Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Second rate reporter says what?

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Dog Blogging / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Happy Holidays, Suzy Pupman

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Happy Holidays, Suzy Pupman

by | 74 Comments

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Suzy is a very good girl, and the Jokinens are very good people. From the Washington Post, “A stray dog wandered into a family’s house in the night and made herself at home”:

It was 4 a.m. when Jack Jokinen woke up to find his wife standing over him with unusual news: Their 1-month-old daughter was fine, his wife said, but there was an unfamiliar dog in their living room.

Jokinen, 34, said he figured there had to be some kind of misunderstanding. Perplexed, he walked downstairs Saturday morning and found an emaciated dog sitting in the middle of the floor — wet, shaking and visibly afraid.

Jokinen worried that someone had broken into their Philadelphia house with the dog in tow. He checked the doors and then the windows. Everything was locked, and no one was hiding in the closets. So Jokinen pulled up the footage from his security camera.

The video solved the mystery. Around 3:15 a.m., a dog limped down the sidewalk past Jokinen’s house and then doubled back to look up the staircase leading to the home. She walked away and returned one last time before she cautiously pattered up the five steps and through the open front door…

The couple didn’t have the heart to turn her over to animal control. Instead, the Jokinens brought the dog to an emergency vet and paid for a $72 exam. They learned that she had ticks and fleas, damaged teeth, infected paws and an atrophied leg.

The dog didn’t have a microchip, but that was perfectly fine with the Jokinens. They decided by that point they wanted to make the dog, who is between 7 and 9 years old, the newest member of their family. They named her Suzyn Pupman after New York Yankees sportscaster Suzyn Waldman, who emailed Jokinen to express her pleasure at the whole thing…

Maybe my eyes are a little wet, but that could just be my seasonal allergies acting up, okay?

Reader Interactions

74Comments

  1. 1.

    John Revolta

    He checked the doors and then the windows. Everything was locked,

    ……

    she cautiously pattered up the five steps and through the open front door…

    ????

  2. 2.

    satby

    @John Revolta: you have to read the whole story. The front door hadn’t latched and had blown open, a passerby saw the open door after the dog had gone inside and pulled it shut again, where it locked.
    Sometimes Twitter can be rewarding, this story thread yesterday and the subsequent happy rescue tails shared sure was.

  3. 3.

    John Revolta

    Ah ha

    Twenty-five minutes later, a passerby noticed that the door was ajar, yelled into the house to ask whether everyone was okay and pulled the door shut.

  4. 4.

    Ruckus

    @John Revolta:
    When he first closed the door it didn’t shut all the way. The wind blew it open and a neighbor shut it for them. So in the morning everything was locked up fine. With dog in house. Their security camera caught everything. It’s a fun story

    I see you found the info……..

  6. 6.

    ThresherK

    I don’t often have kind things to say about someone whose social media account is headered with a picture of Yankee Stadium, but: Good job, Bronxite! Heck, I may even show this thread to my wife, the Worcester girl.

    And I got the Suzyn Waldman nod right away. She is a trailblazer of womens’ reporting and broadcasting in sports.

  10. 10.

    sab

    Over the years we have adopted several abandoned dogs.

    Our first was a white labrador retriever abandoned in Las Vegas. We saw him wandering the neighborhood, looking for lawn sprinklers for about three days until we finally took him in. When I was loading my rental truck to move east he was distraught. I still remember the look of relief and gratitude on his face when I hoisted him into the truck cab. He had thought he was about to be abandoned again.

    Our second was a ten week old lab mix puppy dumped out into the snow in February in northern Ohio. She lived with us for fifteen more years. She loved walks, but she was terrified to be out of sight of houses for the rest of her life. She apparently always thought she could be abandoned in the woods again.

    We also adopted a chow retriever mix that a neighbor had found wandering. That one was really sad because he had obviously been loved and well cared for. We ran ads for months, but no response. Then a couple of years later I was talking with a new (Mexican immigrant) neighbor  across the street from my house. We both suddenly realized that the dog understood Spanish. We had been running ads in the wrong newspapers. My ex got custody of him, so I never found out what happened in the long run with him.

  14. 14.

    sab

    @Baud: Finally the stepkids are old and mature enough that when they adopt a pet they keep it. We got two dogs, two guinea pigs, one hairless rat and three cats from their abandoned pet projects.

  15. 15.

    sab

    @sab: I especially liked the rat. She was very entertaining. She lived in little polar fleece nests that I laundered a lot. I bought fleece baby blankets that I chopped up into workable sizes, and she chewed them up into nesting material and built nests. She was very friendly and sweet. I miss her

    She lived in a fishtank/terrarium next to the TV.

  17. 17.

    Steeplejack

    I’m looking forward to a slow Saturday morning. No pressing errands, it’s cold outside (currently 30° here in NoVA), and I don’t have to do sudden, forced techno troubleshooting, as I did last Saturday when I discovered that my cable/​Internet connection had died. Ended up with a new cable modem, and everything’s fine now.

    I fed the housecat her first breakfast and made a cup of free-range, cage-free Trader Joe’s instant coffee, which I’m sipping with three little squares of rugelach. Real breakfast later. Premier League in a bit, Everton vs. Arsenal. The day’s off to a good start.

  19. 19.

    germy

    Jackie Rae Johnson: The peculiar tension of being poor in winter

    Propane torches are one of those things that all poor people have. You have to have them because they can do lots of things like loosen lug nuts, or start stove fires with wet wood. They are just a nozzle with a shut off valve that screws onto a tank of propane gas. You open the valve, hold a cigarette lighter to the end and whoosh: instant very hot fire.

    Cigarette lighters are another thing that poor people have maybe to light cigarettes but other uses abound: lighting recalcitrant ovens, burning the frayed ends of nylon rope so it won’t come untied while it is holding up the door on the car and you have had to use it because the duct tape has run out, lighting candles, first line of attack when starting wood fires, and lighting propane torches.

    https://vtdigger.org/2018/12/20/jackie-rae-johnson-the-peculiar-tension-of-being-poor-in-winter/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=SocialWarfare

  20. 20.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    We inherited our last dog from a friend who died. When he went into the hospital, Roxie lived alone in his basement for over a month, with his son stopping by to leave food once in a while. She was afraid of our basement. She was just a wonderful dog.
    On another note, we’re finally seeing Ford vs Ferrari today, but I just saw it’s 2 1/2 hours long. Why???

  21. 21.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack:

    As a kitten she lived by a small apartment complex nearby. I’d see her by the front entrance and say hello and give her skritches. One day 15 years ago she just decided to follow me home, which was a very short walk away, and we’ve been together ever since.

  22. 22.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy:  I quit smoking 10 years ago but I still carry a bic lighter for the thousand and one uses nobody thinks about until they don’t have one.

    The Woofmeister and Percy both came to us, via different routes, with abandonment issues. I like to say they fell into a pile of shit and came up smelling like roses.

  23. 23.

    germy

    @OzarkHillbilly: 
    On one of yesterday’s threads I was complaining about a contractor who used our stove as a saw horse. I came home yesterday to find it covered in sawdust and wood. My wife has been patient up to now with this contractor, but she’s irritated. Wants to take pictures of it before I vacuum and cover it.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy: 

    When you are poor, there is this feeling that if something is not needed from spring through fall, then it is not worth spending scarce money on, like new car batteries. Or socks. You do need fuel, and a furnace that works. Of course, running water is nice but there you have it. Heat is most important!

    I’ll explain socks, which may be harder to understand than car batteries.

    Memories.

  28. 28.

    Dog Mom

    Please send good thoughts and energy for my Dottie – Nearly 13 yo beagle with well managed Addison’s, but now in a couple days of lethargy, shivering and not eating. We’ve been to the vet for two days, getting fluids and tests with no specific dx – Test results mostly good. Possibly a uti – culture must ‘cook’ till Monday. She is drinking lots of water and was even getting up about every hour earlier in the week to go out and eat snow. Held her for a while this morning thinking it may be our last time, but she got up and drank some water and went out for a bit. I couldn’t get her to drink any bone broth and had to force a spoonful of baby food to get her prednisone down.

  29. 29.

    germy

    @Amir Khalid:

     I’d see her by the front entrance and say hello and give her skritches. One day 15 years ago she just decided to follow me home, which was a very short walk away, and we’ve been together ever since.

    That’s how the first human was domesticated by a cat, thousands of years ago.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MagdaInBlack: @germy:

    Yeah. This kinda hit home:

    One day in the winter, because it was winter and I was bored of being poor and isolated with two little kids — bored is a substitute for the fear that comes with poverty and isolation — I took out a wall.

    That fear is a feeling I’ve never really lost, the quiet desperation of not knowing how or when or what and wondering if once again I could conjure the magic to stave off disaster.

    My neighbor volunteers for a Catholic relief charity, takes in the calls from desperate people needing help with utilities. Listened to her take one in last week, a mother working at a senior citizens facility,  2 kids, disabled husband, etc  (the questions they ask- rolls eyes-) asking for help with the electicity. When my neighbor got done she wondered why people always wait until the last minute, these folks were gonna be cut off the next day and it was already after hours. I had to explain to her that asking for help is the last thing anyone wants to do, so they put it off until the last minute hoping some how someway to conjure some magic.

  39. 39.

    MagdaInBlack

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Ive determined those experiences are the source of my constant background buzz of anxiety. Spending so much time one false step from the edge, with no safety net, leaves some trauma, as I believe recent studies are showing ( Im not all that well off now, so the buzz spikes on occasion )

    Yes, that article surely did hit home.

  44. 44.

    Amir Khalid

    In the lunchtime kickoff match, Everton are playing what has so far been a distinctly lacklustre scoreless draw with visitors Arsenal.The BBC liveblog’s halftime assessment: “That was awful.”

    Both teams are playing their last match under a first-team coach as pro tempore manager after their managers were booted out a few weeks ago. Carlo Ancelotti, himself recently sacked by Napoli, takes over at Everton from Duncan “Big Dunc” Ferguson; Manchester City assistant manager Mikel Arteta takes over at Arsenal from Freddie Ljungberg. Big Dunc was a formidable striker for Everton, and is a club legend. Arteta and Ljungberg were teammates in the Arsenal “Invincibles” side that went undefeated in — and won — the 2004/5 Premier League season.

  45. 45.

    Dog Mom

    @JPL: Thank you – trying to hope that it is not the time, while knowing it could be and I don’t have control over that.  Just very hard as her sister was gone too soon in May and my old Weim passed in July at 16 years and 8 months – never enough time with them.

  47. 47.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack: 

    Premier League in a bit, Everton vs. Arsenal. The day’s off to a good start.

    After watching the match, do you still feel that way? Both incoming managers are at Goodison Park, and they can’t be enjoying the match.

  48. 48.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: I did not recall either of those things.  No wonder the bakery has been such a go to spot for you all these years.

    Has it messed you up that they started opening later?  Am I remembering that correctly?  Maybe now that you’re retired, you can all sleep a little later, so the timing doesn’t matter as much?

  49. 49.

    Phylllis

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:  It’s sort of like Ebert’s description of the original Day of the Jackal, a two+ hour movie that feels like it goes by in 15 minutes. We enjoyed the hell out of it.

  50. 50.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Amir Khalid:

    LOL, “good start” was not tied to that match, thank God. Made me turn off the TV for a bit. I guess the match of the day will be last one, although right now I can’t remember who’s playing. Man City?

  51. 51.

    frosty

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: @Phylllis:

    a two+ hour movie that feels like it goes by in 15 minutes.

    That’s a good description. There’s a lot of story to tell and it’s done well. Everybody I know who’s seen it enjoyed it. Even the wives of gearheads. :-)

    ETA: I followed the instructions to respond to two commenters and it worked!

  52. 52.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    The 5:30pm kickoff is Manchester City-Leicester City. Liverpool would be best served by a Man City win; that would leave Leicester still ten points behind Liverpool after today. Liverpool could then stretch their lead to 13 points if they beat Leicester on Boxing Day, and still have a match in hand.

  54. 54.

    Mary Ellen Sandahl

    Wonderful Yuletide puppy story … And it makes me wonder how animals choose their people. Suzy saw an open door on a rainy night, but had to steel herself to take the chance. Do Bronxite and family have other pets? Have often thought that pet-friendly humans carry a welcoming aura or scent around with them.

  56. 56.

    WaterGirl

    @Dog Mom: I’m so sorry about all those losses.  A few years ago, I lost 3 beloved pets within the same year.  When that happens, the loss isn’t additive, it’s exponential.  Hugs.

    edit:   To describe situations like this, my old vet used to say “it’s not the end of the road, but we’re on the road”.  Here’s hoping you get to stay on the road awhile longer.

  57. 57.

    TomatoQueen

    Merlin puts his paw out when he approves of something. Merlin puts his paw out to Suzy and never mind the Yankees.
    Now if TOON could just….oh nm.

  61. 61.

    Miss Bianca

    @sab: Our Watson came to us covered with holes – a big one in his side, a couple on the back of his head, and a pierced ear, likely from a BB or buckshot.

    We theorized that he had been dumped, or used for dogfight bait – but somehow he got away from something big enough to take chunks out of him.

    He’s only just got to the point where we can occasionally take him somewhere in the car without him throwing up. I figure it’s anxiety still. Poor puppers!

  62. 62.

    grandmaBear

    Mac was my sister’s beloved dog. He may have been in the room when she was killed, and then was taken out of state, ran away in the chaos and was, fortunately, found and turned in to a no-kill shelter where they discovered he was chipped. So I adopted him and had him flown almost across the country to live with us – 120 pounds is too much to take on board and I didn’t think another long drive was a good idea under the circumstances. He’s a big, lovable dog with some separation anxiety and a little possessive – though he always had those issues, I think. I sometimes wonder what goes on in his head though.

  63. 63.

    WaterGirl

    @Miss Bianca: Oh my god, that’s heartbreaking.  Not to mention, enraging.  My sister’s dog was a very special boy, and he came with a broken jaw, courtesy of the asshole who owned him previously.

    The asshole would come home, wearing boots, and kick Apache in the face.  I am in a rage all over again, just thinking about that.

    There had better be a special hell for people who are cruel to animals. I’ve got 5 bucks  10 bucks  100 bucks that says that Trump has kicked a dog in his lifetime.

  64. 64.

    WaterGirl

    @grandmaBear: There’s so much in your first two sentences that I hardly know what to say, but it’s impossible to read that and not say something.  What a terrible experience all around, and I’m glad the pup is with you now.

  66. 66.

    Dog Mom

    @WaterGirl: Thank you – I was excited a few minutes ago she ate 2 teaspoons of baby food without force. I am hoping for a few more bites. Keeping my fingers crossed.

  68. 68.

    grandmaBear

    @WaterGirl: I brought my sister’s favorite lap quilt with me and he still sleeps on that most nights. I do think it helps that we have another golden for company and small children to play with. He’s a bit confused by the new kitten though, and tries to protect me from him.

  69. 69.

    WaterGirl

    @grandmaBear: I’m sure that quilt is a comfort for both of you.

    I know that my sister’s kids – from the first time I held them as infants – knew/smelled/whatever that I was “like” my sister, and felt like they were home.

    I feel certain that your dog knows that very thing about you, as well.

  70. 70.

    Nora

    Our outdoor cat Sam came to us in a similar way. He lived with our next door neighbor, who got foreclosed on and got his power shut off. We helped the neighbor with the power for a couple of years and then the man moved away and left Sam behind. Sam started hanging out on our front porch, and my husband built him a little house there — we tried to get Sam to come inside with our other cats, but he never wanted to. Ultimately that little house had variable heat, blankets and a roof we could lift off to clean it out. We fed him three times a day for nine years, most of that time denying he was our cat (“he’s just the cat that lives on our porch”), until we took him to the vet to get his teeth taken care of, and after that he was ours (officially; he’d been ours, of course, since we put up the little house). He died just this July and I still reflexively look at the porch every time I pull into the driveway, expecting to see him pouring himself out between the railings to come and say hello.

  71. 71.

    Daddio7

    @Dog Mom: Pork liver dog food, we rescued a starved down small dog that wouldn’t eat. The vet sold us some. A few small spoon fulls at a time and he puled through.

  72. 72.

    TomatoQueen

    @WaterGirl:  I am plotting how to do pics. If we can get him to settle on a surface for more than two seconds, which is the main issue really, then we can compose a view and click a shutter. Merlin is faster than lightning and also startles at everything, tho’ this is improving daily. We are now meowing at each other.

  73. 73.

    WaterGirl

    @TomatoQueen: Do you happen to have an iPhone?  If you do, it will take photos for as long as you hold the button down – that should help you get something decent, even if just by accident. :-)

  74. 74.

    seefleur

    I love all of you jackals… really… having had 2 rescue dogs and numerous rescue kitties, you all are solidly in menschdom.

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