your humble opinion is exactly matched by my own 🙂 Have a wonderful winters day wherever you are and think of us here just about to ramp up into our hottest months of the year. Time to get out into that poor chook scratched garden and shore it up for the summer! 🙂
Dec 28, 2012 @ 12:10:08
Bezial knows better than most of us, and bless his sweet loving heart… love that story. Dogs are my teachers. I’m in So. Calif (30 miles south of Santa Barbara in a rural county like city, Ojai) and today the sun is shining in this wintery day of 68…burrrrr, lol. Don’t know what it gets like in your winters there but here it doesn’t ever get too terribly cold in the winter. We’re blessed. 🙂 Enjoy yourselves as we head into 2013, sounds so weird. Wishing you all well. 😉
Feb 22, 2013 @ 05:35:08
I loved this post so much – made me think of how we were adopted by our two dogs (both rescue dogs, both destined for very short lives if they hadn’t decided to come and take over our home). How did Earl get the name Chupacabra – we’re intrigued?! Does he have a special relationship with lactating goats?! And as for Qi being boss, our Luna is Jack Russell with something else (local goatherd mutt most likely) and she is as bossy as me 🙂
Feb 22, 2013 @ 05:50:45
Qi rules my daughters house with the ability to deliver “Doggy stinkey” to freeze the soul of a perennial yogi! She is spoiled rotten but would LOVE to visit Serendipity Farm and roll in something smelly. She isn’t allowed visitation rights because she sulks for months and won’t eat her fois gras when mummy gets her back ;). Earl is an enigma. He got bitten by a wasp on his paw yesterday and had his first taste of real pain. He limped in looking like we had neutered him and promptly slunk under the bed to wait out the pain till it went. I had to lure him out from under the bed by pretending that Steve had his favourite toy and was up for a game…El Chupacabra is a shape changer (and oftwhile goat sucker indeed!)…I am sure that if Earl had the chance he would dispatch as many goats as his wanderlust would allow (along with any native, tame, or indeed alien animal that crossed his pathway)…he now has a significant respect for all things crawly thanks to his recent run in with the wasp (swatting wasps from your bone in the middle of the day when they are at their most angry is NOT something he is going to do again!) and a scuttling enormous spider that was hightailing it over the lounge floor last night, that prior to his wasp nip would have been crunched up with gusto got watched from a very safe distance last night! Bezial had the BEST time eating as many bones as he could whilse El Chupacabra only had the courage to stick his head out of the dog door to watch morosely…living with dogs has it’s entertainment value 😉
Feb 22, 2013 @ 21:21:22
Aha – it makes sense now! Poor old Earl, do hope he recovers soon 🙂
May 18, 2013 @ 19:15:50
Naaawr! Staffys are the best dogs ever, I LOVE THEM AND THEIR BIG STRAWBERRY SHAPED HEADS!
Aug 24, 2013 @ 21:45:24
Oh what a joy to read you post. My middle child was always rescuing dogs + cats, so now we have the last of the crew living with us:-) They are all aging and we treat them as family. As I read your post I felt like I was reading about our home…we have two pit bulls, and a lab mix from our local shelter where we volunteered for year( kept bringing home more!). Our youngest just left for graduate school and we are empty nesters, but not really we have the other children!Our dogs and cats are so much fun, I could not imagine life with out our “other kids” we have…these are cool since they love us no matter what we say or do!
Aug 25, 2013 @ 06:35:13
Hi Robbie 🙂
Welcome to the chaotic rabble that is Serendipity Farm. SO glad you like our boys. Owning pitties yourself, you would know what a bad rap they get and how absolutely wonderful they are. It is 6.33am as I type out this comment and one of our boys just decided to head out of the warm bed and deposit himself on the floor adoringly next to my feet…nothing to do with doggy love and EVERYTHING to do with being first in the line to get some of the leftover quiche from last night and a dog treat for being such a GOOD boy and keeping me company ;). Needless to say he is the lab mix…the 100 percenter “Earl” is still upside down twitching his feet on our bed dreaming of chasing possums… glad to meet people that “get us”. A lot of people don’t ;).
Aug 25, 2013 @ 08:04:26
I do understand about owning the dog that gets an undeserved bad rap! The first pitbull my middle daughter brought home under her arm 11 yrs ago when she was just a freshman in high school! She rescued it from a truck out in the cold. The man was selling them to people who were going to do things with them that should never be done! I was nervous at first since I had never owned a pitbull bread before, heard all the stories etc.The shelters at the time would not even take pit bulls! That dog was named Schatze ( sweetness in German), I was walking her at the marina near our home at only 11 months and a crazy guy let two of his pit bulls attack her! I learned how crazy the world is out there and I have been protective of her every since. I called the police and they were in trouble, they are trying to arrest these people that do this to this breed..well, the second one came to us when he just fit into the palm of our hand. Came out of a horrible place, we did not know he would live..we called him Chance..he is 8 yrs old. We also had 3 other rescue dogs that were mutts( two have passed on). The pit bulls are the most fun! The are so loving, comical , and just the most “pleasing” dog I have every owned in my life. They have personalities and they so funny + smart…After I read your daily routines with dogs, I thought, finally someone that understands living with a family of dogs! Both Schatze and Chance have to be exercised everyday in our yard. We grow a lot of food on our city lot, but there is a spot for them to run and catch their ball. They live to play! I just hate the way people respond to them..they love kids and are great family dogs.
Aug 25, 2013 @ 10:02:40
Yeah…I am right with you on the dogs being seen as weapons not “dogs”. We walked our boys up a dirt road today because there was a pitbull attack on a baby in a pram by 3 roaming pitbulls in Sydney yesterday and people are very quick to nail the entire breed for the actions of a few. They police can’t find the owners (the dogs have been put down) so that means that they weren’t microchipped like they are supposed to be and they weren’t registered. Does that tell you something about the “owners” or what?!!! The day that the media starts naming and shaming the owners of these dogs is the day that the true nature of the problems with this breed are shown. It’s not the dogs. It’s the people that use them as an extension of their gonads :(. Glad to share our exploits with someone who understands :). We just walked our boys in the rain as Bezial is alright without a walk but Earl goes stir crazy and feels the need to eat furniture and run like crazy around the house knocking over furniture and careening into anything in his path (usually with a toy in his mouth). Earl isn’t 3 yet and in Amstaff years that’s still a kid. Bezial is coming up to 6 and is more stately (and fat 😉 ). We love our boys and to Steve they are his kids. I would defend them to the end BUT I know that they need supervision at all times and that they need to be contained and I know that if I want to keep them living with us we are going to have to be responsible owners. That’s it…that’s all! 🙂
Aug 25, 2013 @ 21:49:12
In our neighborhood we have tons of dogs. But they are the small “yappy” types that run up at your heals, and cost a ton of money…and also are called cutsie little names like “cadoopoddle breed”….lol..We had to add a foot of fence on the top of our fence so Schatze would not jump the fence( pit bulls can leap from a standing position-l0l and clear a fence). She would jump the fence and “visit” the dog next door that never likes any dogs in the neighborhood. Another neighbor was going to call the police when she noticed my my other neighbor out there trying to get schatze out of his yard(this was when she was a year old). I went over took her home. She wanted to play. By the way their dog hates ALL dogs but decided to play with schatze. I realized at that point having pit bulls was different than my husky/german shepard mix, and lab mix, or golden retreiver mix…and so our life with pit bulls changed how people looked at our dogs. It is not the pittbull-they love people, but people don’t love them. The other next door neighbor lets their dogs( little capoddles(lol) things) run all over my front yard. They are good neighbors , but they know nothing about ownership of dogs. Their dogs are not on a leash and run out on the road after all kinds of dogs, people etc….but since they are “little designer dogs” they get away with it..if one of our pit bulls ran around and did all that stuff….they would call the police!
It is not only the “bad pit bull owner people” but people that do not know dog behavior. I have to keep our dogs on a leash and they let those ankle biting dogs run all over my property which means my dogs sense them on their property…I know if one got lose and chased their dog away( which it might think is a small wild animal ) they would hurt it not because they are mean dogs, but just dogs…..it is aggravating to listen to them yap and bark and run all over without a leash( we have a leash law), but I am being a responsible dog owner and keep our dogs on our property..owning pit bulls is different than other dogs because of the bad rap….if you look at old black and white movies, pit bulls were the standard dog….spot over eye sitting with children playing in the street….just like apple pie!
Aug 26, 2013 @ 04:18:10
I completely agree about the designer dogs. Steve held the door open for an old woman the other day who was coming out of the bank with her “fluffy” under her arm! (She didn’t even say thanks 😉 ) and I have seen women with small dogs in supermarkets and walking in the local parks that specifically say “no dogs” because “fluffy woodlekin’s ISN’T a dog, he is my little fluffy babykins…” ECH! A dog is a dog. It is meant to be running around chasing things, especially other animals and that’s what they do best. We have a tenuous relationship with them at the best of times and it’s only sheer luck that most of them choose to toe the line and “behave”. Earl is the closest thing to a timberwolf we are ever going to get. He is instinctual and thinks with his nose. He acts before he thinks and if we lived anywhere else but on 4 acres of wilderness out in the sticks with a large fence we would have lost him by now. He is a lovely dog. He lays upside down gazing adoringly at us and he snuggles up in Steve’s lap. He also plucks hens and roosters and plays mercilessly with anything that manages to get into the compound fence that we have erected around our home. We too know that you have to be responsible and we hate it when we have to walk to the other side of the road because someone is walking their fluffies and they get upset because big nasty pitbulls are actually out on the road. Our boys are amstaffs but they are tarred with the same feather as are Rottweilers and anything else that is big enough to be considered a problem for fluffies. We had someone up the road hide behind her husband a little while ago and say “don’t let them get me!” when we were taking our boys for a walk…makes you wonder about the mentality of some people…sigh…oh well, at least WE know how to care for and love our dogs and who cares what anyone else thinks. As for the problem of the fluffies on the lawn, have you considered naphthalene flakes? Dogs HATE them. They block up their noses and if your dogs aren’t allowed out in the front yard, might be an option ;). Same goes for a quick squirt with the garden hose…dogs HATE being squirted with the hose and what are the owners going to do…sue you? It’s their dog that is in the wrong and as you said, there is a leash policy that they aren’t adhering to ;). We are so lucky that we have neighbours that are on large properties like we are and that most of them are nice, accepting people who like our dogs. Feel free to vent any time. We completely understand 🙂
Aug 25, 2013 @ 08:10:22
oops…”to treasure” …schatze…:-)
Aug 25, 2013 @ 10:03:13
lol 😉 correct spelling and grammar are few and far between here so “forgedaboudit” 😉
Apr 18, 2014 @ 05:17:15
Your animals are BEAUTIFUL and I fell in love with the Jack Russell/Staffy mix – I have never seen that combination but it’s great! I personally could never go for the “yappy fluffy puffy” type dogs although I know many of them who bring great joy to their families. Give me a lively explorer every time, though. Due to our circumstances we needed a small dog, so we got a Schipperke which was like having a big dog personality in a small dog’s body. He left us June 30 after 16 wonderful years and we still miss him. When my husband’s cancer treatments and our son’s open heart surgery are behind us, we plan to adopt another adventurous dog.
Apr 18, 2014 @ 05:30:36
Earl is all American staffy, no Jack Russell in him but my cousin thought that he was a Jack Russell when he was a pup ;). Small yappy dogs make me twich. Not because they don’t have a place (probably in some girlies handbag or nana’s knitting basket) but because its ALWAYS then that starts problematic meetings. We are just walking along minding our business and a small yappy dog comes around the corner, usually with a nervous owner who picks it up and from it’s now lofty position it screams insults and abuse at our bemused big boys who just stare at it in bewilderment (our boys don’t bark much) and I can almost see the nana/owner having mental epilepsy as they run off in the opposite direction because our “killer dogs” are going to inhale fluffy whole… sigh… the media has a whole LOT to answer for :(. I am so sorry to hear about your husbands cancer and your son’s heart problems. They are incredibly lucky to have a wife/mum who is as positive as you are and who shares with impunity. I am very glad to have met you Julia and cheers again for following the blog. It’s a bit of a crazy jumble around here and you just never know what narf7 is going to be doing from one week to the next but you can be sure it is probably not likely to be mainstream 😉 Hugs from once sunny Sidmouth Tassie, now chilly cold Sidmouth where we are paper, rock, scissoring (I am “YAY” where Steve is “NAY!” but then I’m not the one that has to chop the wood…) whether or not to light Brunhilda (the big wood burning oven) for the “winter”. Bit early yet but I have a dehydrated sourdough starter from Spain twitching on my itchy bread making trigger finger that wants to be brought back to life and get baking so I had best get my act together and make sure I win this battle…I reckon I will pick scissors this time! 😉