Well, I offended one of the neighbors mightily this morning. Honestly. Sometimes I do wonder WHAT is the matter with people!
This lady — I’d say she’s in her 60s or maybe early 70s — walks around every morning with a pocket full of dog treats. She inhabits the Richistans, so if Ruby and I go over there on the morning doggy-walk, we’re likely to run into her. And we DO go over there most days, because the park, so much beloved by Ruby the Corgi, is simply overrun with off-the-leash dogs charging around.
Yes. The park DOES have a big sign that says “DOGS MUST BE ON LEASH.” But of course it doesn’t apply to those folks, right?
So if we want to stroll through a shady, park-like stretch, we’re pretty much restricted to Upper Richistan.
This lady haunts those regions. She’s out there almost every morning.
She’s very friendly. She’s a VERY sweet person. And every damn morning she wants to give Ruby a doggy-treat.
Now you understand, I don’t especially mind if Ruby gets a random dog treat now and again. But there are some good reasons to ask her to refrain:
Ruby is getting fat.
Fat is exceptionally not good for a corgi, with its long spine and short legs.
I would prefer it very much that Ruby not expect to get doggy-treats from strangers. My dogs’ job is not to suck up to strangers, some of whom (in these parts) are not folks with whom you especially want to encourage chumminess.
Some dogs are diabetic. They should not have doggy treats: their diets, like the diets of diabetic humans, need to be carefully tended.
She always asks if it’s OK to give Ruby a treat, and I always, out of politeness, say “sure.” Today I decided to get honest with her, and so I replied, “I’d really prefer it if she didn’t get treats.”
WELL! You’d think I’d insulted all her daughters and their madame!
She got all huffy and stalked off dramatically.
People are SO STUPID about dogs!
The ones who insist on letting their dogs run loose in a public park bounded on three sides by streets full of commuters chugging off to the main drags.
The ones who confuse their dogs with children and burble inanely over their “fur-babies”
The ones who coo, as your German shepherd is getting set to remove their dog’s throat, coo “Ohhhh don’t worry! They just wanna plaaayyyy!“
The ones who let their dog run loose in the mountain parks and then are surprised when their dog sticks its nose under a creosote bush and gets bit by a rattlesnake.
The ones who run their dog by their bicycles as they peddle down the street.
The ones who run their dog by their skateboard as they skate down the sidewalk.
Lordie, I’m fed up with that stuff.
Folks. Your dog is not your child. It’s not a human at all. It is a descendant of wolves, a type of pack animal. It acts like it’s your friend because its species has evolved into a an advantageous, symbiotic relationship with humans. Treating your dog as if it were a child puts your dog at risk of health problems and behavioral problems and you at risk of lawsuits.
Even if you must be silly about your dog, please please please don’t be stupid about other people’s dogs!
LOL! It’s only 8:30 — just dusk — and already the neighbors are having fireworks frenzies.
Staggered out for a dip in the pool. (the water is SOOOO warm it’s actually hot!). Followed by Ruby the Corgi, who of course has to stand guard over the human’s bizarre shenanigans. (Read: Arf arf arf arf arf arf arf….) This evening the doggy serenade is accompanied by the staccato racket of neighbors’ bang-bangs from all directions.
Most of the great public fireworks displays here in the city have been foresworn by reason of the plague. Apparently none of the usual suspects are presenting the usual elaborate fireworks shows.
Tha’ss OKAY, though: the locals are making up for it. What marvelous frenzies of banging, booming, snapping, and bopping! Dunno how long this will go on — it’s only 8:40 now — but it’s hard to believe most people bought up enough bang-bangs to hold forth longer than about a half-hour. No doubt the racket will settle down in another 45 minutes or so.
Interestingly, Ruby is unfazed.
I’ve had dogs that were flat-out terrorized by the racket from fireworks. This evening, Ruby was far more concerned with the human’s habit of bizarrely dropping into a puddle of chlorinated water. She seemed not to notice the bang-bangs at all. And now that the human has climbed out of the drink, dried off, and taken up its position loafing on the bed, she seems utterly unconcerned with banging and the whanging going on around us.
Yep: “Another beautiful day in Arizona! Leave us all enjoy it!” That was the catch phrase of the late, great Arizona Governor Jack Williams, an accomplished if less than perfectly literate local politician who came up as a radio announcer. In spite of last night’s mostly dry thunderstorm, temps here have run upwards of 112 degrees. Once I glanced at the thermometer in the back porch shade: 115.
Plan of the day: Install a new bed in the now-unused middle bedroom, which was the TV room until off-the-air TV was taken away from us. Now it just sits there…but, I’ve noticed, because the room is directly below the central air-conditioning unit and so gets air fresh out of the fridge, it is the coolest room in the house. The plan is to get an inexpensive but reasonably comfortable twin bed and sleep in that room during the summer months. Then switch back to the more spacious and comfortable queen-sized bed in the master bedroom for fall, winter, and springtime. And so into the heat and on the road.
I whip into the mattress store where, in the past, I’ve bought excellent products for decent prices — not rock-bottom, but far from “luxury” prices.
Holy shee-ut! EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLAH for a regular twin-size mattress, box-spring, and frame.
I kid you not! That is what I paid for the queen-sized bed I bought when the old one wore out, just a few years ago.
Jayzus.
Out of that place, I do stagger.
Should I venture across the street to Bed Bath & Beyond, there to snab a set of sheets for this spectacular purchase?
I think not. In the first place, my experience with BB&B is that they tend to be overpriced. In the second place, they tend to be underqualitied. I decide, WTF, to drive out to Costco and grab a set there.
This was very, very stupid. Extraordinarily stupid. Gold-medal-winning stupid!!!!!!!
Best way to get out there? Across Lincoln, the northernmost main drag south of the Phoenix Mountain Park, then up 44th through lovely Paradise Valley, and zip! into the parking lot.
Almost sounds sane, doesn’t it?
Eastbound on Lincoln at 24th street, the main road that disgorges central- and central/east traffic onto Lincoln, some nitwit has contrived to have a fender-bender in the fast lane. Traffic in all three lanes comes to a stop as the verypretty young woman driver gets out to try to cope…and is swarmed by Heroic Gentlemen charging to her rescue.
This would have some charm if it weren’t 111 degrees outside just then. In the shade.
So the Damsel in Distress and all of her many Knights have the traffic dead stopped. I’ve been around this block before, though, and so am wily enough to dart left into the entrance of a (spectacularly ritzy) gated community, where I can hang a U-ie and head back in the direction I came from.
Now I am westbound when I need to go east.
But on the way, I think WTF, I’ll just fly into the Macy’s at Biltmore Fashion Square. At this time of year, they’re bound to be having a white sale.
And yea verily, that they are!. Have you ever noticed that when a major department store puts stuff on sale, it’s because said stuff is junk, serious junk, that NO ONE in their right mind would buy? Today, this is true in spades. You would NOT believe the crappiness of the hilariously dreadful crap on offer.
Onto the freeway. Northerly northerly northerly and OFF on Cactus, eastbound.
Easterly easterly easterly, past the Fry’s. If I had any sense I’d derail this trip to go in there and buy a set of cheapie junk sheets, but…
a) I have no sense; and
b) I figure that kinda cheap junk may last through three launderings, if we’re lucky.
Hang a left on Tatum. Northerly northerly northerly…FINALLY reach the Costco. They will have sheets. They alwayshave sheets. Right? And they’re excellent quality sheets, the kind of thing you can hand down to the next generation as heirlooms.
Well.
No.
I frikkin cannot BELIEVE it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Costco does not have regular-size twin sheets!The only twin sheets they have are for extra-long mattresses.
Stalk out into the parking lot. Eyeball the Penney’s next door. They’re closing that Penney’s, because they’re about to tear down the shopping center and replace it with an apartment development. Whooo knows? Maybe they’ll have sheets. Maybe even sheets on sale!
Hike across the broiling asphalt, dodge into the Penney’s.
They’ve shut down the escalators. You can’t even GET to the bedding department. And noooo, I’m not getting onto a crowded stuffy stinky elevator in Time of Plague.
Make my way upstairs and find, in the bedding department, one of the most superbly certifiably stupid CSR’s I’ve ever met, in 55 years of department-store shopping. OOOOhhh this one is dumb. I cannot make her understand that no, I do not want something that does not fit, and noooo I do not want something with a weird busy little pattern that looks a lot likeE. coli organisms under a microscope. All I want is a set of twin-size sheets in a plain boring color. Gray would do. White would do. Beige would do. No, bright pink will NOT do. And absolutely positively the Escherchia coligerms will not do, no way no how.
😀
Back in the car.
On the way out of the shopping center, stop at the Target. Why the hell not? Couldn’t be any worse than what we’ve already seen, eh?
There I meet the cutest li’l gay guy, who also is shopping for bedding. He is similarly disgusted. But he does point out a few sets that…uhm…do not offend too much.
Grab one of these and fly out the door. Price is around 80 bucks. Yes. For a set of freakin’ Target sheets!!!!!!!!!
Stumble back out. Dodge a few fellow homicidal drivers in the parking lot (would those be “homicidal parkers”?), make it back onto Cactus, and start driving. Westerly westerly ever westerly. Migawd, it’s STILL hot!
No. Make that “even hotter.”
Here at the Funny Farm:
It’s 81 in the master bedroom. It’s 84 here in the family room.
It’s 80 in the bedroom where I propose to install this fine new bed, but for some reason it feelsa lot cooler.
That’s with the thermostat set at 79, as low as I figure I can push it without risking bankruptcy.
And as I sit here scribbling, in comes an email from one Priscilla Castro of the dermatologist’s office, wanting to discuss the results of the latest effing biopsy, one she made of a mole that has resided on the side of my nose for as long as I can remember. They’ve decided the thing is malignant. This, of course, means ANOTHER endless trip to the far west side for MORE surgery. Hot diggety dawg.
I call back instantly. “She’s not at her desk,” says the airhead who answers the phone. Odd. She was there 30 seconds ago when she emailed me.
Airhead says she’ll call me back. I explain, for the 89 berjillionth time, that they CAN NOT REACH ME BY PHONE because I block all incoming calls from area code 623 because I get rafts of nuisance calls from telephone solicitors EVERY DAY spoofing the 623 area code. As usual, the phone kid doesn’t even faintly understand what I’m saying. Sheeeeeee-ut!
By now I’m tired, I’m beyond hot, and I simply have no more patience for stupid.
I’m also kinda scared. One of the things they took off was on the side of my nose. It’s been there for years, to the point where I objected that it couldn’t be much or it would have made trouble by now. Stephanie (derma-tech) said it was “vascularizing,” whatever the hell that means. I think I would’ve noticed if it had changed, since I paint my face almost every day, and that entails hiding blemishes under layers of paint. But if she found cancer in it, they’ll be chopping up my nose. And that will require plastic surgery to repair. And THAT will entail endless trips the west side, disfiguring butchery, and several unpleasant procedures to fix. Email “Priscilla” to clue her that unless she can call me from a phone that doesn’t have a 623 area code, she’ll need to email me.
Shortly, Priscilla calls. She says I need to come in, let them cut the roots of this thing off my nose, and then they will repair the (considerable!) damage with plastic surgery.
I have a friend who’s had a quasi-malignant thing removed from his nose, followed by plastic surgery. “Repair” is not quite the word. Though he doesn’t look terrible, nevertheless you can tell that something pretty drastic happened there. I do NOT want my face cut up and then patched back together, not unless it’s absolutely, positively, unavoidably necessary.
A night passes. Daylight dawns. And I snap out of that little panic long enough to remember my Medical Motto: ALWAYS GET A SECOND OPINION!
At the Mayo, I’ve been assigned a dermatologist, for reasons neither he nor I could grasp. A week or so ago, I traipsed out there and met with him. Liked him. We were both puzzled. I left, thinking “huh!”
Sooo….what could be a better source of a second opinion than the Mayo Clinic, eh?
Yesterday — Saturday, natcherly — I emailed him through the Mayo’s annoying DIY Web “portal” lashup and asked if we could make an appointment, and may I have the Avondale dermatologist send him the results of the biopsy. Of course, I haven’t heard back. I do hope to hear from him tomorrow, and sincerely DO hope he’ll agree to review this little fiasco.
Meanwhile, we still have the Rat Situation.
This, if anything, is getting worse. Over the past couple of days, I’ve stuffed piles and piles of steel wool into the crevices and openings around the side yard deck, of which there are a-plenty. These have become little doorways to Rattie’s nest under there.
Ruby has developed chasing poor Rattie into an Olympic sport. This morning the little dog was standing patiently by the back door.
Human opens door.
Dog ambles quietly out to river of rocks (a decorated drainage ditch, now home to Rattie since we blocked off her entrances to the side deck).
Rattie, alarmed, leaps up.
Dog launches into the chase!
Rattie shoots across the yard, just under the speed of light.
Ruby flashes after her.
Rattie dodges into the cat’s-claw vines.
Ruby saunters back to the door, expecting a Doggy Treat for having orchestrated that spectacle.
This, while entertaining in a predator-ish way, is not really a good thing. Roof rats carry a wide variety of exceptionally malign diseases, which they can transmit to dogs as well as to humans: murine typhus, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, rat-bite fever, and plague.
{sigh} I’m awfully afraid the only way to get rid of Rattie, short of poison, is going to be to pull out the cat’s claw hedge. And of course, that will mean every bum who wanders up the alley can peer into my yard. And into my pool, where he’s likely to get an eyeful of the local scenery.
So, later this morning I obtained the name of an exterminator from one of the neighbors on the ’Hood’s Facebook page. Will call him the first thing tomorrow morning — Monday.
In passing, she remarked that she preferred to communicate by email than over the FB page, because some of the neighbors work themselves into a state of high moral dudgeon over the prospect of killing our cute little rats. She remarked – confirming my own observation – that the neighborhood is now overrun with rats.
As these shenanigans are en train, I happen to venture into the front yard, where I notice…hmmmm…what?? The mound of gravel-covered dirt that was piled over the stump of the dead ash tree I had cut down, lo! these many years ago, has been pushed aside and dug up. There are little holes around in there.
WTF?
Rats?
That’s what I suspect. But…on closer observation, I see several holes in the depression where the stump has pretty much disintegrated. These are larger than the holes Rattie typically digs. Gopher?
Hm. Yes, we do get the occasional gopher here in the ‘Hood.
A-a-a-n-d…my scheme to block Rattie out of her nest under the deck has failed. Just this minute I hear Ruby YAP and thump against the Arcadia door: her signal for the Presence of the Rat.
dayum! Leap up, RUN with Ruby to the garage’s side door, and let her rip!
She shoots out like a rocket, patrols the base of the deck…but Rattie is long gone. However, she finds a new hole: Rattie has managed to burrow out of (or into) her nest under the deck.
That, I’m afraid, tore it: now I know I’m going to HAVE to get a professional exterminator. Tomorrow I’ll call the neighbor’s guy.
This, of course, is going to mean Ruby will have to go somewhere else. We can’t have dead and dying poisoned rats laying around the yard, nor can we have poison bait laying around where Ruby holds sway over the backyard. I guess I’ll have to put her up with M’hijito, or else board her somewhere (expensively).
Ohhhhhh gawwwd…pleeeze don’t hurt our little ratties!Aughhh! How do people who are that stupid ever learn to put their pants on, much less acquire a $500,000 to $1 million shack???????
The trick will be to make Ruby mind her own business…except, o’course, harassing Rattie IS her business. Few things does Ruby enjoy more than chasing Rattie at a full-out, dead run.
So Rattie — being a rat, as roof rats in general are — likes to move around on her personal Rat Superhighway. This is a track fairly close to cover, so that the li’l critter can zip along within steps of shrubbery, woodwork, or whatever she can get under in the event of a cat, a hawk, or a corgi. Or if need be, she can climb straight up the side of the block wall. {Yes, they really are amazing little critters!}
Unless it’s a corgi…
She’s been living under the fake-wood decking on the west side — with, I presume, a fair number of her progeny, boyfriends, and whatnot. By way of getting from her castle to the citrus trees, she trots along the footing of the west (solid block) wall. Once at the building’s corner, she can zip under the nearest orange tree, and voilà!Fine dining in a leafy hotel suite!
This morning I take into my furry little head to stuff vast quantities of steel wool into all the cracks and crevices around that decking, then block entry further by setting rocks and bricks along the facings where those packed cracks exist.
Ratty has dug a grand entrance for herself on the north side of the thing, and really, all the way around there are places where I believe she can wiggle under there and squirm back out.
One of these gateways opens almost directly onto the Rat Runway, conveniently enough for Rattie.
Whilst in the process of doing this little project — it is so hot and wet out there that even that little bit of effort results in water pouring off your forehead and flooding your glasses — it occurs to me that I could make Rattie real sick and possibly even kill her simply by sprinkling the Rat Runway with diatomaceous earth (we humans know that as DE, right?).
This stuff is not good for you, for your cat, for your dog, or — interestingly enough — for your pet rats. If swallowed, it rips up your (or their) innards. Breathing it’s not good for anyone, either.
If I were to sprinkle a skiff of DE along the Rat Runway, she would inevitably trot through it and get it all over her little paws and her fur. When she licks it off: RiP, Rattie.
Hence, said Trick: to keep Ruby away from it.
That will mean not letting her go out there unattended.
However, within the next few days it will rain — we are,after all, coming up on high monsoon season, July & August. One good storm will wash the stuff into the ground. But until then, Rattie will have plenty of time to get it all over herself and track it into the nest.
At any rate, I do have some low wire garden fencing, which I can set in the quarter-minus parallel to the Rat Highway but some feet away from it, so she doesn’t realize what’s up but Ruby can’t get into the layer of DE. That will blockade Ruby from getting very close to the DE Trail.
There are, I figure, several other steps one can take to repel Rattie.
Sprinkling a skiff of DE under those cat’s-claw vines, for example. But to do that, I’ll have to come up with some fencing that can be run all along the base of those plants, so as to keep Ruby out of the stuff.
Later.
This project is one that will consist of several smaller projects, any one of which will drain all of a given day’s energy.
The Human woke in the wee hours of the morning — very wee. The Dog dozed while its creature tossed and turned, worried and fretted, got up twice to gulp down various tablets: aspirin, allergy pills, whatnot. Turned on its magical noise-making lightbox and poked away at the little black pedals arrayed across its surface.
An incipient sore throat conjured visions of covid-19, God help us all! Is this just a residue of the choking fit that visited in the afternoon? Or maybe an allergy? Or…or…what?
I get up, stumble down to the medicine cabinet, and scarf down a Claritin. But…but…but…I’ve already dropped a Benadryl. Took one of those along about 7:30 p.m., in hopes of staving off a not-atypical allergy-mediated sore throat and runny nose. By 12:40 in the morning it should have kicked in, and I don’t think it would wear off in just five hours.
Holy shit!! I’m coming down with the covid disease. Right? That’s gotta be it.
Sleep is now out of the question.
Couple hours pass. Waking hours. The Claritin does nothing.
At 3 a.m., I get up and drop an aspirin. But I know now I’m dooooomed! No question of it, DOOMED! What other explanation is there but covid covid fucking covid! Ten days before I could manage to prize free an appointment for a shot!
Is that not typical? I ask you: how typical is that!
Give up trying to sleep.
Along about 4:30 a.m., the Human is pounding at its little black pedals when we hear a noise. A weird noise. It’s coming from outside the bedroom’s east wall, loud enough to resonate through the slump block. Like…bleating.
A sheep? There’s a sheep out on the sidewalk?
b-a-a-a…b-a-a-a…b-a-a…b-a-a-a…
Sheep? Seriously? Goat, maybe? Do goats bleat?
The neighborhood does have several remaining agricultural properties, land banks and tax dodges for their owners and pleasant rural-looking pockets in the midst of an increasingly gentrified zone abutting an increasingly tough and ugly slum. One person still keeps a few critters, among them an overgrown Vietnamese pig that has been known to escape.
Do pigs bleat? No…I believe in any language pigs oink.
Cat? Naaahhh…cats yowl.
Dog? Whatever this noisemaker is, it ain’t barking. Besides, if it were a dog, Ruby would be up and at’em. She’s profoundly uninterested.
Javelina? Hmmm… Javelinas make a kind of grunting sound, but I don’t believe they’re known to bleat.
Fox? Foxes can make a variety of interesting sounds, being clever little critters. But none of them sound like a sheep.
Delinquents? Since when have teenagers begun to bleat while TPing the trees?
“Ruby! Hey! Ruby! Wake up!”
Dog eyes the human wearily. Now what?
“Listen to that! What is that?”
Dog lifts head off mattress.
b-a-a-a…b-a-a-a…b-a-a…b-a-a-a…
You woke me up for THAT? It’s a sheep, you ridiculous creature. Put away the freakish computer, turn off the damn light, shut up, and go to sleep!
Human continues to peck at the computer. Before long, the bleating ceases.
Not too very much longer after that, Dog stirs and notices the sun is bleaching the eastern sky. She arises and demands food.
Human and Dog stumble out to the kitchen, where Human sets a dish of food on the floor. Dog feasts, then goes on about its business.
As the sun marches toward the zenith, Dog and Human set out for their daily stroll through the neighborhood. As they pass the east side of the house, Human spots a skiff of gravel scattered across the sidewalk. The gravel top-dressing on the side yard is roiled up a bit, right outside the bedroom wall. A few doggy-looking footprints are visible.
And now by the light of day, Human remembers: It’s mating season for coyotes. This is February. Sonoran desert coyotes whelp in March (or thereabouts). The serenade we heard at 4:30 in the morning was the Song of Coyote Love.
This means two things:
Soon we will have coyote pups abounding in the ‘Hood, wherever Mama Coyote can find a quiet and secluded place to den. A-n-n-d…
This means Ruby-Doo will be at some risk for the next several months.
When coyotes are whelping, they try to clear their territory of other canids. This is because competing coyotes, as well as wolves, will kill the pups when they find them. A coyote actually will come over your wall to take out your dog.
And that means Ruby will have to be watched every time she goes out in the backyard. Over the next three or four months, she cannot be let outdoors alone to putter around, as is her wont.
Few years ago, a couple of my neighbors — a gay couple — were lounging in their living room having a cocktail before dinner. Their greyhound was perambulating around the backyard, where the men could see them through the living-room window. All of a sudden they saw a coyote come right over the back wall! Unfortunately, this was not the wiliest of moves: the animal was no match for an 80-pound hunting dog.
The grey took after the coyote. It managed to escape over the wall as the two men watched in awe. The hound was unfazed.
A few days later, one of their neighbors happened to mention that, gee, he’d found a dead coyote laying in the front yard.
Welp. A corgi a greyhound does not make. Ruby would be no match for a coyote.
Coyote image: By Frank Schulenburg – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=46976005
Yeah, I understand: Your little “furbaby” and my churlish hound “just wanna pla-a-a-y-y.” But because you’re a bit stupid about your dog is not an excuse to put yourself, two (or more) dogs, and me at risk. To say nothing of putting your kids in harm’s way.
Just back from a quick morning doggywalk. Understand: my dog weighs 23 pounds, though she thinks it’s 123. She looks harmless…but no dog is harmless. No matter how vividly you imagine it’s your furry little kid and no matter how much you believe you’re a pet “parent,” it’s still a dog. It is not a four-legged child.
Even if you love it as though it were your child, it’s a dog. Even if it’s your only friend on this earth, dammit, it’s still a dog.
And dogs? They behave like dogs. They do not behave like two-year-olds, they do not behave like nine-year-olds, they do not behave like your thirty-year-old best friend from high school
They behave like dogs.
If you’re not willing or able to learn how dogs think, well…consider this: maybe you shouldn’t have a dog.
Absolutely NOT your child.
So we’re strolling along a neighborhood lane over in the direction of Conduit of Blight Boulevard. As we approach a corner, along comes a merry family group: two young boys, about 8 or 10 years old, zipping along on scooters as they accompany their dad, who is being dragged down the sidewalk by two large dogs, about 80 to 90 pounds apiece. Though both dogs are on leads, they decidedly are not under control: they are not at heel — they are pulling this guy up the road.
The instant they spot Ruby…well, you can imagine the doggy thought process:
Hey! Predator alert!
Dayum! That thing is coming at our pea-brained human pets.
Ruby, being a corgi, fears nothing. She sees these things as wolves come to stalk her own pea-brained human. She stands them down and prepares to charge.
Get it! Get that damn thing before it catches one of the brats!
I’m on it! KILL!
Nope. Still not your child.
Both dogs charge me and my dwarf pooch, which I immediately pick up off the sidewalk by way of (no doubt futilely) protecting her from the attack. She responds to the charge by trying to lunge at the guy’s dogs.
As he tries to set the brakes by hauling on the two dogs’ leashes, they drag him forward and pull him across the path of one of the boys’ scooters. The boy rolls helplessly into the mêlée and instantly is entangled in the leashes.
He tumbles off the scooter and face-plants on the sidewalk.
The other boy dodges out of the way with about half a second to spare. The dogs, confused by this distraction, stand down.
Mercifully, the first boy climbs to his feet, apparently unhurt, and hops back on his scooter.
The problem here — besides the obvious stupidity of the adult human specimen — is that even though these were big dogs, neither one of them was obedience trained. Nor, we might add, was the human: obedience training is a two-way process. The guy had two big, powerful animals barely under control in the presence of two children.
You would think that a grown man, even if he doesn’t give a damn about some old lady and her puff-ball corgi, would at least consider the safety of his own children, wouldn’t you?
No. Because, one presumes, Americans are stump-dumb stupid about dogs.
All dogs, even small ones that you can pick up and carry out of harm’s way (maybe…) should be obedience-trained. When you get a pooch from the dog pound or the rescue society, the first thing you should do is take it to a vet for a health check. Second thing, which you should do on the same day, is hire a trainer to help obedience-train the animal and to teach you how to handle it. That’s a real trainer, not some salesperson down at the Petsmart. Ask the veterinarian for a referral.
When you get a puppy from some rescue or breeder, right away start learning how to teach the critter, humanely, to coexist with humans. Consult with your veterinarian or with a trainer about the first steps you need to take toward leash-training and obedience training the pup, and when. Then, when the animal is old enough, hire that trainer to help you obedience-train it.
And bear in mind…the first step to common sense is understanding that it’s not a child: it’s a dog.
Well, I offended one of the neighbors mightily this morning. Honestly. Sometimes I do wonder WHAT is the matter with people!
