Busted Seams

Anyone who I come in contact with on a fairly regular basis knows about the "new" dog.

New as in pre-owned.

Pre-owned as in...missing the mirrors, slashed the upholstery and the tires are flat. Or gone


An "as is" type of sale.




Whats really ironic about the whole ordeal of removing the cancer bits and sewing him up to keep the stuffing from falling out, is that he is a really, really, nice dog.


A nice dog being, well, the polar opposite of everything Chili is.



I love his little cone that he was forced to wear. Actually, not forced, ENJOYED, dare I say, wearing. He'd stand there and let you slip it on him, and fix his ears. Then he'd wander away and nap. All with happiness.

Chili, on the other hand, tried to rip out my trachea this morning when I tried to apply 3 droplets of Frontline to his shoulder blades. This was after chasing him. Yes, chasing the little shit around my tiny house for a good 5 mins. I must admit, we do this for fun, so its possible he thought it was a game, but I usually can catch him during the games...I couldn't this time. Mr. SpringyStep seemed to have extra incentive today.

He took one look at the tiny, terrifying tube of dog death juice and decided not to cooperate. The trainer in me kept saying "make it a fun training session! Condition him to like it! Hes only biting you because hes afraid of everything! Its not his fault!!"

The normal, human, frustrated, primate part of me, chased my dog, grabbed him, and told him "tough shit" while I squeezed frontline onto his flailing body. I must note that this is not "normal" for us, but I was having a very bad day, admittedly.

Keep in mind I don't think Chili is actually afraid of the frontline. More like "anything without som'thing in it for me, I wont do it! sort of thing.


I know better than to say that dogs are "stubborn" or "will full". But when I tried the same thing, 10 mins later, in a official "training" session (I had guilt) he didn't object at all. In fact he practically took it out of my hand and applied it himself.

My dog is too smart. Despite me not bribing him, hiding the treats, never showing him the reward first, keeping treats in other rooms. Etc. He is fully aware as to whether I plan on paying him or not. I don't know how he knows. But that little shit knows. They call these types of dogs "Wise".

As in, the dog is RingWISE or collarWISE....it means, in training colloquialisms, that the dog had figured your plan out. He knows your next move before you do. The "you blink different when you don't have treats and I know it" sort of thing. All Clever Hans and such. IN. YOUR. HEAD.


It doesn't even matter what I pay him with. It could be half a Kibble. The human equivalent is probably like getting a $2 check from grandma for your 21st birthday. Chili doesn't care. All he cares about is being paid. Its like hes stuck on the principle of the whole thing.

So maybe next time the preowned dog is being stitched up, I can get a tattoo on Chili's tongue that says "pay it forward".

Until then, don't shoot the dog.

Brain wipes.

Sweet beans, I'm glad that's over.


I returned from frolicking in the trees, the bug less trees, but I digress, to find that the infants have vanished. This must be how parents feel with the kid finally, finally goes to their first sleepover. Som'where else of course.

We have a running joke here that the dogs are easier than kids, way easier. I mean, dog kids go willingly into their cages and don't poop in their pants. I think those two facts alone is enough qualification.

Well, having 4, trained dogs, is probably as much work as half a well behaved, decent aged kid...as in a kid that's old enough to pour their own cereal and dress themselves, my dogs are easier than that.

Puppies are not easier than that. Puppies are, mathematically between 3/4 to 2 1/2 times as much work as say, a two year old child. The three quarters puppy being robotically perfect, small sized and low energy and the 2.5 x puppy being a nipping, shitting, screaming, 80lb beast from hell.

I figured that the Muppet's were about a 3/4 of a two year old child, each.

So mathematically, I went from having less than one behaved human kid to essentially 2.25 human children. Human children that don't speak English, keep odd hours and eat doors


Thankfully my brain didn't explode, and all is normal now. Which brings in a new issue.

Wtf to do with myself.

Today I walked in circles, I cleaned, but not in a focused manner, I brushed a few cats, trained a dog or two, but mostly I ambled around going "what were my hobbies again??"

No wonder people do this puppy thing over and over. Motherhood gives you amnesia.

Poopmares

Its official.

I've lost my mind.

Out of all the deep thoughts swirling in my head all day. Dolphins and physics. Polymers and behavior...what does my brain chose to dream about?

Poo.

Not just in a "there was a turd in my flying dream last night". No, as in the whole dream was about poo to the point I became so anxious and upset I woke up and had to determine if it had really happened.

A Poopmare.

I had just, just enough sense in me to not ask if it was real. I had the thought of "if its real, you'll deal with it when you get up, if its not, you'll never hear the end of it"

Anyway, I feel this is fitting, because I'm positive the cause of my poopmares is actually experiencing them herself. Tippy is a sleep pooper.

She was "the bed pooper" before all of her sleeping in bed privileges were revoked. A once in a blue moon thing became clockwork like an incoming train. So the bed pooper sleeps alone

She is bonafide asleep when this happens. So every morning, she awakens to several nuggets amid her bed.

I suppose I can't complain to much, my dream was waking up to find the floor alllll around my bed was covered in Tippy nuggets...

but Tippy gets to live the dream. Live the dream Tippy, live the dream.

Things I've learned this month part twooo

The second you spend $300 building a fence, and half a day, the reasons for it will be tied up on the other side of the yard.

There is a fine line between arrogance and confidence, and its blurry to everyone but you

Tippy must poop in her sleep at least once a day

usually at night

usually in the dog bed that you just washed

yesterday


Monitors like to eat their own eggs

The weather is all over the effing place

My Anna apples are growing in funny shapes


The duck will never fully appreciate his 200sq ft enclosure...preferring to use about 10 of it

I probably will never eat tuna in large amounts again

California only has enough water for another 10-20 years (at most)

Birds get in som' nasty, nasty brawls over bitches.


thats is all.

No thank you, your dead things violate my belief system, Sir.

Its been a hard month, Critter passed and quite suddenly, my house has started to less resemble a fort, but more the need to be a fort. We've always prided ourselves on privacy, and keeping undesirables out, but those "undesirables" never materialized...in fact I've always figured people thought of us as paranoid wierdo-urban hermits...but now I can see my fears are founded.

One of the more positive aspects of Critters absence is I now have a tremendous amount of free time. Most of which must be actively used indoors, for now, due to the dire wolves that have materialized at my fence line, but I digress.

I guess I never realized how much time I spent putting up and taking down baby gates. Mopping up pee in the morning, evening and night, off tile. Using the carpet cleaner when I wasn't lucky enough to be cleaning tile. Time spent wandering around the house aimlessly searching for the giant, invisible bottle of white vinegar. Having to do a potty break ever half hour, all hours of the day, in a futile attempt to keep the floor clean. I'm exhasted thinking about it just typing this up.

Don't get me wrong, I love my dog, and I'd endure "pee feet" every morning for the rest of eternity to have her back...but man that dog peed a lot, and in all the wrong places.

Now that hospice duties are over, I've been getting to know my other dogs. I thought I knew my dogs pretty damn well. I mean, I spend all my time with them, so I thought. I feel like that dad that has a great relationship with his kids, that just lost his job, and is now home all the time and coming to the realization that there was a lot more to know. A lot more to do.

My first impulse was to replace the gaping hole with another dog. Not to replace her, but to occupy my time/mind while I heal. This is how we acquired Emma and Kiwi . This model works out for me logically. Dogs need homes. There is a vacancy at the inn. Sorry no pool. Pets allowed with deposit. Please no peeing on the carpet. That sort of thing

This transition was different, so I laid low and allowed myself to feel the awkwardness. I kinda felt this time, like I didn't deserve another dog, and this time, like it would be an insult on Critters memory. I let the emptiness eat me this time, in between cleaning everything in sight.

We went on a hike the other day. I took the three able bodies, and left Tippy to sleep on her pillow, which she'd probably rather do anyway, to the trail up off of Ettiwanda. It was cold and my hands wouldn't work. The dogs were beside themselves. For the first time I didn't feel any guilt for leaving the "others" behind.

Emma is a turnkey dog, if I could replicate her and sell her to new owners I would. On this trail, Kiwi must be kept on a long line, or else in her glee, she'd get lost. Chili stays by my side, sniffing this, or that, but staying with me, I watch for dogs and people which could potentially ruin both his and my day. Em, on the other hand, is having the time of her life, looking for rabbits, she must have inspected every shrub on that trail, all the while, staying near and checking in with me, of her own volition, which required no training to accomplish this.

I never in my life thought I'd be comfortable, letting a 25lb dog, run out of sight, with prey around. Never in my life. I trust this dog that much.

Chili followed her into the brush for a brief moment. I do see that the other dogs are role models for him, as hes gleamed a bit of behavior from them all. But I could see in his face that he had no idea why the hell this was so "fun" and eventually came back to me. Probably the same feeling I had as a kid, backpacking, miserable, all the while my dad was toting it as the best thing that could have ever happened to me... "your not tired! this is fun!"

There was a place where the trail doubles back on itself, and as a result, Em had emerged quite a bit ahead of us on her "check in". I could see her, but she could not see me. Hilarious. She wasn't panicked, but had this look of "stupid human, I left her RIGHT HERE" funny to see the dog look for the "lost" person rather than the other way around. I highly recommend it


So wikipedia, defines religion, partially as such

Religion is a cultural system that creates powerful and long-lasting meaning, by establishing symbols that relate humanity to beliefs and values


I mention this, because today, on impulse, I almost said "sorry, its against my religion" when a guy came in selling flowers. This struck me as odd, since I've always prided myself on the absence of religion in my life.

I took note of this, because my head didn't miss a beat, so I must assume it was genuine. Kinda like a Freudian slip.

But now, when I look at the definition, perhaps my subconscious was onto something.

For those that don't know about Roses, specifically the hybrid tea rose...I wont bore you with details, but essentially its an over bred hybrid, with pretty much no resistance to insects of disease, grown for the long stems that us Humans prefer in our cut flowers. They are readily available at garden centers at huge prices, yet almost never in garden, since unlike other roses that are hard as nails, these teas die.

Since hybrid teas are what are raised for cut flowers, and they essentially, suck. They are raised indoors in huge greenhouses with heavy fertilizers and pesticides.

My other understanding, is for the sake of cheap labor and lax chemical laws, they are grown primarily in South America...where workers are exposed to toxic chemicals and paid less than they are worth, probably without the knowledge that they are killing themselves.

Somehow my brain accessed all the above, and in an instant took a stand. No. I do not believe in this. My second thought however, was that this guy wasn't aware of any of these things, and chewing him out would do no good.

I could have educated him on it, but I didn't, which IN FACT goes against one of my OTHER beliefs, about educating the ignorant. So now what?

I guess if my hypocrisy is going to send me down the road to hell, I'll at least have Emma escorting me down that road, checking every damn bush along the way.

Enviromentalism with a side of bipolar.

I have been manic lately. Massively manic

Not in a good, clean the house, paint the ceiling sort of way. More of a recycle the bottle caps, tempted to root through the neighbors trash kinda way.

I've known the sky to be falling for a while now, but the combo of dolphin eating footage, that dude skinning the golden retriever, and the large amounts of people I run into with far to many children finally got to me. If I could have had a seizure, I would have, pant crapping and all.

I am not the depressive type, quite the opposite, I have pep talked myself out of som' heavy shit. Even if I was crying uncontrollably. But it all finally got to me, my brain went into death mode, and why are we here, and nothing you do matters etc etc.. even as I was thinking these things, I was totally aware my brain was slitting its own wrists.

I am currently out of my funk, but like everything, I have learned from it. I overdid it. Much like an athlete pulls a muscle, I am an intellectual that overloaded and pulled my empathy tendon. Resulting in an accute case of emphadepresalitis.

I read once, that empathy was kinda like a floodgate, once you open it, stand back, or else your sneakers are going to be more than a little wet. This is held true for me, as I have in the last five years yo-yo'd from not giving a damn about anyone but me and my fuzzy minions to caring about every goddamn thing in this world, crying at not just aspca commercials, but at infomercials and everyday things, like some crazy pregnant woman.

So now I sit in a zen state, partway between my "I only care about me"  and the over the top "feed the world, save the whales" overly emotional brain. I find, that this is the state that I get the most done, and feel the best doing it.

stay sane everyone, you can't save the world alone :)

Squats like dis mom?

Kiwi has the muscle memory of a rock.

The 'wi has gone from impossible to train, to OMG I LOVE YOU WHAT DO YOU WANT like a ball-sick labrador after you've been gone all day. These are also peppered with the occasional fit of OMG DON'T BEAT ME. Which occur at complete random, usually when I am not even interacting with her. Take last night for example, I was putting my phone on the table and whatever motion that involved gave her the impression I was about to gut her and serve her raw. No amount of anything would "fix" her. So I eventually gave up. Today shes my buddy again. I think a wire is loose in there. If she kills me in my sleep, it'll all make sense.

Anyway, back to rock muscles. I have been trying to convince her to "sit pretty" for about a month straight now. Its a behavior I have been capturing and shaping, and since its not perfect, there's no lure/hand motion/cue for it yet. She just does it at random when she feels its time for her and I to party. Which is many times a day.

She would only hold it for a split second, before either dropping back into a sit, or doin' som' zoomies-ish motion, or standing up completely like a weirdo. Paws high like a 6 year old kid stands when mom is about to put a shirt on them. After selective rewards for over a month now, shes not making any progress in the duration department. So my conclusion is simply that there are no abs-o-steel in there, and those muscles instead are in her ridiculously muscular pit bull beef legs that she has, despite the only exercise she gets being nap marathons.

Chili, on the other hand. Has decided to once again make all the other dogs look like chumps, and just randomly one day decided to basically stand in front of the 'wi as it flopped around, and do the trick with 110% perfection. He even held it until I said "OK". Hes like that gifted kid in high school that really should be the one beat up, vs the people that have to actually put in effort to get things. Its so sad, hes like "like this mom?" with a pathetic expression. While the others just emanate a long, low durrrrrr sound that fills the room.

I think kiwi is debating stuffing him in his locker and eating his homework.