More Madness
I seem to be unable to escape a life in which canine madness predominates. And by this I mean, even though Faye went to a wonderful new home on a ranch with three adorable boys who are madly in love with her, I once again find myself with two grumpy canines in the house and a never ending cycle of opening the backdoor to let them in or out or to just stand there and stare, and continuously dirty food bowls, paw prints on the floor, and little tumbleweeds of hair drifting about in the currents of the A/C. And not to mention that one of the dogs currently staying with me is the Queen Of All Things herself, and she won’t let me forget (not in a million years) that Her Opinion Matters Most (and no one elses’ ever matters).
Beau is not so happy with this arrangement. I saw a drastic improvement in his behavior once Faye left (can we say, war over the sofa, 24/7 wiggleworm and running 4 miles a day with continual hyperactivity??) and for two weeks or so things were as normal as they ever are around here. Then Penny showed up and he gave me the, oh-no-you-friggin’-don’t look, and now it’s a competition to see who can behave more badly, who can be loudest, and who can possible act the most jealous. Beau pretty much ignores Penny as much as he ignored Faye - but the problem in this is that Penny is short, fat and geriatric, and she hates to be ignored - hates ever more to be trod on by a large grey and white galumping moose. Every five seconds she is expressing her displeasure that he should be within a twenty mile radius of her royal self, despite the fact that this is Beau’s house and I am doing Penny a favor by keeping her here and not banishing her to the kennel (even if the kennel won’t take her anymore). The crazy bat queen must have her way at all times and immediately or there is several minutes of growling, barking and snarling while slithering around on the floor on her good front legs and gimpy back ones, oddly reminiscent of one of those dancing-flower fireworks.
My parents (and brother) are happily galavanting about in cool, beautiful, scenic and interesting San Fransisco. I, on the other hand, am stuck in hot, muggy and rainless Texas with a large grumpy moose who hates company, and a small fat badger that hates everything. Which is all fine when they are at their respective houses with their respective slaves to wait on them hand and foot - it’s when we get these two irascible creatures together that canine madness ensues. Here I am trying to write a parasitology paper on Hydatid Disease with moose grumblings in the background because it’s been twenty minutes since he last ate and angry badger opinions being spat at me from behind him because HOW DARE HE SPEAK IN HER PRESENCE.
I am going out of my mind at the present moment.
Saturday cannot come soon enough.
better than hanging out with humans, moose on the loose, pack mentality | Comment (0)All madness, all the time
I could not win last week. Just when things were looking up, something else went to crap. I am just hoping at this point that this means all my crappy days and bad luck are out of the way for the rest of the semester, and I can get down to what really matters - school and getting Beau healed.
Mon: Faye was up at 5:30 a.m. Normally, I just put her in the bathroom so I can keep sleeping until 7. I should have known when she didn’t get excited (because normally if I get up it means we’re going outside for potty then breakfast) that something was up. At 5:32 a.m. there was a violent diarrhea explosion all over my bathroom. Dammit. I never could fall asleep.
Texas A&M Athletics also decided to deny me football tickets on my sportspass (that I have had for 5 years), telling me I must have bought them too late and their computers weren’t updated yet. Too bad I bought them in July and paid tuition the day it was posted. I parked illegally, yelled at some poor student worker, and got a crappy seat not with my friends.
That night, after one of the best afternoons of my life, one of the best relationships of my life ended. I’m still trying to figure that one out, but you can’t be in a relationship with somebody if that person doesn’t want to be in it as well. So now, I just feel like an embarassed fool, which luckily doesn’t differ too much from my normal status quo. Gave my sports pass away to someone who could use it and enjoy it a lot more than me.
Tues: The box from hell scared the crap out of Faye. There was a box, on the counter, that had been there, not moved or changed, for a week. But today, the box was out to get her, and long after the box was removed, I had to drag her in and out of the doorways it had been within 100 miles of. While I was making dinner, Beau was sleeping in the pantry and as I turned around with a hot pot of steaming broccoli, he lifts his head and I kick him square in the damaged ear (which has been getting steadily worse). I proceed to sob on the floor, cradling a whimpering Beau, for 30 minutes while my food gets cold.
Gave away my crappy ticket to the person I gave the sports pass to.
Wednesday: I come home to find that some asshole truck decided to drive up into my lawn and make a huge smush of my grass that I work very hard on to keep nice. It’s not nearly impossible to mow that section of lawn. I do, however, get to go horseback riding and I don’t fall off. After taking the dogs to the park, I go to move a sprinkler and walk right into a ginormous spider web. Much screaming and frantic brushing myself off ensues.
Thursday: I learn I am bad at my job. First I forget to get the drinks from the SCAVMA person, then when I go to pick up the food for the Natura feeding program, I find out they’ve sent me the wrong thing. When delivering the food to people, I mistake one person’s order for another, give one person a coupon and give away a bag of food that I thought had no home, but in fact belonged to someone else. Thus, I created more work for myself. I come home around 7 to find two incredibly crazy hound dogs and take them to the park where Faye proceeds to eat voluminous amounts of mud, and Beau tries relentlessly to hump a friend’s dog.
Friday: School is (thankfully) uneventful, and I am enjoying my new project at one of my jobs. I am getting most of the food fiasco sorted out. I come home, happy, excited - only to find that my neighbor who just put in new grass (and is two houses down) is flooding out my yard with all her runoff, causing my grass to develop a fungus. Yay for free water, bad for fungus. I was hoping my yard would be dried out so I could mow it - but instead I have to mow in the squishy thick uneven yard. I also come home to find voluminous amounts of Faye diarrhea once again splattered all over my bathroom. It’s been there for hours and there are flies all over the place and it stinks the whole house to high heaven. I call my mom, have a slight breakdown over the phone and cry while picking up stinky poo and cursing this week.
Also, my weedeater string ran out 1/3 of the way through the yard. And because the grass was wet, all the clippings are still on the sidewalk. Oh and I had three weeks worth of laundry to do. And I walked into another spider web while moving sprinklers. At least the dogs and I had a good walk.
Saturday: My neighbor and I went to the football game together. I had hopes that we would be in the non-student section and I could sit my tired butt down the whole time, but instead we are stuck with a bunch of freshmen (God I hate that Wildcat) and have to stand the whole time. At least it was down on first deck, 14 rows back from the field. And lunch was good and the company was pleasant. And the sun went down and it wasn’t god awful hot. Also, Jeff bought me a snowcone, which is pretty good in my book.
However, upon returning back home, I find confetti all over my floor (at least no diarrhea). This is because Beau has decided to eat my parasitology notes that I left on the coffee table (they had been there for several days). So all my keys and my notes and my annotations are now more or less in his GI tract and I’m just waiting to see the pink, blue and yellow flecks start appearing in his poop. It just hope it’s not diarrhea.
Since it was late, I just went to bed, but the dogs were slightly manic from no walk and it took a good while to calm them down before I could finally fall asleep.
Sun: Nothing so far… but it’s only 1:30 and I haven’t left the house today. In fact, maybe I won’t ever leave my house again. At least there hasn’t been any diarrhea…
moose on the loose | Comment (1)Adrenaline rush
I got the brilliant idea this morning that when I went to pick up the dog food from Close Quarters, I would bring just Faye along to see how she did in pet stores and of course for the added benefit of some work on her socialization skills. I thought it would be nice for just the two of us to do something, get in some bonding time, as this is what I did with Beau when I had him at first - we toured around the city running errands (still one of our favorite things to do together) and we are duly bonded very closely.
However, as we left the store, the guy with the sixty pounds of food on his dolly trailing behind us, she completely freaked out on me and ran off. She has been so good lately with the “wait” command inside the car as the tailgate is opening - apparently such a thing does not apply when the door is closing. Other than that very first day, she has never tried to escape from the back of the CR-V, and I stood, frozen for a moment in the hot afternoon sun as she bolted straight for the highway. The food guy just stood there, probably unsure of what the hell to do next, as I tore off after Faye, screaming and about dying right there in the middle of the parking lot as my heart lept from my throat and all my insides knotted up.
The cars on the highway are going at least 60, if not 70 or more, and there she was on the shoulder, looking back at me, frantically calling, crouching, trying to entice her to chase after me (which is what I did the one time Beau got away from me - I just ran the other way and he followed). But she darted across the road to the other side, just as the cab of a 16 wheeler came barreling down the stretch. I don’t know what I was thinking, or maybe I don’t know what stopped me from being so stupid, but I stepped out into that road, screaming, waving my arms at the cab and the trucks coming in the other direction, and trying to see where Faye was darting off to next. I called to her, I crouched in the middle of the road, the cars honking and stopped all around me. But Faye wouldn’t come, I think she was as scared as I was.
A man in a Dodge 1500 suddenly saw what I was doing and pulled his truck into the ditch on the side of the road, blocking Faye’s exit that way. Another man ahead of where I was standing did the same, so Faye was trapped in the ditch (unless she decided to leap over the high brush and go across the rail road tracks). I crept closer and closer to her, trying to be non-threatening, freaking out, saying good girl good girl goodgirl goodgirlgoodgirl… The truck driver in the cab was getting out of his truck at this point to help as well, the dog food guy was still standing by my CR-V where I had just dropped my purse and phone and keys in the parking lot.
She laid down onto the ground and let me get her lease. I clasped her so tight, so relieved, still so incredibly scared and shaking. I shouted thanks to all those who stopped, and the oncoming traffic remained at a standstill until I crossed back to the parking lot. Faye was panting heavily, but unharmed, thank God, and trotted expertly at my side. I don’t know exactly what possessed her to flee from my car, but I certainly never expected it. I have also never been nearly so scared in all my life - I feel deathly sick to my stomach just thinking about something horrible happening to her. About her getting hit by a car going 70 or more, about how she would probably be dead in an instant or have injuries I could never afford to repair. About how much pain she would be in and how much she would be suffering.
The adrenaline has still not worn off and I can’t stop sobbing every time I think about how close we came today. How very very close we came to something horrible and how very very lucky we were to escape unscathed and merely shook up.
It’s amazing how quickly we come to love our dogs, as surely today proved to me. She too is one of the loves of my life, and I can’t stop shaking…
can't imagine life without them, moose on the loose | Comment (0)