Busy Weekend

A minute to 9:00 p.m. and rain is pouring down. Lightning is lightninging and thunder is thundering. The back porch is already starting to flood.

Weather has been hot and humid, not cooling much below 90 degrees at night because we haven’t had any real rain. But the teasing clouds have given us the occasional spectacular sunset and sunrise:

 

Our illustrious leaders have been busy all weekend and supposedly have come up with some sort of compromise solution for the deficit issue. From what little we’ve had time to hear, it sounds like a lash-up that will please no one, other than maybe Wall Street: the Asian market has already soared 10,000 points on the news. But that assumes the lash-up will hold together at all. 🙄

Since we and our country are doomed, let us consider what remains to matter for us; to wit, il faut cultiver notre jardin.

Not much literal cultivating going on in 110-degree heat, but within the metaphorical garden all sorts of things have been going on.

Friday we drove out to the far side of the galaxy to pick up M’hijito’s adorable new puppy, an eight-week-old English golden retriever. This went smoothly enough, though we were told he has a ….oop! just lost power! thank goodness for lithium batteries… Campylobacter infection and is on antibiotics. And he truly hates going in a crate.

Ohhhhhkaayyyyy…

A little investigation revealed that various types of intestinal pathogens—the sort that cause what we humans call “food poisoning”: Campylobacter species, Salmonella species, three variants of E. coli—have been spreading steadily through the ranks of show dogs because of the growing popularity of the BARF diet. Adherents to BARF feed their dogs raw meat and bones in the mistaken belief that canids are immune to pathogenic bacteria. As a practical matter, this is wildly untrue: all dogs are susceptible to the food-borne pathogens that cause the same kinds of sickness in humans, and puppies and old dogs (like small children and elderly humans) can die from these infections. Puppies pick up the microbes when they suckle and climb around on their mothers, whose fur of course is contaminated with the bugs.

Yea verily, one of our breeder’s pups did die and another was seriously weakened: not from our pup’s litter but from the much fancier concurrent breeding engendered by a dose of doggy sperm expensively imported from Sweden.

So we were concerned.

At any rate, we made it back to M’hijito’s house uneventfully. Pup was awed and stunned to find himself in an alien environment, and he succeeded in keeping M’hijito awake most of the night.

LOL! Doggy parenthood.

In the morning M’hijito called to opine that nothing is wrong with the dog: all systems appear to be functioning quite normally.

By Saturday afternoon, M’hijito had Pup persuaded that the crate was OK to walk into, as long as the door isn’t closed. He’ll go into the crate and loaf around but still doesn’t like to be closed in. That is, I think, very significant progress in one day.

M’hijito’s friends, who have been dying to see this miraculous beast, descended on his house Saturday night, children in tow, for hamburgers and dog admiration. Apparently Pup took all the partying in stride, the result of which was he only woke up twice last night.

Today they—the dog and his human, that is—showed up at my house, here to be introduced to the doggy day-care where he’ll be spending his weekdays. M’hijito put the old, well-scrubbed dog crate together and persuaded Pup to walk into it and then it was off for more exploring and partying.

Cassie is not impressed. She’s taken an attitude reminiscent of Garfield’s toward Nermal the Disgustingly Cute Kitten. She remains fixated on the Ball, although she would like to deconstruct Pup’s stuffed toy.

M’hijito decided to go swimming and of course was followed outside by Pup, who was called by the water like Odysseus by the sirens. Before M’hijito could step into the pool with both feet, Pup tumbled/jumped into the water—it was hard to tell which—and took off swimming like an otter. M’hijito had to dive in and swim after him to catch him.

We steered him over to the steps where he could climb out, but it was pretty clear from his first experience he didn’t get that concept. This dog is going to have to be watched every. single. minute he’s in the backyard. In fact, I’m thinking he’d probably better be on a lead when he’s out there.

In another couple of months, he will have figured out how to find the steps and get out of the water. And his waterproof retriever coat will be growing in. But for the nonce there’s no hurry to be diving into that thing.

After Friday’s $150 bill from the Leslie’s repairman, the pool is on the fritz again. So tomorrow I’ll have to hassle with those clowns again. Yay.

Pup loves to lounge in the breeze from a fan. After the water frolics he curled up under the kitchen counter and dozed off with his little ears flapping in the wind…

If you’ve ever had a kid, you know that babies do not lay still while snoozing on the bed. They rotate on a private internal axis. So, it appears, do puppies. This one came perilously close to rotating down the step, so we propped him up:

Awwwwww….

M’hijito has yet to settle on a name for this beast, though just now he’s considering “Seymour” or “Jack.” I’m for “Jack Daniels,” myself. 😉

Holy mackerel! It’s getting rambunctious out there! Lightning just struck right outside the house—probably hit a palm tree. Cassie’s getting scared. Think it’s time to post this and go hunker down somewhere with the Mistress of the House.