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The Schneider's Zoos
Jim and Betty have two legal desert tortises, Tommy
and Centaur, both hatched in captivity. Nana has three of them,
Andy, Candy and Dandy. Robert and Theresa also
have three but their names keep changing. May sister Carol and her
husband Jerry (Jim's cousin) have at least a dozen of them. All of
these tortises have been bred in captivity. It is illegal
to pick them up in the wild!! Ours and Robert's have the
run of the yard and eat mostly grass. We have tortise proofed
our yards by putting an underground curb of concrete below the fences.
It is six inches wide and 12 inches deep. Tortises
are burrowers. They do this to get out of the midday heat in
the desert and for hibernation in the winter. They are terrific
pets as they do not bark or chew up the furniture. Some times
they do bite toes though.
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Holly, or Holly-dog as Stephen and
Margie called her when they were little, is our dog. She is
a Brittany Spaniel. When she was young she would jump six to seven feet
straight up. We should have named her Tigger! Brittany's are
bird dogs. They are noted for their ability to flush, point and retrieve.
Their loves are birds first and family second. They do make a very
good family do but are very active. You need to have a large yard
for them. Holly loves to travel with us and absolutely has the greatest
time out in the desert when we are camping. She and I
have a deal going -- if she catches anything larger than a lizard and
brings it home, I have promised to cook it for her. So
far I haven't had to cook anything but boy is she good at flushing
critters out.
Holly loves to sit by the campfire in the evenings.
She enjoys trying to catch the sparks. We have tried to discourage
this activity but to no avail. She also enjoys fireworks on the
Fourth of July and New Year's Eve and lightening. This is a learned
trait. We found out long ago that if a dog can see where the noise
is coming from they will not be afraid of it. She
looks to the sky for fireworks and lightening whenever she hears the
booms.
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Over the years we have had a number of dogs.
Our first was Jennifer, a red daschund. Jim had her before
we were married. She was a great dog but had a habit of banging the
tip of her tail on the ground when she wagged it. Twice we
had to have the tip amputated. Another of our dogs was Heidi.
She looked exactly like a golden retriever but was the
size of a cocker. We got her from the Humane Society on the day
that Robert came home from the hospital after having
his tonsils out. We stopped there on the way home. Robert
was still in his pajamas. We had promised him a dog and it seemed
as good a time as any. She was a very good pet.
The next dog came along when Robert was about 11
years old. This was our first Brittany. Her name was Buttons.
Actually her whole name was Le Butons de Robert as Brittany's are
French. Our second Brittany was Shorty. He had
been badly mistreated by his first owner and when we got him he was
terrified of people. Buttons was the best thing for
him. He became a very good pet and excellent father. He
and Buttons produced on litter of puppies, but what a litter that
was! Fourteen puppies. Not a runt in the bunch.
That was the last litter she had. One of the pups, Freckles,
was given
to my parents, Al and Bee. But when they retired they asked us
to take her back. Freckles was a strange pup. Dad took
her hunting one time. She turned out to be gun-shy. When
Dad shot a quail she ran the other way, back to camp. We
never did find that quail. Two hours later she left camp and
came back with the quail being softly held in her mouth. We
were at least one mile from where that quail was dropped. Strange
dog!
We had reports on some of the other pups.
One gentleman called wanting to know when we would be having more
pups as he had many friends and hunting companions that wanted one
of Button's and Shorty's pups. His dog was a little
over one year old and had already proven herself on duck, quail, geese
and dove on land and in the water with no training.
Cheeky was our Cockatiel. He lived to
a ripe old age of 22 year. This is very old for a cockatiel.
He fathered dozens of youngsters. One of whom we still have.
His name is Huey. His siblings were Duey and Luey
of
course. Huey is 20 years
old and appears to be well on his way to living longer than his father.
For about 16 years we had an aviary in our back yard.
In it we had cockatiels, Zebra finches, Diamond doves, Button
quail, Netherland Dwarf bunnies and baby Tortises. This
year we found we were down to our last cockatiel, Huey, and
we decided to demolish the aviary and bring Huey in doors.
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Robert and Theresa have a recently adopted
puppy that had been abandoned by a former neighbor of theirs. They
named him Houdini as he has proven to be an expert escape artist!
All of his excape routes have now been successfully blocked!
He is a mixed breed but obviously has a lot of Wire-haired
Terrier in him. He and
Holly are very good friends and this
is good as Robert dog-sits for us and we dog-sit for them. Many
times we have Stephen, Margie and Houdini at the same
time.
They also have a couple of aquariums. At various
time they have held salt water fish, brackish water fish but right now
they have fresh water fish. One of the fish in the tank is a
blue gill that was caught in the lake that is just outside their back
gate. I happened to catch him when he was only two inches long
and I ran up the hill and put him in the tank. He is being
very well fed and is getting to be quite big. As he is now a
pet he will never be eaten.
If you have any questions or problems with this page
please feel free to e-mail me. 
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