New house New crazy

We just moved into our “Move in Ready” house, (but that’s a different story) a couple of months ago. We spent 21 years fixing up our last house, AKA The Funny Farm, to move to the Colorado Mountains on a couple of acres of forest. What an adventure! Had to find homes for a lot of our animals. Some were not allowed in our new county, they frown on roosters and guineas, too loud, I guess. Some were too old to make the journey, the parrot and desert tortoise were not equipped to handle the cold weather.

It was heartbreaking to give them away, but we were blessed to find them all great homes.

At the last minute we were able to find a home for the hardest of the hardest pets to place – Buster, the slaughterhouse rescue horse. He almost died in the 30-minute trip to his new home, he would never have survived the trip all the way from Temecula to Florissant.

We bought a gigantic used horse trailer to haul him in before we found out we weren’t taking him. It turned out to be the MOST amazing thing. We used it to move 9 chickens ha and a couple ducks. The chickens were so happy on the trip they laid eggs on the way!

We moved 4 cats inside my SUV, they were not happy enough to lay eggs. They cried and complained for hours. Poor Jim was on that trip. My mom traveled in style, perched up on a queen bed in my sister’s campervan. The next big animal trip was with my daughter and grandkids as co-pilots, along with my 4 little dogs. The grand-co-pilots, brought their dog along just so we’d be extra packed.

Turned out their dog is a seasoned traveler and helped keep my nervous pups quiet. The first leg of our trip was beautiful. We loved driving through Utah and even got to see a Sister Wife when we stopped to get gas. However, the next day we barely made it over the Vail Pass because of snow and ice. All the other road warriors had no problems managing the white stuff. We, however, were riding on, and I quote the Tire Man on this: “Uhhh, Yeah, you had super shitty tires and they were totally bald.” We got new tires the next day. That explained a lot, like why we were going 100 MPH sideways, and all the other people were going 40 MPH, straight.

So, we made it to Colorado on Wednesday and left the next day on shiny new tires, expensive ones with tread and stuff. Found a home for Buster on the way back to California and a home for our last puppy, but that’s another story.

Got home Friday late afternoon. Poor Jim had been alone for the first time, to pack the last of our stuff and tidy the “move-in-ready” house. He was not move-anywhere-ready. We punched it into high gear and tried to get the horse trailer loaded with our last-minute stuff and dog-proof the inside of the car for the next load of co-pilots.

We finished up around 10:00 pm, got up at 4:00 am on Saturday and loaded up about 400 pounds of dog. Baby Biscuit weighs in around 110 lbs, his girlfriends are slightly more ‘slender’, but not by much.

Poor Jim fed them during the day on Friday, but we held off on snacks during the trip. We adorned my car with several tarps, blankets and towels, Poor Jim had protective head gear for us, just in case, but we didn’t need that, thank God.

They enjoyed a hearty meal after we snuck 400 pounds of white giants into the hotel. We happily paid $50 for one, but didn’t want to blow our wad on the other 3 criminals, so with stealth-like moves, scooted them in a side door.

Believe it or not, the little angels, (my grandkids and little dogs) made a much bigger mess of my car than the 400-pound hairballs.

I laid awake for hours for a solid month trying to figure out how to move a 96-year-old lady, a bunch of dogs, chickens, some horses, goats…. you get the picture without anyone dying on the way. With all the planning and angst, it all worked out. Some ideas were mine; most weren’t. When they say, “It takes a village”, they are not kidding!!! It took: Poor Jim, Brother-in-law Joel, Sister Teri, niece Julie, nephew Jordon, daughters Kelly, Tina, and Katie, grandkids Stella, Jack, grand-dog Benji and brother-in-law Tom to make this sojourn work.

Everyone survived. I can’t believe it.

Well……. except for the tires on my travel trailer, but that’s a different story.