Archive
old dog, new dog, feel alright
Its been a strange time, very busy lots of changes, lots of talking to very bright people whose first language is not english. it stretches your mind, as does the new job at work, as do the canine changes at home. Wednesday I met Belen downtown and we went for icecream at sparkies. it was good i had a wafflecone. we stayed for 4 hours talking about psychology and metaphysics. its been ages since i’ve had such an intense talk about stuff. i didn’t get home til after ’10 and if you know me lately that’s my bed time. going to bed at the same time is one of the things that keeps me sane, but sometimes there are higher purposes than mere sanity and i headed for bed at 11. i was devastated to see oni had pissed in it. thursdays my long day, jamming from 7:30 to 8:30 and i don’t mean an hour.
i stripped the wet stuff off, the good news badnews was she had hit the comforter, and tossed it in the hall, grabbed a flanel sheet and closed the blinds in the living room and laid down on the couch. sometimes when i can’t sleep rather than do progressive relaxation i take the easier route of zoning in front of the tv to manage rushing thoughts. but after asking dad to turn down the tv and turn off his lamp i explained his dog had pissed my bed. he seemed mad at me about it and turned off his movie right before the end and went to bed.
said he was taking oni to the humane society and i didn’t tell him not to. just tired of it. lowering the quality of my life. it had come that close so many times before i couldn’t get up the motivation to give her a final farewell goodbye but knew it was happening so i said something. “take care now” or something.
they were both gone at lunch. didn’t mean anything. enjoyed the quiet.
after the day job dad was subdued. dog was nonexistent. i was apologetic and sad. for 10 minutes and then i had to go. i was already 10 minutes late. my life is too hard.
group was alright but last week had been super great. therapeutic and meaningful, cool because we had an intelligent observer who gave good feedback, a therapist from Taiwan in a PHD program in an exchange program. this group was not quite perfunctory but more educational and less deep. but had made it through a long day.
friday, work was work. its new reality is do one thing after another from the time until you leave and leave some things undone. jamming all day. home, change clothes, weed the garden for 10 minutes and go downtown for the 100th anniversary of the wabash station. toured the artrageous gallery 1st floor which had been a storage building for supplies. its a cool old building with a neat rehab into studios. train art and toy trains. no tour of old underground train repair space in the catacombs as promised. there was a ’26 model t, they had three petals i learned from dad and an old dude who’d wandered up. brake, clutch and shift. never noticed the windshield was two small windshields on pivots. i added the fact they got better gas mileage than the ford explorer.
we met amy and some friends of hers at sycamores, we sat at the bar. christina was one of them and we talked about her friend the harvard professor whose study that showed happiness and sadness followed disease models of contagion (you’re 11% more likely to be happy if you have a happy friend, twice that for a sad friend). more people showed up and there was a shortage of bar stools and a surplus of weirdness so we split. probably should have just got a table.
dad and i were going to go to the casino but we had words and i said i didn’t want to go and didn’t. mowed the lawn and ordered pizza and felt a little bad. i was deadheading the roses when he arrived and pointed out the beautiful sunset i was oblivious too and what it was doing to the tiger lillies til he mentioned it and asked to take a picture. i said “sure, in the sweet light”. and we talked about that, the hour before sunset and the hour after sunrise when light comes in obliquely and makes for better photos. softer, less glare. he hadn’t heard of it but had sorta discovered it. sweet.
today was up and do dishes. drink coffee with sarah and talk about sociopaths. i think its a curable condition if they’re motivated. we went to the market. they’re awesome this time of year. melons are out and got a nice little watermelon, plus peaches, concord grapes, this and that.
home to meet the new dog. dad had found one in the free classifieds. a cockapoo four months old. named him fido. he’s barking at the cat right now, first peep i’ve heard out of him. he’s a little black and white fuzzy guy with big paws and goofy eyes. shy and charming. i put away my stuff and left (after having swapped vehicles with sarah) to pick up the girls from taiwan.
we went out to devil’s ice box trail at rockbridge state park. more of its open and everyone enjoyed climbing down to anderson cave where it was cool and very cool. watching the little ones play, the real little ones sitting down on rocks because they didn’t want to cross the underground stream.
after stopping by the Pierpont Store we went back and hung out while dad smoked a pork loin and grilled some chicken breast on the grill. we had the watermelon as well as red potatoes and corn on the cob. they took almost as many pictures of the meal as they did the cave.
needless to say i was bushed and coasted through the evening. through it all i’ve been re-reading neal stephenson’s anathem. brilliant book, i’ll post on it.
they paved the road to sutton’s bluff
This week found Harry, Dad, myself and Oni making a brief Ozarks excursion. We delayed a day to have an extra one to prepare and severe weather had been threatening and left on Tuesday. We set out around 9:30 and had an enjoyable drive down. The Black Eyed Susan was striking and it was nice to get out into the woods. Going gluten free and wanting shade for the dog kept us out of restaurants and it made me nostalgic for road trips past when we had made sandwiches on the road because we couldn’t afford to eat in restaurants. In 94 I had helped organize a summer long volunteer/protest/environmental education/camp out. We were a roving band of 8-60+ folks who met and did projects and hung out and camped and gave workshops and talked to locals. We worked on trails, repaired a dam, dumped saw dust at a national forest office, publicly threatened to disrupt an ATV race, got death threats, and were almost set up for a marijuana cultivation case we did not commit by a crooked sheriff in a small town. All in all it was a grand old time camping and hiking in beautiful country, learning about the natural world and how to live together and make it better. A lot of skinny dipping and a lot of driving. One of the places we liked to go was Sutton’s Bluff and I planned to check it out/camp near it and check out some tourist sites I gave short shift to back in the day, namely the recently re-opened Johnson’s Shut Ins.
We had a little trouble finding our road as forest service 2233 was being paved and was renamed county rd 917. We drove up it a few miles weaving around the paving crew then traveled down a forest service road for a couple of miles until we found an established camp site at a trail head for the Ozark Trail. It was a pretty site with some clearing, lots of shade, and some black eyed susans. We pitched our tents then drove to the shut ins but we didn’t have a lot of time and we were tired and the visitor center was closed so we never figured out how it worked.
Camp was nice though, made spaghetti and we had a smoky fire to keep away insects. Got up early made coffee. Thought our Kaldis Bolivian in the French Press quite likely the best cup of coffee in Reynolds County. Hiked the OT up from camp, nice. Found some fresh boar scat which i thought i had heard them snuffleupagussing in the night.
We headed out and drove up to Taumsauk and climbed the tower. Oni was game for it even though she wasn’t quite as tall as the step, but she climbed it like a champ. Beautiful 360 view. We also checked out an overlook than headed down to Elephant Rocks. I’ve seen bigger rock fields but it was cool for the Midwest, getting to scramble around on boulders. We checked out the ruins of an old engine house made of the granite pieces. I learned about Reg Granite which can can come from Missouri and Dad talked about how granite got going (black granite first used as ship ballast to even out loads until they had a surplus and decided to slice em up and sell them) and how they work it (1/4 mile long wires to give it time to cool). Elephant Rocks are the world’s preeminent place to see weathered red granite and it was pretty cool. There were some cliffs you could jump off into a quarry but i wasn’t quite hot enough and wanted to get back to dad and oni.
We then went to Johnson’s Shut Ins which were very cool and Harry and I slid/scrambled our way through that. Rock climbing in a waterfall, just a lot of fun in the water. Went back to camp and cooked again, i made an apple and ham wild rice dish that was impressive let alone for camp food.
Today we packed up, did out OT hike and cruised back. Caught a diner for lunch on the way home, they did a nice hamburger steak and we all made it home happy. Oni enjoyed camping, just thrilled to be living outside and loved the off leash hiking.
Today back in time to mow the front yard and get cleaned up for Batterer’s Group. The guys were rockin’ and we graduated a cool dude, biker type who teared up when I praised his progress. life is good, vacation is fun even when you’re working. Harry and I are both excited to be seeing mewithoutyou tomorrow night in Springfield. I remembered when I was hoping to leave work an hour early to make the show on time and now i’ve had all week off. Surely god works in mysterious ways.
Myrtle June 2007-May 2010
Myrtle was a great little dog, a real one of a kind. My dad got her right after he retired from the vagabond life of a truck driver from the Humane Society in Mesquite NV. She was out the door at $15 and they threw in leash, collar, and a bag of toys. She was a pup and they said she was half chow and half hound dog and Dad always called her a chow hound. She was tiny though, and at first i swore she couldn’t be more than a 1/4 chow because she was so little. She had the black tongue and aloof nature as well as the long black hair and some of the looks, but tiny. With big grizzly bear feet with long wicked black nails and beady black eyes. But cute though, straight out of a dr seuss book.
Not long after Dad had her he realized something wasn’t right, she would just fall out, scream, and kind of have a seizure or something. After a check up at the vet we learned she had leaky heart valve. It would be 5K just for the diagnostics so Dad decided to love her just as long as she was here. We figured that was why she was so tiny.
Myrtle was a funny dog, she was raised pretty gentle and sometimes she had an attitude. Dad always emphasized personality over obedience. She’d come when she was called when she felt like it. If all were inside and were going out Myrtle wouldn’t come, she’d have to wait 45 seconds and then she’d want out. If we were outside and went in she wouldn’t come in with us, she’d wait her 45 seconds and then scratch at the door, just long enough to sit down and take one shoe off.
Sometimes when we were out she would scratch at the door, and i’d go to let her out but she would just stand there. She didn’t want out, she wanted us all to come in. She had definite ideas about propriety and strict obedience violated her dignity. She had a Princess quality about her, in hind sight its easy to see why Dad babied her.
She was a desert dog who didn’t like the heat, she’d hike from shade to shade, and would always crawl under the truck to stay cool when we were camping. She loved my brother’s Australian cattle dog who was about the same height but 40 pounds heavier, a dog with muscles on its forehead. Smokey, my brothers dog, loved Myrtle and would lure her in to play by rolling on her back and pretending to submit. They were very cute together.
Myrtle could only be active for a bit and then would have to stop and catch her breath. Smokey would hang back and let her. Myrtle couldn’t over do it or she would fall out, eventually she learned to self regulate and stopped seizing. Eventually she did less and less.
Sometimes in the humidity she couldn’t catch her breath. It was the saddest thing. I had a feeling she wouldn’t make it through this summer. Three weeks ago she got pneumonia and couldn’t catch her breath. She crawled under the truck like she was going off to die while we waited for her appt. at the vet. At first we thought it was a spell and she would snap out of it like she’d had in the past. But she crawled under the truck like she was crawling off to die.
The vet hit her with antibiotics, steroids, and benadryl and she seemed to snap out of it, but she never did catch her breath. She went through it all pretty stoically. She just got so tired from not being able to breath and couldn’t really lie down until her little heart just gave out. Dad found her dead in the basement, still warm yesterday morning.
I was just heading off to work. I was in no shape to counsel and canceled my day and came back home. Dad wrapped her in a sheet and carried her in the backyard and put her on the hill by the bird feeder. He had marked off a spot and was shoveling out sod. We dug a deep hole, close to 4′, below the worms and above the water table, dad said. Dad buried her with her little pink semi truck and a little girl’s shoe Myrtle had found in the desert.
After we buried her i got cleaned up and we went to breakfast at the Country Kitchen. We went to the nursery and got most of a flat of Spanish Myrtle, the flowering shrub. They didn’t have the tree kind.
beautiful spring days
Thank god for beautiful spring days. sarah came over for coffee before we went to the market with harry. there was more of a crowd even early and everyone was loving the beautiful days. got eggs of course, the big bag of spinach, brats, goat cheese, everything else i still had from last week. sarah got flowers for amy’s bridal shower and i donated a tulip and a prettier than theirs daffodil. Sarah was impressed with how much stuff i had going when we did the grand tour.
I couldn’t turn up my proof of personal property tax so i went down town to see if i could get a copy and couldn’t. While i was downtown i grabbed some Kaldi’s beans. Got a relationship Brazilian light roast (excellent} and a sumatran. I tried the relationship Montserrat and it was good. Kaldis really knows how to roast a bean.
I also had gotten bacon at the market but it was frozen so i offered to get everyone breakfast at Midway Truckstop. Had the french toast, fair. Dad had the hamburger steak and eggs that i usually get but wasn’t hungry enough.
After breakfast we went out to the Overton Bottoms and checked on the trees we had planted (oaks, pecans, and other hard nut trees, with the idea over the next 3 or 4oo years the trees would mature and the nuts would wash downstream to propagate along the river banks. The Bottoms are a cool area that got protected after the big flood of ’93, thank you slick willy, and are going from pasture/farm land to wooded wetland. We checked on our trees, the switch grass wasn’t out yet so we couldn’t check in on that and then looked fruitlessly for morels. the dogs enjoyed meandering around the forest. Myrtle soaked in the Big Muddy but Oni wasn’t having any of that.
Since we were shroomless we filled our bags with garlic mustard. Its a pernicious problem there and I had volunteered on a pull last year. There was less of it but the seeds take two years so it was to be expected to be back in force, and it was.
Came home and dad watched the tigers beat the indians, harry finished digging up the spring bed and planted lettuces, mesculin mix, and arugula. I mowed the front yard. Yea. The push reel works with my impaired arm. i felt like i could have mowed the back but decided to be cautious and wait until tomorrow.
Instead i painted the black stripes on the rain barrels. They are closer to being done, on two of them we are going to run the pipe straight into them. One bush will have to be trimmed. On the southwest corner we need to do a flex pipe so we don’t have to move the garden gate. Dad thinks its going to be frost free. He started cutting on the red bud stump but it was thicker than the saw and it still stands. He wants to pull it over with a chain and his truck. We swung the axe at it some. Its fun i couldn’t cut my french toast with a fork but i can swing an axe. weird.
In between those last things i cooked some supper. I cooked up a good size batch of the mustard greens with some local bacon. I fried the bacon in small pieces, threw in red onion, and then the garlic mustard in the water that clung to it when i washed it. I added malt vinegar. When i tried it it was pretty bitter so i squeezed in the juice of a key lime and added some braggs, it turned out good but i wouldn’t want a steady diet of it. Harry is going to try some with ham bone and great northern beans. I also made a pack of the brats pulled in a third of a Mickeys with the rest of the red onion and some amy’s mac & cheese with garlic powder and basil.
We’re finishing up the evening with a little 2o12. Neutrinos shaking up the earths quest. doesn’t bold well with my perennials. I do like me some apocalyptic fiction though.
“Gordon Goes To Heaven”
I wrote this poem on the request of my niece after the death of one of her associate’s with severe developmental disabilities. She was struck by his Cookie Monster doll sitting by his plastic palm tree which she had always meant to decorate with christmas lights but never got around to it. Got me thinking about big questions and i wrote this surrealist thing:
The Cookie Monster sat
Under the seven foot cactus
That though never wore Christmas Lights
In this life for sure
Will shine in remembrance
Where we’ll all live the longest
If we get to live at all
The memory mansions of a communal Heaven
A place across the abyss
That is not alone
Many Many Memory Mansions
Are prepared for us for sure
Life without interaction is impossible
And Jesus said he could do it
And Jesus said he would do it
He might have said we should do it
And far greater things
Less we be swallowed up in the unimaginable
Not remembered Not remembering
Swallowed up in the divine for sure
Through the conservation of energy if nothing else
Can’t be all bad
Some noble folk seek it out
As their ultimate goal
But if its communion versus existance
Independent Existance
I stand to be here
To be Me if not I
Humility has its demands
And the Work has too few hands
And there’s shadows grow across the land
‘Midst the dappled sunlight of growth
And the warmth of gentle decomposition
The cycle turns and turns
But passions churn and burn
In their immediacy
The seeds of apocalypse
Are as easy to see as beauty
And which is more real
Only time will tell
That lying bitch
Mother of dogs
Man’s best friend
Do you remember the wolf
That you were
Or the angel you may be
May be becoming
Was a stop in the suburbs
Of arbitrary confinement
And casual nurturance
Worth a step toward the Celestial Hunt
Murderously vain about intelligence
We are
I have to say to not sound threatening
Though there’s no violence on my mind
Except the violence I see
In the stories I hear
In the papers I read
In the people I meet
Arrogant to believe intelligence
Trumps connection
That God does not preserve man and beast
And yet the socially constructed eternal soul
Of personality in interaction
Shines brighter in imagination
A fuller conception of the divine
Aids resonance
Resonance to dance
Outside the hallowed walls
Of someone else’s memory
Skating across the abyss on a name
A hope, a prayer
To soar amidst the other luminescent beings
And share our light
And shine brighter
We are all stars in time
and I swear I will try to remember
You all
In time.
Spring Break 2010 part 3 (the journey home)
We pulled out of Ft Meyers and headed North. This was Tuesday so we still had some time for some exploration. We detoured over to the Ocala National Forest and took a random hike up a forest service road. The trees were pretty shrubby and from the looks of the logging trucks they have a pretty short rotation on the cuts. Nonetheless it was nice to be out of the van and hiking in the woods. Again i was struck with how much less life was present here than in some of the areas. It just seemed like it wasn’t a fully functioning bio-system, like there were pieces missing. It was pretty though pine and hardwoods with lots of tropical plants. Looks like a nice place for free winter camping should i ever get the chance.
Spring was definitely in the air though. There was some very pretty wildflowers and the red buds were doing there thing. We thought we were gonna break our streak of incredible wildlife viewings that had been going on as long as we could remember but we saw a couple of elk as we were heading out of the woods. I didn’t think there were elk in FLA but seeing was sort of believing. A little research showed Elk are not native to FLA but 6 were released after a TV show, but not in our area. The elk we saw were by a fence so they were probably not wild at all. Sometimes seeing is not believing.
Coming up I-75 GPS sent us off and on an exit but we came out of that with a hitchhiker. He was pleasant enough but not really going anywhere, seemed more like a mobile panhandler than someone trying to get somewhere or even just wandering. We passed on the hints for a handout and took him up to Lake City where there were three other dudes trying to hitch north on that exit. Tough world.
We got a room in Tallahassee and decided to do a little side treking and then driving through the night rather than just drive and sleep for two more days without time to do anything. We took 319 South which runs along the Apalchicola National Forest. We stopped for a hike at Leon Sinks, a geological site highlighting sink holes and swamp lands. It was very cool, especially the disappearing streams and dogs were allowed on the trails so it was fun. Not a lot of wildlife viewing though beyond some squirrels.
From there we drove south to the Gulf and then west along the coast. We stopped and took the dogs to an isolated beach which they got a big kick out of. The water was cold for swimming.
Then we drove and drove. We stopped for some good barbecue in Alabama, dozed a bit, but mostly kept the wheels turning all the way home Thursday morning. Our only excitement was some heavy rain in st louis with a multi-car pile up right in front of us. Our luck held and we weaved our way through the wreckage to make ourselves home.
All in all it was a good trip. I would like to go back. The hitchhiker says you can still swim with manatees in the Crystal River, winter camping in the national forest would be cool and i would like to go back to the everglades with a bicycle (its so flat there) and a canoe (perhaps some back country camping or a long float trip). So didn’t get to check if off, my list of places to go never seems to shrink but just gets bigger and bigger the more i learn.
Spring Break 2010 Part 2 (everglades to ft meyers)
We ended up camping three nights in the Everglades, mostly bird watching and some hiking. One morning John and I both woke early so as not to disturb the rest of the camp we drove up to the marina got a cup of coffee and went and watched the sun rise over a lake. We had some nice company with a night heron fishing nearby who didn’t seem terribly alarmed at our presence. All in all it was a nice relaxing time.
We packed out early to head back to Big Cypress National Preserve. Driving out of the park I was profoundly struck on the abrupt change from the swamps to the agricultural lands. The absence of life was striking coming from where so close it is so thick. What a loss we have with these huge monocrop wastelands. It was really more like a desert than anything else. So sad and such a wrongness around it it could’ve broken my heart. i always cope with things like this by remembering it hasn’t always been this way and it is not always going to be this way its just this way right now. i send out prayers for effective preservation and using the park to build on restoring the whole ecosystem.
At Big Cypress we drove the loop road the other way and again parked near Sweet Water Strand and this time hiked the other way. There were a lot of alligators sunning themselves not only on the canal banks but out in the road. The dogs seemed like they couldn’t see the gators and were totally unconcerned. I think with the gators staying still and being unfamiliar to the dogs they just couldn’t see them. Probably for the best that the dogs don’t know whats out there waiting to eat ’em up.
From there we started our drive back North. We stopped in Ft Meyers and got a room. The next afternoon we went out to Pine Island and visited our longtime friend Jay and his wife CeeCee. They have a place right on a canal and Jay was eager to take us boating. Smokey was as ready as anyone but Shadow took some coaxing. Once we were out there though they really enjoyed it, except for when Smokey fell in the canal when we stopped for gas.
The wildlife was thick in the canals as they bordered on mangroves. So close to the city there was this huge explosion of life that rivaled the everglades. Gave me hope that we can live in some kind of harmony that allows biodiversity and wild beauty and still have all of the social goods of urbanity. We saw manitee, a bald eagle, dolphins, and the usual cast of avian characters. The Bay was calm so we got the canal boat out and frolicked with the dolphins a bit before putting back to home.
Jay made a nice lunch and we took a drive over to another bald eagle nest. There was one in the nest and one on a nearby branch. The one on the branch took wing and the one in the nest eventually joined him calling back and forth. It was really really cool. We decided to wrap up our visit while our hosts still thought the dogs were cute and headed back to our room.
Spring Break 2010 part 1 (home to everglades)
Back from vacation today. My brother John came through town and picked me up. We left the Saturday before last in the morning and drove through the day. He brought his dogs Shadow (Australian Shepherd) and Smokey (Australian Cattle Dog). It was rainy on day 1 so we didn’t really do anything else and got a Motel 6 room for the night.
We didn’t make too far and still had a long way to go so we decided to drive through the next night. We took a side trek to Russel Cave in NW Alabama. Its a federally managed archaeological site but we mostly used it as an excuse to get off the highway and into the woods for at least a bit.
The next morning found us in South Florida, a little punch drunk but none worse for the wear. We checked out sunrise in a pocket park at an early oil well. It was wet but there were a bunch of little deer in the distance. We drove into Big Cypress, stopping a couple of places to try to get info and see alligators. Eventually it warmed up enough for them to come out and I saw my first alligators.
We got a campsite at Monument Lake, pitched camp and relaxed a bit. Being a National Wildlife Refuge dogs were pretty limited, although with the thick layer of alligators we weren’t going to let them run around a lot on their own anyway. We ended up driving down a road out into the swamps, parking near Sweetwater Strand and hiking down the road. The Cypress were beautiful but it was sad as well as they were all pretty small. Apparently they got pretty ruthlessly cut in the 40s and we never saw a single big cypress in Big Cypress.
The Cypress stands were dense with birds and gators in incredible numbers. It added something to the hike seeing the big gators or hearing them splash into the water. Smokey got a little nervous but Shadow was oblivious to alligators.
We decided to just camp one day and move up our trip to the Keys so we could catch Lost at the Motel 6. One of the elevators were out so after routinely sneaking an extra dog into the room we finally got busted. John paid for 2 rooms so we could be legal but we decided to forgo our second day there.
So day 3 we left out of the hotel and drove down Highway 1 all the way to the end. It was rainy which thinned out the spring break crowds. Mostly just looked at the gulf and the ocean and all the islands. At Key West the sun came out and we walked around downtown. We went to the old Smokey Joes where Hemingway used to hang out and were going to hang out for a drink with an umbrella in it but we got tired of waiting and just left. We walked by Hemingway’s house and saw the giant Banyon Tree and we enjoyed the colorful rooster at the courthouse.
The drive back was more fun as the weather was better and we stopped off and walked a bit with the dogs. We got a room at a place that was pet friendly and sneeked the big dogs in without incident. The next morning we drove down to the Everglades. We checked out a pond where the black vultures were eating the rubber parts of peoples cars.
We camped at Flamingo campground which was pretty nice and really delved into the incredible complexity of life in the swamps. It was just so biologically rich you could literally just watch any area and a showcase of exotic animal life would descend their and put on a show. We speculated on how long you would have to be there before you became jaded to the spectacle and just went about your business blindly.
We kept stopping by the Marina because there had been manatee and crocodile sitings there. On one trip an Osprey flew overhead carrying a fish, we followed it and watched it closely as it sat on a branch. It called out and other Osprey came and it seemed like our Osprey with the fish was trying to date but a bigger Osprey hung out in the same tree like some kind of cock-blocker. Our first Osprey ended up just eating it. On the way out we saw a group of folks with cameras trained on a big Osprey nest. Sure enough there was a mama feeding her baby. We ended up seeing 4 Osprey with fish and countless others and became pretty familiar with their call.
At the visitor center there was a red shouldered hawk nest and we saw a number of those as well. I have had a thing for raptors especially hawks since this three week period of time some years ago when I saw a hawk take a rabbit, another grab up a squirrel, and a third narrowly miss a pigeon. All of these sitings were just driving around my normal business in the Monroe-Toledo are. Another notable raptor encounter happened in the Manistee national forest when i got repeatedly swooped by a pair of Goshawks, had me so spooked i was running blindly through the forest. Our other great Everglades raptor siting were swallow-tailed kites. They’re a really lovely bird and we watched them repeatedly. John got some great photos you can see at his picasa web.
yellow snow
Its been an eventful midwinter at leslie lane. Oni the piss hound had an active period, hitting the futon and my bed (twice). The second time i said she has to go. Sure she’s family but she’s been trouble since she came in the door. The first time i said she had to go too but she’s crafty. She always pisses on like a friday night knowing the humane society only takes dogs on thursdays and fridays and then she tries to be cute until i give her one more chance. The last bed shot i had had it and was not going to back down. Then Harry went to the cool no kill shelter, who of course won’t let a piss hound of no small renown anywhere near their no kill place. (no kill shelters aren’t more moral for the most part they just export their kills elsewhere) They said have you checked with your vet, maybe its a medical problem. Now that is what i said the first damn time it happened but now its a brilliant idea and dad had already made the appointment. So she goes and gets some antibiotics in case its a UTI and some drops i can’t find any info about because of all the noise from people selling the drops that are supposed to “tighten her up” according to dad. we shall see. all in all, i’m calling it a reprieve from the governor.
Oni led to some interesting conversation in my batterer intervention group. Somehow i mentioned i was going to make dad take the dog to the pound for furniture pissing (everytime i type “the pound” oni moans and looks at me pitifully) a batterer, a crusty old biker type called me out on being a dick for sending a family member to her death. I couldn’t protest too much as i was thinking about this guy in my group years ago who killed the family dog bouncing it off the wall. Once the situation resolves itself i’ll probably talk about dog killing.
Changing the subject the snow has been incredible. Its been coming down hard all day but it was warm air and has been melting. A foot has fallen and we don’t even have an inch. I had to drive an hour to a meeting and it was slippery this morning in places but still gorgeous.
After work i took The Onerous One out for a walk in the snow. She wasn’t enjoying it so i went back for The Turtle Dog. Dad says hamburger helper’s ready so on to dinner.
Odious
I met Oni in my living room when she began barking when I got home from work. She’s a little white dog, short haired and beagle like with bulbous eyes. I introduced myself as the owner of the house she was defending and my dad preceded to tell me about Gene stopping by with a cock & bull story that involved the dog staying the weekend. Gene had introduced himself last summer when he stopped by to borrow a needle and thread as he had ripped his pants walking to work. He broke my needle & dad gave him a pair of old workpants and apparently they became buddies because apparently he dropped off Oni to stay the weekend because he didn’t have anywhere for the dog to go when he was at work.
I decided to give Oni a chance because Myrtle had been having a fit just a couple of days ago, with her breathing really labored for a day and a half. Scary. Thought we might have to put her down. She has a leaky heart valve, 5 thousand dollars just to diagnose the problem. We’ve decided to just enjoy her company while it lasts. But I thought another dog would be good for Dad just in case.
Harry asked me what’s up with the dog’s name “I thought it was Mya?” By then I’d been calling her Oni all evening and didn’t take much to Mia so we left it Alzheimer’s induced. Oni is a Japanese ogre and she’s a little thing so I liked the irony.
She has the bark of a big dog and she likes to go at it. Joggers, pedestrians, but she’s at least pretty much stopped barking at me. She has the haunted eyes of a survivor of immense cruelty. She’s got a beaten dog’s slouch and wariness. She’ll hole up in the doggy bed in the corner behind gramma’s rocking chair for up to like 12 hours.
I tried to be gentle around her. She’s a lap dog and little enough that I like it. She likes to be in the chair you want to be in and her little tail starts wagging when she sees you looking at her in your spot. Like she’s getting one over on you.
On maybe her third morning with us she was sitting on the Lazyboy when I got up and I wanted to sit there watch some cnn while the coffee brews. I gently tried to scoot her over to the side of the big chair to sit next to her. Her leg must of gotten caught in my robe or something because all of asudden she’s screeching like I was killing her. She cringed back from me when I tried to approach so I couldn’t really see what was wrong.
I felt terrible. She couldn’t walk before I left for work. I got home late, she’d laid around all day, could barely walk when she was made to go outside and pee. Too late to call the vet. The next day she’s fine. I was so relieved. I thought I broke her leg. It seemed like maybe her hip popped out.
But worst of all she’s way wary of me.
Weeks later, I am letting Myrtle out after first getting up. I step in something squishy, ahhh dog shit. I put out Myrtle and clean up my foot and throw the rug outside. I go to Oni and try to get her to go outside. She kind of cowers a little. I decide she is going outside, I’m suspecting Myrtle, a long time occasional shit-hound of no small renown, but the new dog was suspect and needed to go out. I go to shoo or maybe even scoop her up and out a little and the dog pisses herself, hugely. I literally scared the piss out of her, and on my brand new futon.
“Fuck”, I’m yelling a bit now and waking people up. I shoo out Oni explain my lunacy to Harry and the Popster while I wrestle off the mattress cover. Harry’s offer to wash the cover is the only thing that brings me out of this low grade murderous rage. All within minutes of waking.
So John and his two dogs an Australian Shepard and an Australian Cattle dog named Shadow and Smokey. Great dogs, glad to see them. Oni not so much. She’s a snapper so I made sure she had her shots before John’s dogs came. It turns out Oni is the one ends up with the bleeding ear. Had to pull her off the Australian Shepard. She just took a hate to that dog and it was go go go more than once. Oni lets the frail little dog with a heart condition get over on her but she throws down with the 75 pounder.
John’s big on nicknames for dogs. Shadow he calls Fat Dog and Smokey he calls Doo Doo. Myrtle he started calling Turtle Dog enough to where my dad’ll call her that sometimes and he hates that nickname. We also call her Princess Mildred. Well Oni he started with Odie like Garfield’s pal. That evolved to Odious (she does need a bath) and ultimately to Odious P. Dog. Harry points out she really might know how to come when you call her but we keep calling her something else every few days.
She’s a pistol. And an occasional furniture pisser. She let loose once more on the chair. My dad pointed out when she did that one I was walking toward her. I try to be gentle around the dog I really do. She’s curled up next to me right now. Sometimes like I said her little tail wags when we make eye contact. She’s a pretty good winker, sleeps in my bed most nights. I still have to be vigilant not to terrify the little thing.
The last incident I was sleeping in another room when she pissed in Harry’s bed. He got up to use the bathroom and came back and she had pissed the bed. I told Dad she had to go. We debated the possibility of a UTI and I offered to pay for a vet visit but Dad said no, we can’t be puttin’ up with that. He took her to the Humane Society but it was a Saturday and they only take dogs on Thursdays and Fridays so she got her reprieve from the governor.
I told dad to make a vet appt. and if it was a UTI maybe she would be alright. Now I’m thinking its behavioral. She just gets scared to go out holes up on a piece of furniture til she can’t hold it anymore and then bam. I thought that right off but didn’t think there was much I could do about it. Then I remembered how food focused she is. She’s a beggar dog for sure. So the night before last I got her to go out for a little piece of ham. She was glad to do it. So now I think Oni just might make it.
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