The Perils of Pol-LEN

Even on a rainy day, springtime is lovely in our back yard.

Today’s rain washed pollen into yellow puddles on the driveway, a clue to the source of my morning headache and clogged ears.

Speaking of headaches, here’s another one that wonder dog Scout called to my attention:

Yes, the little bastard is standing ON the squirrel baffle.

Now THIS is just plain cocky!  The sumbitch is rubbing our noses in the fact that WE’RE the ones who are baffled.

This aggression will not stand, man.

- The Dude, The Big Lebowski

(Also George Bush in 1990, sort of.)

Shopper in a Sassy Sundress

My brother took a quick picture of this shopper in a big box store.  She must have been on her way to the Easter parade.

Now that I’ve seen it, I have to wonder whether, If someone tells me I dress like a dog,  the correct response might be, “Thank you!”

Happy Easter!

Park It Here

We have had more rain in the last couple of weeks than I can remember.  (Don’t go correcting me on that.  I admit to having a very poor memory.)   Our new dog, Scout, is energetic and loves to go for walks, so she has been assisting me in my Walking My Butt Off campaign.

Even though we’ve bought her a raincoat,  today is simply too slushy to venture out.

Our neighborhood was designed over 100 years ago and every time I go for a walk, I see something I never noticed before.  Lately I’ve been concentrating on garages.   Many of them were built with what I assume were maid’s quarters.  Some of the older ones have living spaces on the same level.

Old garage with ground-level apartment.

More likely, the living space is apt to be above the garage bays, like this newer wood frame one with a Juliet balcony.

O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

One garage in particular fascinates me because it is so large and lovely in its Tudor style that it doesn’t seem to need the very grand house in front of it.   If it is an in-law apartment, they must be very, very nice in-laws.

As the property has a large wrought iron fence around it, not to mention a barking dog, it’s hard to get good photographs without risking arrest.

Yep, that’s all garage.  The house isn’t in the photograph at all.

Partial view of front.

Side view.

Not that I have garage envy.  After all, we have an eight-room unit above our garage, too.  It’s called “our house.”  We live on a downslope.

On the street behind us, a 50′s Cape Cod home with two-car attached garage has been the object of a year-long renovation by its young owner.  The work has been meticulous and since it looked completed, we were surprised when a structure started rising behind the house.  This is the view from our sunroom.  At first we thought it was a pool house, but there is no pool.

Guess what.

We’re calling it the Taj Garage.

Scouting Around

Our newspaper runs weekly photos of available dogs and cats to promote adoption of homeless animals.  Dearly Beloved and I had discussed the possibility, but felt that Miss Piggy might not approve.  After she went temporarily blind from her corneal ulcers though, Bonnie seemed so lost that we thought another dog might help her mobility.  Also, DB wanted a walking buddy for those 3+ mile walks he takes every day.

Two weeks ago, a photo of a beagle mix named Wilbur caught DB’s eye, so we went to the Humane Society to see about him.  Unfortunately, he was easy to locate, as Wilbur’s barking and baying were constant the entire time we were there.  

“Yeah,” one of the volunteers offered, “Wilbur’s got a big mouth.”  

DB decided that Wilbur wouldn’t do, so he walked around, looking at all the other dogs.   There were some adorable puppies, which we knew would be quickly taken, so we passed on those.   DB chose a dog of about 70 pounds and the attendants brought her out for him to meet.  She seemed like a nice dog.

I asked that one other dog be brought out.  When I’d walked past her run, she’d come up to the fence, wagging her tail and looking directly at me without being distracted by the other dogs or people walking around.   She checked out my eyeliner.  I noticed hers.

“I choose YOU,” those eyes said.

When she was brought into the enclosure to meet us, she didn’t simply wag her tail, she wagged everything south of her rib cage.   She piddled a little with excitement when DB approached her… and then she set about charming him with her exuberant yet gentle,  mannerly ways, as he walked her around the property.

That is how Scout, a two-year-old skinny boxer, retriever, shepherd mix came to be ours.

Scout was polite and deferential to Bonnie, whose only orders to the new girl were to leave her chew bones alone.  Scout was on medication for an upper respiratory infection, but refused Pill Pockets, which were Bonnie’s favorite treat.  Yikes!  I am not dexterous when it comes to stuffing pills down an animal’s throat.  For the first 36 hours, Scout would not touch her food.   We had one dog that ate everything, another that ate nothing.

At night she sleeps in the crate we bought for her.  She likes it.

The night Bonnie had her stroke, after she had entered the state where she seemed to be unaware of anything around her, I was sitting on the hall floor with her.  I’d tried to lift her onto her bed, but she’d wiggled off so that only her head was pillowed.  Suddenly, for no reason I could discern, Bonnie screamed… an anguished, primal scream like nothing I’d ever heard.

Immediately, I heard Scout scrambling in her crate, trying to get out.  Dearly Beloved thought she wanted to go outside, so opened the kennel for her and walked down the hall, calling her to follow.  But Scout went a short distance down the hall, then turned back and came to the place where Bonnie lay.  She sniffed her briefly and then did the strangest thing.  She lay down in an exact mirror image of Bonnie’s position, her head on the pillow, too, her nose just barely touching Bonnie’s.

It lasted only a few seconds, then she scrambled off the pillow and followed DB down the hall.

I don’t know the mysteries of the dog world, so I have no speculation about what passed between them in that instant.  Bonnie lay quietly and screamed no more that night.

More than one person has offered that perhaps Bonnie, with her failing organs, had been waiting until she felt it was okay to leave us and that Scout’s arrival allowed that.  I don’t know.  Yes, I’m aware that dog is god spelled backwards.

Scout was rescued by the Humane Society from a kill shelter in another county the day before the barking Wilbur’s photo appeared in the newspaper.  She was examined, spayed, and de-wormed her first day at the Humane Society.  We adopted her the day after that.  She was rescued twice in less than a week.  Or perhaps it was one rescue for her, one for us.

It’s going to be interesting.  For one thing, we’ve discovered that she can jump the backyard fence from a standstill.  She doesn’t run away–she simply jumps back over.  She has gone from being a non-eater to inhaling her food as soon as it reaches her bowl.  I now medicate her with a syringe pill shooter.   She wags her backside enthusiastically as I shoot her a pill into the back of her throat.  Go figure.

And get this…  Scout is a SQUIRREL CHASER!

We chose her name from To Kill A Mockingbird.  I find myself telling folks she’s a GIRL Scout when they ask.  To describe her to the grandsons, I explained that she was a BROWN(IE) Scout.   And yes, her coloring– brown with white chest and feet–is like Tonto’s paint horse, Scout.

But those eyes are pure Angelina Jolie.

(PS.  I have posted so many photos of a sleeping Miss Piggy in the past, I’ve added a photo of her from last summer to yesterday’s post.  She always reminded me of a teddy bear when she held her tongue like that.  It was one of my favorite expressions.) 

Bonnie

Her real name was Bonnie.  We called her Miss Piggy for the little snorting sounds she made when she trolled the floors for crumbs.

She came to us, underweight and neurotic,  when she was nearly eight, after my favorite uncle died, and having been rescued as the breeding dog at a puppy mill only a few months before.  She’d clearly had a traumatic background.  So afraid, for instance, that a door was going to slam on her, we had to prop it open and walk away before she would venture through.  Her terrors were so obvious that the vet prescribed Xanax on her first visit.

She spent her first weeks under our bed, refusing to be coaxed out.  Oddly, she’d take a sock under with her.  Bonnie would sneak out to eat and relieve herself only when no one was around.

Thus began the demise of our living room carpet.

Gradually, she came out of hiding to discover that people could be kind, that feedings would be regular, and that treats were divine.   She emerged into her new surroundings with a gentleness that was touching.  She was loved and petted endlessly by our five grandsons and she loved them, crumb-magnets as they were.   She went from running from the sound of the doorbell to greeting visitors, angling for back scratches and belly rubs.

Miss Piggy was not much of an exerciser.  She walked for business rather than pleasure and would do a U-turn upon completion.  She wagged her tail at squirrels and cats.  The very thought that she might indulge in something like a game of fetch was so ridiculous that we never even tried.  Sometimes she’d follow Dearly Beloved around as he worked outside, or she’d lie in the sunshine while I gardened, but eventually, she’d dig out a little nest for herself under the deck or station herself beside the back door, awaiting reentry at the first opportunity.  She was a fireside dog.

She had a presence about her.  She was usually “Miss Bonnie” to those in the vet office.  Bonnie loved car rides.  If we went someplace without her, she’d wait by the door until we returned.  She knew exactly what a doggy bag was.

Since she always wanted to be close to us, she was only a few feet away when she fell late Thursday night.  Her legs splayed like those of a newborn foal whenever she tried to stand again.  Her eyes were open, but unseeing.  Her breathing was labored, her heart, racing.

We stayed with her through the night and took her to the vet at daybreak.   She rested her head on my shoulder like an infant as I held her in my arms.

With dogs, the worst part of a stroke is at the moment it happens.  It doesn’t affect their brains as it does humans, so recovery can occur if they can regain their ability to stand and if there are not other complications.

By chance, there was a veterinary neurologist in the veterinary office that day.  He and our favorite vet examined Miss Piggy to determine her for any chance of surviving and regaining a good life.  The tests revealed that her liver, kidneys, and heart were failing.

We stood on either side of her, rubbing her and whispering into her deaf ears, as she went to sleep one last time.  She looked peaceful, which helped us a little.  So did a sympathy note from the vet, reassuring us that we did the right thing at the right time.

Still, it’s been tougher than we would have imagined.  The funny little dog who dug holes in the back yard had managed to dig a couple of big ones in our hearts.

The Conehead Saga

‘Nuff said.

Enough With The Prancing and Pawing!

It has been a strange couple of weeks around here and I’ve been the only one still standing. Dearly Beloved banished himself to the guest room, quarantining his flu germs in case my flu shot wasn’t any better than his.

We’re pretty sure he picked up said germs at his high school class reunion group’s Christmas dinner.  Remember, how, at their 50th reunion, they decided that maybe they should meet more frequently than every 25 years?   They’ve been lunching together monthly ever since.

“Evening” Christmas party may be a misnomer, as concession to age had it beginning at 5.  DB was home by 7:30.  However, pestilence and disease must have been door prizes because so many of them came down with the crud, they’ve decided to cancel the January lunch.

DB says he reckons there was too much hugging and kissing in the parking lot.

Meanwhile, Miss Piggy had eye surgery for ulcers on both eyes earlier this week.  Alas, we can’t even get her Christmas jersey over her lampshade collar or take her for an overdue holiday grooming.  Her anal sacs are contributing to her misery.  She dozes during the day,  raises her head occasionally and squints to look around for a moment, then resumes her nap position.  At night, however, she wanders from room to room, banging the plastic collar against walls and floor.  It sounds as if someone is opening cabinets and drawers in another room, a haunted house effect.

On a recent windy night, she woke me by pawing at my bed covers, wanting to go outside.   I flipped on the light switch so that I could see to put eye drops in her eyes while I was up.  No power.  Dang!  I’d heard nothing since the sound of the wind chimes outside the bedroom window lulled me to sleep hours earlier. . . nothing except the sounds of Miss Piggy bouncing off the walls.

After the potty break, as I climbed back into bed,  I heard DB coughing in the bathroom.  It is an unmistakable sound:  imagine a slow freight train rumbling down a bowling alley lane.

“The power is out.  Maybe we should call!”  I yelled to him.  He came into the bedroom.

“It’s BEEN out for hours,” he answered, a bit sanctimonious for my tastes.  “There’s a bunch of guys working outside with chain saws and flashlights right now–been out there for hours.  A limb knocked down the power line up the street and they’re cutting back the trees so they can get to the transformer behind our house.   I’ve already been out and talked to them several times.”  

(The next day our neighbor told us that one of her boys had awakened and asked about the noise, “Why is Mr. Lee cutting his grass in the middle of the night?”) 

I couldn’t go back to sleep, now that my ears had picked up the chainsaw concert.  I  could see lights flashing in the trees.  I tossed and turned the rest of the night and well into the morning, not really sleeping, but not wanting to face our no power, no phone, no heat, no internet situation either. The chain saw noise continued.

When I finally did go outside to look, I found that two of our very large holly trees had been reduced by half, and the branches lying on the ground were loaded with holly berries, unlike the lower branches I’d been able to reach.  I grabbed my clippers and cut some to supplement my slacker Christmas decorating this year.  We look much more festive now, compliments of the nocturnal loggers.

There is holly on mantels, bookcase shelves, tables, even a ledge in the bathroom, safely out of bare bottom range.   At the back of the yard, in place of one of the hollies, the workmen left a stack of neatly cut logs. The chainsaw noise was replaced by the chipper grinding beneath our kitchen window and most of the wood went here.

Driveway view from our kitchen window

Long haul.

After guys have been working throughout the night in trees, with chainsaws and flashlights amid live wires to restore power, even a whiny homeowner spends little time fretting over the now decapitated little ceramic mushrooms, trampled ferns and woodland plantings in the fairy garden she was creating beneath the hollies.  (Nevertheless, she still feels the need to mention them here.)

One even giggles a little when one’s husband confesses that during his nocturnal visits out to check with the workmen, lured by the magic sound of chain saws, the workers had to ask him to step back away from the live wire lying near his feet.

The fairy garden can be restored later.  Right now I need to find the good fairy of anal sacs to give poor Miss Piggy some relief.  I googled that and don’t see it as a do-it-yourself project. Really.

Now that DB is recovering, too, his cough sounds better.

Maybe Christmas will indeed be a silent night around here!

Dog Day Afternoon

We’ve had no measurable rainfall since early September, so when the weather forecaster predicted rain, we were hoping it would rain cats and dogs.

Turned out to be only dogs.

Miss Piggy’s steep decline in recent days indicated the end was near.  She’s been lying around, barely opening her eyes, refusing to go on her short walks.   It is not an exaggeration to say that she lives for food, so Dearly Beloved has been giving her extra treats to ensure that she ended her 16-year lifespan with a happy stomach.

We noticed that her left eye, the one that the vet treated for a scratched cornea a couple of weeks ago, had a gooey discharge and made an afternoon appointment with our vet.

In the meantime, one of our neighbors called and said that a man had rung her doorbell to ask if she knew the owners of the large white dog that was following him on his walk.  The neighbor didn’t, but offered to put the dog in her fenced backyard for safety until the owner could be found.  It was a soft, fluffy, friendly female, she told me when she asked that I send out a Found Dog Alert to the people on my Neighborhood Watch list.  Her neighbor photographed the dog so that it could be included.

Later, because the dog-keeping neighbor was going to be gone all afternoon, we brought the dog to our house.  First,  I loaded her in my car and took her to the nearest veterinary office to see if she had a microchip.

They discovered a couple of things:  ”she” was actually a neutered “he.”  Oops.  There was also a microchip, but the registration info was not for this dog.  I corrected my e-mail to acknowledge the newly discovered organ.

We left the white dog here with a bowl of water and took Miss Piggy to our vet.

Three vets studied the infected eye and recommended a veterinary eye specialist.  Our vet would call to make the arrangements.  Miss Piggy isn’t dying, she told me.  She has a very sore eye and a bad headache.

Back home again, we waited to hear from the vet specialist and also the white dog owner.  Here is a Fast Forward of the events:

Young mother is out pushing her child (who has the flu) in her stroller in an effort to soothe the little girl.  She encounters another walker who asks has she seen a white dog because a man was out riding around looking for it.  The young mom tells the walker about the e-mail alert, but the walker does not know the owner’s name or where he lives, but does describe his vehicle and remembers he said the dog’s name is Barney.  Young mom calls me to say that the owner is “out there” and she’ll try to find him.  She continues to push her snoozing child around as she watches for the car.

About 30 minutes later, she called again.  She’d flagged down the owner.  He drove over immediately to retrieve Barney.  In all, seven people had a hand in the reunion.    Another Neighborhood Watch e-mail went out and five dog-loving neighbors immediately sent their congratulations.

Back to Miss Piggy and the eye specialist.

The waiting room at that office was full of flat-nosed dogs with eye ulcers… boxers, bulldogs, Boston terriers.  Like Miss Piggy, most were older dogs and beloved pets.

The waiting room was also full of hairy chairs.   Drat!  I’d been out to lunch with a friend earlier and hadn’t had time to change out of my best brown pants and new sweater.  I chose the grey cat hair covered chair to Dearly Beloved’s right.  Miss Piggy assumed her usual waiting room position under our chairs.

I have no idea what the eye specialist was telling us was the problem,  but she numbed the eye and scraped it with a succession of swabs, leaving it now completely ulcerated.  She prescribed pain pills and told us to continue the antibiotic eye drops and moistening drops we were already applying until we return in two weeks.

Then came the final insult–the dreaded cone collar.

We heard scuffles and bangs during the night as the patient tried to get comfortable in her new armor.  She’s going to be even more distressed when she realizes that the abundance of treats must be curtailed now that we know her demise is not imminent.

The predicted rain turned out to be only a slight drizzle, not even enough to clean our car windshield as we returned from our dog day afternoon.

Autumn

In the opening scene of the old movie, Hopscotch,  Walter Matthau, with his droopy, basset hound mug, looks around an outdoor cafe and strides over to an attractive woman (Glenda Jackson) who is sitting alone at a table.  She shows no sign of recognition, but nevertheless,  he bends down and kisses her lustily.

When he steps back, she asks in her dramatic British voice, “Where have you bee-e-n, you Old Goat?!”

I use that line often (with or without the kiss) on Dearly Beloved and have been advised that some of my blog friends are starting to wonder the same thing about me.

During my own “aging spurt” this summer, the extended service contract on my laptop, Granny Smith, expired.  Within weeks, Granny had an aging spurt of her own.  I would turn her on, only to hear three warning foghorn-like blasts.  I’d quickly turn it off and try again.  She’d eventually start, but a grey shade would fall over the screen and a black box would appear with an ominous warning.  In few words and about a dozen languages,  it advised me to shut down my computer immediately.

I left her with the Genius Bar folks for several days and was less than satisfied when she was returned to me.  The fog horn still blew sometimes, the scary black box still appeared, but now Granny had developed a new tic:  she would drop the first letter of every word.  For instance, when I could finally manage to get her started, she’d demand the assword for ary ee.  

I have bellied up to the Genius Bar several times since then.  The last time she went in for an overnight stay, they either inserted two new sticks of RAM or rammed in two new sticks of something else.  I can’t remember what they said.  Perhaps it was B-12.  At any rate, she’s still ornery, but working better, so here I am.

I’d better write fast.

Miss Piggy, too, is feeling her 16 years.  She can hear only the loudest sounds now and cataracts have clouded her brown eyes.  We have always thought of her as…um… not smart, but are rethinking our opinion.

She doesn’t beg to go out, we have to beg her.  We stand in front of her dangling her leash and gesturing wildly.  Eventually she relents and agrees to accompany us.  Once she’s on the sidewalk, she enjoys it, sniffing the leaves and grass, ever hopeful that someone has dropped a crumb or crust.

We try to get her to go outside frequently to prevent the leaks that sometimes appear on the rug.  Arrgh!  She won’t squat in wet grass for me unless I stand in it with her, as if she is demanding that I realize what I’m asking her to do.  DB is cleverer; he simply gives her a treat whenever she produces.   That dog can duckwalk in a full squat the full width of the front yard, trying to convince him that she’s Beggin’ Strip-worthy.

She refuses the chewable tablets for her leaks and her joints unless we encase them in Pill Pockets, along with a pain pill for her arthritis.  She ignores her dry food unless we serve a sauce, like warm beef broth.  The liquid from a can of tuna is her absolute favorite.

Dramatic as ever, she wanders the house at night, wailing and moaning loudly as she looks for places to hide her chew bones from unseen thieves.   She snores.  She smells.

She melts our hearts.

Dearly Beloved and I have thought this autumn to be especially beautiful.  We smell the roses, crunch the leaves, and enjoy morning coffee in front of the fire instead of obsessing that the house needs painting, the bathroom needs updating, and the shrubbery is reaching for the power lines.

We love mornings, but bedtime is pretty darned nice these days.  After years of lecturing to me that the bed was for only two things, neither of which was reading,  DB now goes to bed early because it has become his favorite place to read.

I try not to be smug.

Carpe diem?  Of course!

It’s just that now, we also carpe naps.

Booty Calls

The sock-it-to-me humidity that smacks me in the face these days when I open the door to step out for the morning paper brings the heat of July to mind.  Those were the weeks when we were juggling the fun of Camp Grandad and the work of keeping the beach-house-not-on-the-beach ready for showing, plus treks to the doctor to figure out why my heart was threatening to mutiny.

We kept Granddog Ivy during Camp Grandad, so whenever there was a showing, we’d hide the dog bowls and beds, mop the dog drool from the sunroom floor, spray the de-doggy spritzer, and head for the dog park. Ivy loved the park and could hardly wait to start running.  Miss Piggy detested it.

It’s easy to see why.  Even at 16, she’s still got it.

Not that she wants it.

Eventually she dug a hole under a bench and parked her butt in it.  We realized that she was so miserable that she’d prefer to stay in the car.  After that, we parked in a shady spot, left the back door of the station wagon up, and she’d contentedly chew her bone, trying to polish it off so that she could start on Ivy’s while she was romping..

The dog park used to be all grass, but it’s just around the fringes now and the dogs run in the sandy soil.

Can she look any more ticked off?!?!

Ivy, on the other hand, loved making new friends.

These young moms were at the park every morning.  First they would gather for sit-ups and floor exercises, lying in the grass under the tall pines (not in the dog park!)  then they would circle the park, taking the tougher, uphill route.

They deserve merit badges:  Size 2 tags in some new jeans.  Go, Little Mamas!

The only size 2 items in our house are some lead pencils.

You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She’s 97 today and we don’t know where the hell she is. ~ Ellen DeGeneres

I don’t exercise.  If God had wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor. - Joan Rivers