dogs

Gnorb posted this entry today, which is actually 3 smaller posts rolled into one. He began the entry with:

Don’t you just hate it when you have a bunch of things you think are important to you going on, but then when you start to tell someone about them you realize they probably don’t give a rip?

I realized I’ve had a few things like that rolling around in my head - things that I’ve felt are fairly important to me, but I wasn’t quite sure if I could make a post out of any one of them. So, in the best fashion, I’m stealing Gnorb’s idea. Thanks, Gnorb. (Hope you enjoy your typewriters, and I hope you get your health issues sorted out soon!)

Point One. The first thing on the agenda: exercise. I’ve stuck with it. Days have been missed here and there, certainly, but the overall trend has been regular exercise. About two weeks ago, I started using my punching bag again. If you recall from the last post about it, I stopped using it because I was concerned that the house was going to fall in on me; that wouldn’t be good. However, upon inspecting where it’s mounted a bit more, I came to the conclusion that it should be okay. I’m going to keep an eye on the wall above the woodwork for any developing cracks, and if I see any, I’ll stop using the bag. Until then, I’m going to continue on. One good sign is that I’ve not seen any more little pieces of plaster on the floor after using it.

A week ago, I started the 100 Pushups in 6 Weeks program. I’ve been doing push ups as part of me routine, but I saw someone mention the site somewhere - a feed item, Twitter? - and thought it sounded pretty cool. I’ve done 4 sessions thus far, and am already seeing some improvement in my arms. Looking at the later weeks, I’m not sure if I’m going to keep up with it - I’ve done well so far - but we’ll see. If I can’t, I’ll just start the program over and do it until I can keep up.

Finally, yesterday, I signed up at Mapmywalk.com, to.. well, duh, map my walks out. It’s a pretty neat service. You map out your walks on a Google Map, and the site calculates the distance you’ll be walking. Speaking of walking…

Point Two. I’ll now be taking two dogs for regular walks instead of one, as I’ve officially accepted that the dog that showed up is now ours. I’ve checked everywhere I know to check, and found nothing at all about her. No one has said “Hey, my dog!” when I’ve walked her with Gandalf, nor has anyone knocked on my door saying, “Excuse me, you’ve got my dog in your backyard.” So, she’s now ours. We named her Zoë. The name has some spunk to it, which she has plenty of. Perhaps a little too much - I’ve been paying lots of attention to both her and Gandalf, but she still keeps knocking their water bowl over…

And yes, particularly because Cas did some light badgering via email, pictures of the dog shall be forthcoming. Soon. I promise.

Four days ago, the wife and I were sitting on the porch listening to the rain. It had been raining heavily for about an hour, and it looked as if it might go on for some time. While we were sitting, a black dog with a collar showed up, looking for a place to get out of the rain. We called her up onto the porch, as she was soaked and looked rather miserable. She hasn’t left our place since.

After the rain stopped, we tried shooing her off, hoping she’d go home. But she’d not have it. She’d either ignore us completely, or walk a few feet away and then come right back. We even went inside for a few hours, figuring if we left her alone, she’d head home - wherever that might be. However, when we checked the porch, we found her curled up on one of the chairs, looking at the door. We left her for a few hours more, and while she did get off the porch, she just walked around our house, never going more than 50 or so feet away. We thought this was pretty weird, as it appears that she’s either got puppies, or had puppies very recently, as it looks like she was nursing them.

We also discovered that whoever she belonged to trained her to play fetch, as well as how to take a walk properly (that is, go on a walk without pulling the owner’s arm out of its socket). It appears that she was taken care of, so why won’t she go home?

We’re thinking that perhaps someone dumped her, for whatever reason. Maybe they couldn’t afford to feed her anymore; I don’t know. Her being dumped off in an area she’s wholly unfamiliar with is the only explanation we can come up for as to why she wouldn’t leave.

She’s in our dog pen now, with my dog Gandalf. We were concerned that if we just let her wander around our house, she’d get hit by a car. Here’s the problem: we’d like to keep her, but we don’t want to be stealing someone’s dog. I’ve called all of the local radio stations and reported her; they didn’t have any reports for a dog like her. I’ve walked her around the neighborhood, hoping her owners might see her and say “Hey, she’s mine!” No luck. I even asked a few people if they’d simply seen her before; they hadn’t. I’ve also been keeping an eye on the newspaper: no mention of a dog like her at all.

At this point, I don’t really know what to do. While we’d love to keep her, I’d love it even more if her owners would come get her. But I don’t even know if she has owners anymore. And if she does, how long am I supposed to wait for them to show up looking for her? I’m not crazy about the idea of keeping her in our pen for three months, feeding her and caring for her, just for her owners to show up and say “Gimme’!”

What should I do?

This morning - early this morning - was not overly fun. No sir, no fun at all.

On days when I have to be at work at 7:45, I usually get up between 6 and 6:20; plenty of time to take a shower, get ready, enjoy my breakfast and (more importantly) my coffee.

This morning I was instead woken up at 20 ’til 6 by my wife.

Her: “Hey, there’s something wrong with your dog.”
Me: “Mmhmhm? Wha’? What time is it? What dog?”
Her: “Gandalf, your dog, there’s something wrong with him.”
Me: “Oh.” *blank stare* “Well. What’s wrong with him?”
Her: “He won’t go in his house, I think the thunder and lightning scared him.”
Me: “Oh.”

Let’s pause the scene there for a moment. As can probably be guessed, I wasn’t exactly, er, fully awake. I was aware that there was a lot of thunder and lightning going on outside, but I hadn’t come to the expected conclusion: it was raining. We got out of bed and meandered into the kitchen, where I looked out the back door.

Me: “It’s raining. Surely he’s in his house now!”
My wife looks at me for a moment with a look that says, “Sometimes, you’re really, really dumb.” What she actually says, though, is: “Josh, he won’t go in his house. He’s scared.”
Me: “Okay.”

I shuffled around a bit in the kitchen, looking back and forth between the door - beyond which was the dog, the rain, the cold - and the way from which I came, where ultimately, bed and a little more sleep awaited. The sleepiness in me was shouting something like “Don’t go out there, you’ll ruin your chances of falling back to sleep - you could have 40 more minutes this morning!”^[1] My brain stalled at that point, and I was unable to make a decision for a few seconds. The wife prompted me, though. “Aren’t you going to bring him in?” Err… yes, yes. That’s the right thing to do. Yes. Bring the dog in.

The brain machinery lurched again and I moved on to the next thought: shoes. I need shoes to go outside in the rain. I looked around for my house shoes, which were, of course, nowhere to be found. My eyes fell on my boots. Boots with laces. Laces involved tying. No, the brain says, I’m sorry; we’re^[2] just not going to do that right now. Too complicated. Alright, so the complexity of tying my shoes was out, and I couldn’t find the low-tech (i.e., no tying involved) house shoes. Alright, so I’d go without shoes. It can’t be that bad, I thought.

I grabbed my coat with a hood and stepped outside.^[3] Good, I thought - it’s not raining that hard; perhaps I won’t get too wet, and I’ll be able to go back to sleep after all. I walked down our ramp, stepped onto the pavement, and at that point, I really thought I had it made. Gandalf was one step away, and then I could go back to sleep. I took that one step - at which point my left foot plunged into a 2 inch deep puddle, complete with a nice layer of mud at the bottom.

A few things happened at that moment. First, I’m pretty sure I swore something or other - maybe it was frak, maybe it was our “real world” equivalent of frak, but whatever it was, I’m fairly confident that it consisted of four letters. Second, all remaining sleepiness left in me disappeared; I think I might have heard it howl “I told you so!” as it went.

The dog was taken in and dried off, and the cold, wet, muddy foot was cleaned. I attempted to go back to bed for a measly 20 minutes. I did so in vain. I was pretty much fully awake at that point, and even if I hadn’t been, I probably would have been kept awake by the smell of wet dog, which was particularly strong. At 6:25 the alarm told me it was time to get up (again), and so I did so. Full of grumbles, yes, but I did it.

I did the usual morning ritual: I showered, got dressed, ate breakfast and drank coffee. I noticed when I was leaving that Gandalf was sound asleep. He’ll probably be that way until I get home this afternoon. For that, no dog treats for him today! (I jest, but man, it’s a good thing I love him, because if I didn’t…)

1. In Sleepanese, of course. [↩]
2. Am I the only person who sees my personified brain as a bunch of characters, rather than just one entity? [↩]
3. Yes, an umbrella would have been better. Yes, we have one - a couple, actually. But the brain just wasn’t working well enough for that. [↩]

A few days ago, my dog Gandalf became a full-time outdoor doggy. It was time. I’m not really sure what we were thinking when we got him to be an indoor dog. He’s a beagleman, half beagle and half doberman. The way he turned out is basically like a giant beagle. His coloring is quite similar to the beagles in the picture. He’s just.. much larger.

The main problem that we’ve had is his shedding. I’m not sure how he’s avoided going completely bald . Gandalf can simply walk by and you can see little white hairs drifting down to the floor. It’s even worse when he stands up and shakes himself after a good, long nap. Hair goes everywhere.

It’d be bad enough if we had carpet, but we don’t; we have hardwood floors. To keep the floors clear of white hair, one would probably have to sweep them every 20 minutes or so (and no, I’m not exaggerating!)

As to be expected after having my dog be primarily an inside dog for a few years, I wasn’t overly keen about making him an outdoor-only dog. It being nearly October, I was worried about him being cold. I’m happy to say though that I’m not too worried about it now. Yesterday the wife and I (yup, I’m married…) went and bought a dog-house for him. Him being a bit weird about many things (he’s terrified of most sounds, for example), I was concerned that he’d 1) take quite a while to get used to the idea of a dog house or 2) simply not use it at all. We got home with the dog-house and unloaded it into the backyard. I wanted to try and get him to warm up to it, so I came into the house (ours, not his ) and grabbed a few doggy treats, with the intent of luring him into it and getting him to see what it was all about. Luckily enough, by the time I’d grabbed the treats and gone back outside, he was already in the house, laying down. Coolness!

Since yesterday afternoon when we set it up the house for him, he’s spent a huge amount of time in it. Last night rained quite a bit, which would explain why he spent most of the evening in the house; however, today it’s been pretty nice outside, warm and sunny. Even with the nice weather, he’s still spent most of the day in his house, so I’m taking it as a sign of him really digging it.

I’ll probably be bringing him inside a few times during the winter if the temperature gets low enough, but I think he’ll be just fine. He actually seems happier now that he’s outside. Now all I have to do is go through the house and search out the hidden armies of doghair. I’m almost scared to look under some of the furniture that hasn’t been moved in a while…