Dog Days

Well, we moved into our temporary house in town on Tuesday, and we've adjusted quickly to life in the Big House. We're enjoying cable channels, someone else's CD and DVD collections, and a grocery store that is less than a mile away.

I only had one concern going into this move, and that was how well our dogs would adjust to the new environment. Because the real inhabitants of this house suffer from pet allergies, Phoebe and Callie are not allowed inside. To add to the shock of becoming around-the-clock outside dogs, they would be having to share the backyard with the Moore's giant, hyper boxer, Molly.

I was afraid to leave the house for the first 24 hours of our stay because I was worried that Callie would pick a fight she couldn't finish, and that Molly would kill her and strew her limbs around the back yard. On that front, things seem to be going okay. The dogs don't love each other by any means, but they coexist peacefully for the most part. My two dogs have actually commandeered Molly's doghouse and Molly now sleeps on a bench nearby. In return, Molly asserts her dominance over Callie by drooling all over her face and back about once a day, and they call it even.

The other possible conflict is with the back-fence neighbors. Apparently they have no patience toward barking dogs. They called the police on Molly one time on a night when she was barking at an opossum in the yard. Another time, they threw loaves of bread at another neighbor's barking dog to shut her up.

Now that there are three dogs in our yard, I worry constantly that they will provoke this testy neighbor with their barking. Any time the girls make more than three barks in a row, I run and beat on the windows to make them stop. I'm especially paranoid late at night or in the early morning, when these people might be trying to sleep. Having to get up late at night or early in the morning is also especially annoying when I am trying to sleep myself.

I have to laugh at myself on the rare instance when I go in the back yard and yell at all three dogs at once: "Molly! Callie! Phoebe!", and it sounds like I am running some sort of boarding school for cheerleaders. The odd one out is my fourth pet responsibility, which is a rabbit named Oreo, but it doesn't really spoil the motif too much, because I don't ever really talk to it.

So, in sum, we're almost one week down and no new enemies or pet emergencies. All is well with house sitting and menagerie maintenance.

Friday Beef

On my favorite radio show, the week always ends with "What's Your Beef Friday." I never call in to share, but today I have one: the fact someone else's irresponsibility made me a murderer today.

One of the hazards that I encounter almost daily is the fact that there are stupid people who live along the highway between my home and my job who do not keep their dogs safely barricaded inside of a yard. As my own two dogs have proven to be escape artists from time to time, I am sympathetic to the fact that sometimes dogs get out. But I think that as a pet owner, it is my job to fortify my yard fence by whatever means necessary to prevent habitual wandering of dogs, especially given our proximity to the highway. There is one bend in the road where four or five dogs are always lazing around in the grass mere feet from the edge of the paved road. These dogs (as well as many others who live along the way) usually stay out of the road, but they do not always, and I have had more close encounters than I am comfortable with.

So this morning, I took a different highway route so that I could drive by Starbucks on the way to work. I do not drive this road often, but a rural highway is a rural highway, and the dangers are the same, as I was to find out. Since it was a workday/conference day rather than a regular teaching day, I was not in a hurry to arrive early, so I was driving attentively down the road at a moderate 65 miles per hour. All of the sudden, somehow, there were several dogs trotting across the street. I slammed on the brakes, but I hit one anyway.

This was the first time I have ever run over any kind of a living creature, to my knowledge, and I didn't know what the etiquette is for one who has just, in all likelihood, killed an animal. I was slightly worried that either the dog that I had hit would still be alive but would now be viciously defensive, or that the other dogs in the pack would attack me in defense of their fallen comrade. Plus, it was seven in the morning, and I was not about to go knocking on people's doors, possibly waking them up, to inform them that I might have killed their dog.

I called Stephen and he said that as long as my car seemed to be running smoothly, I should keep going, so I did. But I deliberately took another route home, and I worried all day as I drove around that I had some sort of incriminating evidence of my hit-and-run on the front of my car and that I would be arrested for animal cruelty.

So, if you are reading this and it was your dog, I am deeply sorry, and I feel really bad. If this story was not about your dog, but it could have been, let this be a lesson to you! Please don't make me a repeat offender.

A Cautionary Tale

I am afraid that I have created a monster.

A little over a year ago, we went to the Waco Humane Society, where we adopted a dog that we loved for her giant ears and spunky personality. We named her California, because we had recently vacationed there. Callie seemed a little insecure at first, and she growled and nipped at her older sister, Phoebe. Since I knew that her previous life must have been difficult (she did, after all, end up at the pound), I tried to build up her fragile and untrusting view of the world by showering her with lots of extra love and attention.

Callie loved to be held and petted, and we encouraged her and Phoebe to sit on our laps as we watched movies or read books. As a young bride, I took out my maternal urges on Callie, and carried her around the house on her back, cradled in my arms like a baby. About a month ago, I felt a mysterious lump on Callie's ribs and thought that she had a tumor. I gave her lots of extra love and attention in case she was dying, which turned out not to be the case.

It's a very sweet story, except that now, a year later, Callie has become the canine equivalent of the spoiled child (an undesirable menace to society, which I have always vowed never to create). When I am in the room, Callie wants to be held. If I sit on the couch, where she is no longer allowed, she rests her head on the edge of the cushions and whines pathetically. If I am working around the house, Callie follows me around and assumes the begging position every time I pause. She emits a very high pitched, yelping noise if she thinks I am ignoring her. She will not chew on her bone. She will not lay in her bed. She wants my attention now and always.


I'm a little bit worried that when we have a child and Callie has to become an outside dog (because she snaps at kids), that she will die of grief. Literally, like Little Ann in Where the Red Fern Grows, she will lie down in her dogloo one day and not have the will to ever get up again. Wait...that means that my days with Callie are numbered! I better go hold her while I still can.

Follow Up

1. Last night, all the neighborhood dogs had another crazy barking night. But mine were sleeping soundly like good little girls in their sleeping cage! I am not "That Neighbor," after all. (whew!)

2. Speaking of animal invastions, last night I peeked into my closet to find it so infested with ants that I had to move half of my clothes into the garage and Stephen had to spray down the corners and baseboards with ant killer. I have never seen so many ants on clothes in my life! And I hadn't left a sandwich in my pocket, or anything.

No more animal stories!

Animal Planet, continued

Last night I was trying to relax with a book and I kept hearing the dogs on our street barking like crazy. I braced my ears for what I knew was coming, and sure enough, Phoebe and Callie quickly picked up on the sound and started going off as well. I put them outside, giving them the chance to join the barking and pass along the message that "the puppies have been stolen!" or whatever urgent dog memo was passing through our neighborhood. I figured that after a minute or so of barking, the dogs would get tired and be ready to come back in. Not so! For a full five minutes (which is a long time, when you're sitting on the couch trying to read above the din of a bunch of neighborhood dogs), the barking was still at full energy, with my two dogs leading the pack. I bravely stepped out on the back porch to investigate (half expecting the Return of the Guineas), but all I could see was Phoebe and Callie's shadowy forms racing up and down the fenceline.

This situation called for a more intensive investigation, so Stephen got a flashlight and looked over the fence. The mystery of the Barking Dogs was solved, and the culprits were two loose cows, grazing up and down in the field behind our house. I do not even know where the closest cows live, so these guys were clearly refugees from some faraway farm.

While I'm talking about animals again, I thought I would explain the "Spider Hunting" that my home is now becoming famous (notorious?) for. We live in a house that is 1) newly constructed and 2) in the country. Apparently this is a perfect recipe for spider infestation. The spiders with which we cohabit are about the size of a thumbnail, consisting of a smooth, brown, bulbous body and little, well, spiderlike legs. They are non-poisonous, and they make a very loud popping sound when they are squished. They tend to come out at night, especially if I happen to be watching television, and I think they are attempting to break my will to live by invading my home in large numbers. In the course of one evening, I might kill thirty to fifty spiders. Attempting to pick up after every kill is an exercise in futility. I usually just slap around with my flip-flop or a magazine (already read, of course, and NEVER Karen's Real Simples) and pick up the carnage in a major cleaning campaign right before bed.

The real charm of this spider-killing is especially evident to me when we have guests at our home in the evening. I always nervously watch the floor for the first spider of the night, and upon his arrival, I begin to nervously watch my guests to see who will be the first to notice the extra company. It's a great test of friendship: the people who are truly comfortable in the living room will remove their flip-flops and whack away without missing a beat in conversation.

So on that note...to all you dearly beloved friends and family, we want you all to come and see the new house...I hope you still will...

Animal Planet

I felt like Paris Hilton on the Simple Life when I looked out the front window this morning and yelled for Stephen to come look outside: "We have turkeys in the yard!" Stephen came to look, and corrected me between his fits of laughter, "Those are Guineas," which apparently is something different. It took special maneuvering out of my driveway to avoid hitting said Guineas as I rushed off to work a few minutes late, as usual.

Later on in my commute, I was watching the sun rise and considering it to be one of the most overrated beauties of nature when I had to swerve abruptly to avoid hitting a dog on the side of the road. The country roads in Bosque county have no shoulder to speak of, and someone had set out their trash right at the end of their driveway. This dog was nosing around in the garbage with one of those giant vet head-cones around his neck. I passed judgment on the pet owners at this time, for whatever wound was supposed to be protected from irritation by the unsightly protective collar was probably rubbing up against germy refuse at that very moment.

My animal adventures continued as I crossed the county line and drove past my favorite commuting landmark, a farm named "Tottie's Exotics." Before you pervs out there get your hopes up, the name refers to exotic animals. From the road, you can actually see bison and llamas in the yard, but the real treat are the larger-than-life ceramic statues of other exotic animals such as camels, hippos, and apes. I've been waiting all summer for a good excuse to bring up Tottie on this blog, and today my first-ever animal post is as good as any.

The wildlife around me became much less interesting as I cruised into Waco city limits, but in a curious aligning of the stars, on this, my animal-filled morning, my talk radio show host decided to break his self-imposed ban on panda stories. Apparently in Beijing, an inebriated man jumped into the panda cage at the zoo and woke the panda up by petting him. Startled, the panda bit the intruder. Not to be bullied by this great bear, the man bit the panda back. Yes, you read that right.

At 7:45, I arrived at school and walked into my fourth grade classroom. Now you want to talk about a zoo...