Coffee heat rising

Pets

Jack Daniels and the Swizzle Stick

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Annoyingly enough, I’ve taken to calling my son’s dog, tentatively named “Jack,” by my idea of his name: jackdaniels.

My poor son. Will there ever be any relief for him?

Jackdaniels is quite the active puppy. He’s been keeping me and Cassie the Corgi busy every living breathing minute between the time I get home from campus and the time M’hijito comes to pick him up, which is often quite a while, because my son regularly puts in 12-hour days.

This has been putting a crimp on my blog-scribbling and paper-grading activities. Clearly something had to be done to distract him.

Today I decided to celebrate the end of my Eng. 101 summer class with a trip to Whole Foods. Though I can’t afford Whole Paycheck, I was hungry and wanted something good to eat and there’s precious little left in the pantry. They had none of the stuff I craved: the sale on $4.50/lb wild crab doesn’t start til tomorrow and they were out of my beloved tuna and salmon poke and I can’t afford their cheeses. So it was on to the Trader Joe’s in the same strip mall, where I snabbed a very fine chunk of ripe brie and some exceptionally nice baby artichokes. And across the parking lot, what should I spot but…a fancy pet store!

Mais certainement!

Jackdaniels has taken to chewing on the kitchen cabinetry, which will never do. So I dropped by to ask if they didn’t have some sort of chew toys that will not choke the dog, and (as I’ve read elsewhere) the salesdude said all the vets were recommending bull pizzle as relatively safe. The product is also called bully sticks. Right. For the sake of our male readers we will not discuss what these objects actually are.

Suffice it to say that the fancy pet store was the Whole Paycheck of the dog world. Bull pizzle is selling for just slightly under the price of gold, which in these panicky times is fairly high. No joke: $45 for a package of the damn stuff!

Well, I did find some six-inch pieces selling at an astonishing $4 apiece. To prevent mayhem and bloodshed, I realized I’d have to get two of them, one for the pup and one for the Queen of the Universe. And remembering how Anna the Gershep could polish off a large chew stick in about 30 seconds, I figured I’d better get two apiece: $16 for four six-inch pizzle sticks.

Hence, across the city with two bags of groceries and the gold-plated dog chews in tow.

Well, it was $16 worth of dog joy! And interestingly, neither dog has been able to destroy one yet. They must be pretty sturdy, because both pooches have been chewing happily on them for the past two hours, and neither has made much progress at consuming them.

So it looks like even though these things are stupidly overpriced, they may at least last longer than your average pig’s ear.

Cuter than cute!

Meanwhile, we’ve been dwelling in Stress City for the past few days. Oh god.

It’s effing hot here in the kitchen, where the dogs and I are penned in to ensure that jackdaniels doesn’t demolish the rest of the house. With the AC set at 80, which is about what I can afford in the summer, it’s 88 degrees here in the kitchen. And humid…sticky, sticky, icky humid. This is August. You don’t need a calendar to know that.

So this is a bit draining and does little for my enthusiasm to grade papers or clean house or work on a blog carnival or do much of anything. But…much must be dealt with.

Tomorrow morning the Mr. Lutz the Trustworthy Plumber is coming over before it gets too, too hot to climb into the attic, there to examine what I expect is a half-assed repair job on the water heater vent. He said he would inspect the other vents, too, although he thinks they’re probably OK because those are hard pipes rather than aluminum ductwork. I wouldn’t put it past the roofer’s bunch, though, to have screwed those up, too.

And I’ll have another little chore for him: at 5:00 this morning when I went out to shovel back the results of last night’s violent windstorm, what should I find but this nice little damp spot off the east side of the patio slab… The spot above it is dog pee, but the large puddle is neither dog pee nor rainwater. Though the north valley was inundated, we in the rain shadow of the North Mountains saw nary a drop last night.

Soooooo….one might reasonably ask, “WTF??? Where is that coming from?”

Well, there’s a hose bib on a standpipe coming off a line that runs (where else?) underneath the KoolDeck-swaddled slab that covers about 550 square feet out there. Uh uh.

Visions of jackhammers dance in my head…

One of my students is an architect, interestingly enough. I asked him what he thought fixing that would entail, and he thought that if it was actually a leak (and what other than a leak could explain yesterday’s HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-DOLLAH WATER BILL!!!!!?????), the water would not have moved in that direction.

Well, we’ll see what the miracle plumber says, assuming he can think through the sound of the cash register jingling in his head.

Damn. I’m beyond being able to cope with any more zillion-dollar emergency bills.

If I have to have the pavement jackhammered out, the plumbing dug up and repaired, the paving relaid, and the hideous KoolDeck smeared all over everything again (what is the appeal of that stuff?), it’s going to cost every penny I earn this summer plus several thousand more. Oh…damn, oh hell, oh damn!

Really. I’ve worked like an animal all summer, devoted weeks of unpaid labor to creating my own CMS in WordPress and Google Docs to get around the flicking NIGHTMARE that is Blackboard, and I’d planned to use the munificent three grand I’m earning to fold into survival savings to delay having to draw down from retirement savings another three months.

And as we see the market swooning once again, we can see that said delay is no longer a “want” but an absolute, positive need. The last time this happened, grâce à our fine political leaders, I lost two hundred grand from my savings. That loss was just about recovered, and now, thanks to the FLICKING STUPIDITY we’ve seen from what passes for our elected leadership, the money is going right back down the drain again.

And so, believe me, the last thing I want to do is pour my summer earnings into the literal drain.

Nor do I want to do what I’m about to do, which is to take off my clothes, go out in the blast-furnace midday sun, and work on the pool; then come back in and start grading student papers.

Busy Weekend

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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.

 

Pupple!

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M’hijito sends a photo of his Intended Puppy, below.

{click to enlarge}

Ain’t he cute? He comes home to M’hijito’s house next weekend.

Is She Gone?

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OMG! I think the German shepherd lady just moved out!

Not for certain yet… It was on the late side of mid-afternoon when I drove into the neighborhood and spotted a BIG-a$$ Bekins truck parked out in front of the house where the late, great crime occurred. Whichever way the movers were going, they were about done, and so there was no action. So I couldn’t see whether they were carrying things in or out. But because several brand-new, unused boxes were leaning against the front of the house, my guess is she’s moving out and those were boxes she was returning to Bekins. Or boxes the movers were going to use to pack up her stuff.

A bright red FOR RENT sign was stuck in the front yard. Why would the landlord have a for-rent notice out there if the tenants were moving in?

Cruised by the house a couple of times, as unobtrusively as possible, which wasn’t very. Came home, put the groceries away, let the dog out, changed my clothes, idled a few minutes away. Then I rode my bike down there, through the 109-degree heat, to see if a slower, closer look would resolve the question.

By then, the truck had left. It looked like the house was vacant! Of course, I was afraid to charge right up to the front windows and peer in. But I do think SHE’S GONE!!!!!!!

I’ll drive by there tonight after dark. If there’s no light in there, then maybe I’ll be emboldened to barge up and look in the windows tomorrow.

Wow! How awesome would that be, if she really were gone?

Cassie and I would get our favorite evening walk route back. It’s the best after-dark doggie-walk trail through the neighborhood, because it doesn’t go near the park, which isn’t very safe at night, and because it doesn’t cross the main north-south feeder street, taking us further afield than one would like to be on foot at 10 or 11 p.m. This route passes several really beautiful homes, borders a horse property where the burros come up and kiss Cassie on the nose, and goes through a lush, quiet neighborhood full of mature trees and cool, irrigated lawns. All these things make it the closest desirable place to walk, day or night.

I haven’t taken Cassie back there, of course, and was resolved never to walk anywhere near that house again. That meant we couldn’t go into that part of the neighborhood at all, since we have to pass that house to get into the enclave to the south of it.

LOL! She must have called the landlord, told him there was a crazy woman in the area, and demanded to be let out of the lease. Heeeeeee!

Whatever: good riddance. Now we’re free to walk anywhere in the neighborhood we please.

Update

Bicycling past the house early Sunday morning, I saw a vehicle parked in the driveway. Damn! She must have been moving in, not out. Doesn’t matter, I guess…Cassie now refuses to walk in a southerly direction from our house, anyway.

Images:

German shepherd dog. Ameliorate! at en.wikipedia. Creative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Pembroke Welsh Corgi. Pmuths1956. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Dog Attack: Trounced Pooch

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DogAttackUSAF-300x282Horrible evening and night. Along about 10 pm as we were walking in the neighborhood, some idiot’s out-of-control German shepherd dog charged across our main feeder street and down the side road where we were standing and attacked Cassie.

The shepherd belonged to the guests of some renters in a house on Feeder Street. This bunch were out in front of the house, apparently taking their leave of their hosts as they loaded stuff into the back of a small SUV. As we approached on Side Road, I could see they had a couple of dogs out there, one of them a shepherd, and that the shepherd was squirreling around their truck. I stopped to watch for a moment, but then decided we could get by since we were all the way on the other side of a wide road.

About the time we stepped forward from this pause—well before we reached the corner—this dog spotted us and shot across Feeder Street like a rocket. It grabbed Cassie by the nape of the neck and started shaking her, trying to kill her.

Wouldn’t you know, I’d decided to carry along a glass of tea instead of my coyote shilelagh, and I was wearing sandals, so couldn’t even kick the damn dog in the ribs.

I grabbed the shepherd but couldn’t force it to release her—she was shrieking and the shepherd was shaking her like a rag and I couldn’t stop it. Finally the moron owners came shuffling up, and the two of them were able to disconnect their fucking dog.

Effing morons! They claimed they had the dog on a leash. Yeah…they had a leash on the dog, all right: they just weren’t holding onto it! The animal was frolicking around the vehicle because they’d dropped the leash. I flew into such a high rage I turned the night air Day-Glo blue yelling at them for their stupidity.

Fortunately it was a fairly young dog, inexperienced, and it grabbed her not by the neck but over the shoulders. Her hair is extremely thick in that area and so the bite didn’t break the skin. By the time we got her free, she was ambulatory, and in fact did not want me to carry her far. She seemed to be able to walk OK, once I hauled her away from the scene.

The emergency vets tried to scare me, over the phone, into hurrying in for some expensive x-rays and tests, telling me she might have internal injuries. But I’m $450 in the hole as we scribble, no sign of my Social Security check, probably not going to get one next month, and after two weeks of entertaining freshmen four uninterrupted hours a day, tomorrow’s “lagging” paycheck from PeopleSoft will cover three, count’em (3) days. Since Cassie sleeps on the bed with me, I decided I could keep an eye on her until morning and then, assuming I didn’t have to rush her to the emergency animal clinic during the night, foist her onto La Maya to schlep to the vet while I was in class.

This morning she seemed sore but OK. So La Maya and I decided to opt the relay race to the vet’s, no doubt much to La M’s relief. Not as though she had nothing else to do… 🙄

From the campus, I made an appointment for 2:00 p.m. with the regular vet—fifty bucks just to walk in the door—but after arriving home from class I decided to cancel, because by the time I got home from class she was standing by the door and looking hale and hearty. Now she seems pretty well…bright-eyed and lobbying to chase her ball around. So I think she’s probably OK.

My throat is sore from all the screaming I did last night. Got to sleep around 3; had to get up at 5. I’ve been a zombie all day.

You know, if you own a big powerful dog that could pose a danger to you, to other people, or to other people’s pets, you have only two choices: either you have it so exquisitely, perfectly trained that it WILL stop what it’s doing under all conditions and come when called (few people know how or have the patience to train a dog like that), or you keep it on a lead at all times whenever it’s outside a fenced area.

Stupid, stupid, stupid people.

Soggy Doggy!

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Cassie the Corgi fell in the drink this afternoon. Squirreling around with the ball, she tumbled right in. And oh! The terror!

This little dog hates water so much that if she sees a sprinkler while we’re walking, she’ll insist on crossing over to the other side of the street. And if you think dogs don’t feel emotions like humans do, you needed to be here to see the look of raw fear in her eyes.

WTF?

Fortunately, she was so close to the edge that all I had to do was reach over, grab a few hairs on her mane, and guide her over to the steps, where she soon found her footing. And then she was a very, very, very disgusted dog.

Naturally, I’d washed the dog towels, having laundered the dog herself not so long ago. Didn’t notice that after I’d put them on the line, they slipped off and fell on the deck. So when I went to retrieve them, they were lying on the planks in a wet heap, useless. Had to press some human towels into service.

And naturally, it’s 6:00 in the evening, and so she’s still going to be wet by bed-time. This animal’s coat is so thick that when she gets soaked to the skin, it takes her six or eight hours to dry out. So I’ll have to find something for her to lay on that will protect the mattress. {sigh}

Knowing how much she hates water and also knowing that she never lets me out of her sight when we’re in the yard, I’ve been lazy about teaching Cassie to paddle over to the steps, where she can get out of the pool by herself. And indeed, when she fell in, she was right under my feet. In fact, for a while there she was giving me the evil eye…I think she thinks I kicked her in there.

When the puppy gets here, she is going to need to know how to get out of the pool. The first thing that’s gonna happen is that little critter is going to tip her right over into the water. In fact, they’ll probably both fall in. So…I’ve got about six weeks in which to teach this dog to swim. We’ll be starting the first thing in the morning.

Then we’ll have to train the pup to swim out, too.

Hm. This may not be a great idea…

Oh, the dog? Never fear. She’s none the worse for wear.

I'll live to eat again! Soooooonnnn!

Before she’d even shaken the last of the water out of her fur and onto the kitchen cabinetry, she was back in business…

Ball!