Pets

So it develops that Ruby’s stealth peeing apparently results from something wrong. Possibly something really wrong. This afternoon the vet found she had blood in her urine.

This is a symptom that raises all sorts of very depressing possibilities.

It could be a urinary tract infection. That would be the most positive choice: it can be treated.

It could be a cancer.

It could be a kidney infection.

It could be a genital abnormality, cancer, or disease.

It could be diabetes.

It could be porphyria.

And on and on and on…

The vet guessed it’s probably a urinary tract infection and sent me home with a large bottle of antibiotics in liquid form. She thought a tumor would be “uncommon.”

But of course, she doesn’t know that “uncommon” is the story of my life.

I suppose if there’s some unholy congenital thing wrong with Ruby-Doo, the breeder will take her back and (maybe) refund my money. If that’s the case, or if the pup dies of one of these many potentially very serious ailments, then…what the hell.

Cassie went batsh!t at 2 a.m. the other morning; I heard it, too: some sort of weird scratching. Decided it was probably a roof rat or raccoon, because none of the outside motion-sensitive lights were on…but then, the ones on the west side, whence she seemed to think the noise emanated, are not working.

I guess if I’m going to stay in this house and I lose this puppy, I should go on over to the German Shepherd Rescue and apply for one of their dogs. They have a couple right now that don’t look too demented, appear to be more or less manageable, and probably aren’t going to start racking up huge vet bills for a few years.

One thing you have to say about a German shepherd: There’s nothing like a nice friendly GerShep to send Mr. Burglar down to the next house.

Killed the better part of the day cleaning house, a job made bigger and longer and far more tedious than usual by the amazing puppy mess. Had I started the day feeling well enough to get any productive work done (which I most assuredly did not), we could have added a substantial opportunity cost to the price of owning Ruby (as she’s made herself known).

Turns out that corgis in general tend to be a little slow to house-train. Add to this supposed characteristic the theory that small, runt-like puppies such as Ruby may (or may not) be underdeveloped at birth and so “younger” in a way than their chronological age, and what you get is a gigantic mess. I’ve never had a dog that peed on the floor so extravagantly.

Fortunately, the entire house is paved with ceramic tile. But still: even though it’s relatively easy to clean up, it still has to be cleaned up. Ruby pees by mental telepathy — today I cleaned up a dried patch on the far side of a kiddie gate, where one would imagine the dog has never gone. So puddles get missed. And puddles get stepped in and tracked around the house. What a gawdawful mess.

So today I took it upon myself to sanitize the Funny Farm from stem to stern. Normally I would vacuum first, then dust-mop, then steam-mop. But because there was so much dog urine on the floors, I felt I ought to smear it around with some detergent. So, the order of business was

1. vacuum 1860 square feet of tile;
2. dust-mop 1860 square feet of tile;
3. wet-mop 1860 square feet of tile with a hot solution of Simple Green; and
4. steam-mop 1860 square feet of tile.

In effect, that is the equivalent of cleaning 7440 square feet of flooring (1860 • 4). By the time I finished, I thought I was gunna die. It took hours! Hours in which I did exactly zero paying work.

LOL! Father, forgive me, for I have $inned in what I have done and (especially!) in what I have left undone.

• I have not graded student papers.
• I have not responded to the 16 messages from benighted li’l students.
• I have not registered ISBNs for the diet guide/cookbook or Fire-Rider.
• I have not created a for-reference-only “chronological” list of events in book 1 of the Fire-Rider series.
• I have not finished compiling the formatted copy for the print-on-demand version of Slave Labor: The New Story of American Higher Education.
• I have not tracked down the guy who runs The Adjunct Project and begged for a plug.
• Nor have I asked said guy to let me contribute a post to his free-for-all website.
• I have not nagged BlueHost to remove the unused Beady-Eyed Babe site for which I continue to pay.
• I have not transferred incoming cash from PayPal to the corporate checking account.
• I have not billed the client for the latest unholy frenzy of work.
• I have not sent to another client a discussion of a relevant passage in John Gardner’s Art of Fiction, which, IMHO, would help him a great deal in framing his current revision.

Of these, only one is an immediately paying task. But all of them either cost me money or may one day create money for me. Instead, what have I been doing?

Scrubbing floors.

If that’s not an opportunity cost, I’d like to know what it is.

This puppy is cute. Very cute. But as it develops, one pays for cuteness. The other day, in a moment of desperation, I asked the vet for a recommendation to a trainer who might help expedite the house-training process, at which I felt I was failing abjectly.

She recommended a franchise outfit whose strategy involves using a remote collar to jolt the message home to the offending dawg. The woman who showed up at my house to give me a “free demonstration” (i.e., a sales pitch) explained that this thing works with a vibrator that indeed does feel very much like your cell phone vibrating, or with an electric shock comparable to a mild static zap.

(Ruby, by the way, has begun to get the idea. She hasn’t widdled on the floor today, and we managed to get through yesterday with only one puddle.)

Today the woman followed up by calling me on the phone to prod me to sign up. I explained (with only slight exaggeration) that I’m living on Social Security and cannot pay their silly prices.

They want — hang onto your hat — $795 (!!) for a package that entails two or more private lessons and “unlimited group classes” held in public parks. For only $695 (!) you can get the same with only one private lesson; any extra private lessons will set you back $145 apiece. Then they have an “Indoor Only Training” package for — wait for it…are you ready? — $1,299 (!!!!).

If you want to buy the whiz-bang remote collar, you have to pay $225.

Understand…remote vibrator/shock collars can be had from Amazon for about $65. For two of ’em.

I hafta ask you: Is it or is it not amazing that people will spend that kind of money on their pets? For services and products they can get for a fraction of the money? Or for free, if they’re willing to look up the instructions on the Internet?

The pet industry is a freaking gold mine, isn’t it?

Ohhhh…so cute!

(Click on the image for the full dose of cuteness.)

We’ve found the newspaper recycling basket, and we think it’s an extremely cool place to hang out. Adorable, eh?

Right now she’s harassing Her Stratospheric Majesty, who in spite of an occasional testy moment is amazingly patient with the little pest. They’re having a horrible fake “fight” just this minute, very funny.

Since we switched to the new feed recommended by the holistic vet we tracked down, Pup has begun to put on substance. She was pretty frail, being the runt of the litter, much tinier than her little brothers and sisters and really very delicate. She’s now developing some vigor and spunk, and she’s utterly unafraid of the Queen of the Universe and Empress of All Time, Space, and Eternity. She’ll call the Royal Bluff at the drop of a growl.

After she damn near drowned in the pool…omg! Did I report that here? I’ve got another site on a Corgi board where most of the puppy antic stories are going.

Well, the other day we’re sitting out there and pup is roaming around the yard. I look up and see she’s managed to weasel her way through the barricade I put up to keep Charley the Golden Retriever away from the shrubbery-clogged deep end of the pool. Uh oh…there’s a reason I don’t want the dogs down there.

I slip off my shoes and start to walk around the shallow end toward her, hoping to call her to me before she can fall in — she’s now toddling along the very, very narrow strip of Kool-Dek on the far side of the pool. Too goddamn late. Before I can reach her, she topples into the drink!

She’s now as far from me as she can get and floundering in the very deepest part of the pool — which is 8 or 10 feet deep, farther down than I can swim.

I run around the shallow end to reach the deep end and throw myself in, fully clothed. My foot slips as I jump and I land in the water with a belly-flop, creating a tsunami that swamps the puppy. She starts to go down. I manage to get to her just as she’s getting one helluva snootful, grab her by the leg, and lift her head above the water.

We make it out of the drink. I’m shivering. She’s shivering. Bluejeans are very heavy when they’re wet.

I wrap her in a kitchen towel long enough to pull off the soggy clothes. Then run her to the bathroom, wrap her in a bath towel, pull a space heater out of a closet and plug it in, and wipe her dry in front of the thing.

This, as it develops, is not very difficult: puppy coats are not what you’d call very substantial.

Luckily, the water is not very cold — weather has been in the high 80s and really, a person could go swimming right now, if a person were brave enough or stupid enough.

Now on an endless QV, I realized another Animal Barricade Contraption was needed. Hence, the following:

This contraption is built from three-foot lengths of (relatively) inexpensive garden border fencelets, made of wood. They’re flipped upside-down and strapped together with UV-resistant plastic zip-ties, and then roped to the patio upright, a chair, and the metal bordering around the poolside flowerbed. Cost is nominal, especially compared to the metal equivalent. They’re low enough that I can step over them without risking disaster, but high enough that neither dog is willing to try jumping over them.

Heh. My house: Home of the Eccentric Innovation.

Anyway, Pup is OK. She’s going strong, except for having been set back a bit in her house-training project. She’s reverted to Stealth Peeing, a strategy at which she is very, very effective. I didn’t know it was possible to pee by mental telepathy. This dog can be on one end of a room and cause a puddle to materialize all the way over on the other end of the room. It’s weird.

She’s in love with her new Rope Toy: carries it everyplace she goes. Problem is, it’s almost as big as she is!

Cassie and the new sidekick:

Loses!

heh heh heh heh heh… I believe I recall reciting this ancient bit of wisdom myself, not so long ago.

Kitty-cat

Cougar-cat

By the way, you might ask, how did the fortification of the Funny Farm’s ramparts work?

Not well. The cat won. Again.

{sigh}

Cassie and I are out there trundling around the yard the other day, an extremely lovely day, and what should we see but Other Daughter’s big, fat orange tabby strolling up the far side of the pool. She is not fazed by the presence of the savage corgi. She is not fazed by the presence of the hostile human. The Enemy, in other words, makes her no never-mind. She ambles down to the far end, takes up a position under the Texas sage, lays herself down, stretches out luxuriously, and relaxes.

Cassie ignores her. I give up.

It is not possible to win against a cat.