laurenisms » dogs

What I had for dinner on Wednesday, March 14, 2012

lauren — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 06:04:35 +0000

In transit home from Austin. I had some airport bloody mary, some airport vegetarian sub sandwich, and some homemade beef jerky.

Up too late…

lauren — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:54:21 +0000

… so I am reading and sharing ILU-486, a heartbreaking, scarily potentially-realistic, Handmaid’s Tale-like dystopian fiction about a world that exists after the passing of some current and real (i.e. non-fictional) legislation that might have a very, very significant effect on reproductive rights and health, which is to say, basic women’s health care. Every part of you belongs to you. (For now.)

… so I am putting dogs out in an attempt to keep them (FRY!!!!) from crapping and/or barfing all over the house, and then I end up having to suit up in my warms (because it is below freezing out there) to go chase them down in the woods — twice. I don’t know what *they* are chasing but they aren’t bleeding and they seem happy, so that’s fine. (Maybe their activity means they [FRY!!!!] won’t crap all over the living room tonight. One can only hope.)

… so I am reading the news online and remembering that a million years ago this morning, I happened upon a NYT front page that someone had left on the ferry for the next person — which is a thing; you can totally dig in the trash for newspapers on the ferry without social persecution. But anyway today’s NYT (or Washington Post? I don’t know) was a big ol’ picture of Rick Santorum (link Not Safe For Work!!). I am usually one of the last people off the ferry, so I found this paper still on a table, and I hesitated for fear of discovery by ferry personnel, but then I decided I don’t mind being caught telling the truth, so I took out my pink ballpoint pen and I drew a little talk bubble over Santorum’s head and I wrote “I AM A DOUCHEBAG!!!!”
(I only hope the person who gets that section of paper on the next ferry either agrees and laughs, or is startled and wonders why, and goes and finds out.)

… so I have stayed up late enough to see the esteemed Lyle Lovett (et al) performing a very nice version of “White Freightliner” on Dave Letterman, but it’s not on YouTube yet, so instead you can watch The Cleverlys on a completely different song.

Edited to add Lyle et al, though it is not last night’s Letterman performance; in fact, it is better because it has a pedal steel!!

Wake

lauren — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 06:01:21 +0000

So, I never said on this blog about Oscar.

I mentioned that he had a scary episode that resolved itself. After that he started eating again mostly, but it was just a few — maybe six? weeks — before we noticed his appetite was declining and he was losing weight pretty severely. I blogged about it over at the farm blog, which I figure if you read this blog you also read the farm blog, so you already know, but maybe you don’t. Oscar died at home with us, on his own terms, on June 26, 2011, and we are still very sad. I think we will be very sad for a long time. Oscar was an amazing, wonderful, one-of-a-kind dog.

I know everyone says this about their dog, but in this case it seems like everyone ELSE is saying this about THIS dog. People came out of the woodwork to say “I don’t really get dogs, but Oscar was a great dog” and “Oscar made me love dogs” (I’m one of those — he was such a gateway dog) and “I have had dogs forever, and that Oscar was some good dog.” etc.

G. had Oscar for about 11 years. I arrived when Oscar was about 5-ish. We went on an outing to the beach one time, when we (G. and I — Oscar was quite confident, as you will see) weren’t sure if we were on a date or not. It was all very awkward. We walked on the beach trails and then we sat down on opposite ends of a bench, because it was not-quite-a-date. G. was holding Oscar’s leash in his left hand, and I was sitting on the left side of the bench and G. was on the right side. Oscar assessed the situation, then casually walked around the bench to the left so that suddenly G.’s arm was behind me and basically around my shoulders, like G. had been a sneaky yawning teenager in a movie theater. At the time I thought “YOU TRAINED HIM TO DO THAT” and was kind of pissed, but I didn’t say anything out loud. I wasn’t able to verbally acknowledge that that had actually happened until we were at least a few weeks together, and I knew Oscar better. Then I figured out that it was all Oscar. He knew what he was up to, and he never did anything he didn’t want to.

When I was first on the scene, and I sat on one corner of G’s couch to watch tv, Oscar would sit and stare at me with big soulful eyes. I thought he was sad and envious that I had taken his spot on the couch. He did it when I sat at the kitchen table too. That took me a while to learn, too — that that was just Oscar. With the staring. He didn’t hate me. It was a loving staring. Oscar loved everyone.

Oscar had a really nice big neck scruff that you could put your whole face into. He had really soft ears, and spotty feets. He never licked you, and he would put his head on your lap and look at you with his big eyes. He would chase tennis balls, sometimes. He could fit Ruby’s whole head in his mouth, and did so regularly. When I got home from work and opened the gate, he would be so excited he would pounce on Ruby and make his wookiee noises, and then they would rassle. He didn’t like to come up on the couch much because he felt like he didn’t fit in the space he had, but sometimes he’d come up anyway so that we would be happy. We always gave him the dinner plate with more goodies (gravy, fat/meat bits, etc) than the one that Ruby got. He had a really fluffy tail and it went thump really loudly. You always knew when Oscar was happy, because of the thump.

It is pretty hard. There is a new kid, Fry, who will get his own blog post, and we love Fry, but it doesn’t make it less hard. I haven’t had to hasten myself to the bathroom at work in a few weeks, but a few times I’ve thought about it hard and decided to suppress. This whole thing is a first for me, and it really sucks a lot. I don’t really have a good conclusion to this but I guess it is its own conclusion. Life goes on for us without Oscar. It is sad and it is the way things go.

Oscar has a scary

lauren — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 05:10:49 +0000

Oscar, the best dog ever, had an unexpected and undesirable vet visit this morning. G. texted me just as I was getting out of the bus tunnel with “Oscar is sick we are at the vet.” I immediately started freaking out and he called a few seconds later to say Oscar had been curled up all small, and drooling, which is unlike him, and when he tried to walk he held his hips like an inbred German Shepherd and then started staggering like he was drunk and eventually gave up walking completely. I tried to think of all the things that he has been eating or may have eaten lately — cat poop from the cat box (so gross, we just got a new one with a lid to prevent it), soup that I spilled that had lots of various kinds of veggies in it, and, most alarmingly, the rat poison I have been putting out in the greenhouse (I know, it’s horrible, we’ll get the cat unleashed on the world soon) that has been only in the greenhouse but maybe he found a dead rat outside of the greenhouse and ate it?

Much churning of this sort went on over frantic texts and emails, with me starting my day at work all distracted, laying groundwork for having to leave and come straight home again right now to say goodbye, and G. running the gauntlet of the super-worried vet receptionist and the super-worried vet tech. G. discusses the fact that it seems like he’s having a stroke, or a seizure maybe. Eventually the doctor, who we really like, arrived, looked at Oscar, and said oh, it’s probably an ear infection.

WHAT. We thought it was a stroke or rat poison but it is probably an ear infection? OK, I’ll take it.

Ultimately not quite so simple, but also not the worst news. It is something called vestibular disease or disorder, which could have many causes. Ear infection is a common one — and Oscar is prone to them, especially during allergy season, which it is for him right now. But my second-hand info via Garth is that it is not a straight-up ear infection; they didn’t send them home with any antibiotics, so it seems like that’s the case. For now it is diagnosed as idiopathic, which means we don’t know why it is there, and it may resolve itself eventually. We hope.

In the meantime, poor Oscar is hugging the floor waiting for the world to stop spinning. He doesn’t want to lift his head up because he is so dizzy he can’t hold his head still when it’s not attached to the floor. The biggest risk at this point is of malnutrition/dehydration/pooping all over the floor because he hasn’t the balance to get up. There’s nothing wrong with his muscles or anything, it’s just his balance is all messed up. He hasn’t eaten or drank anything since I got home from work just over 3 hours ago, so I’m going to agitate for figuring out how to make sure he’s staying healthy while his ears recalibrate themselves.

Trapped on the couch

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:24:53 +0000

Ruby’s head is on my leg and I daren’t move her because I am afraid to disturb her wounds. She tangled with either a raccoon or some sort of farm equipment at 3 o’clock this morning. We had all gotten up to check on some noises we all heard, and found three of our five ducks had not made it to the coop when the coop went to bed. We put ‘em to bed and headed back inside. Ruby was limping a bit on our way back into the house, and when we got back into the light I noticed her face was bloody. On further inspection she had a flapper above her eye, not deep but with a skin flap, and some other undefined owies below her eye that she wouldn’t let me look at or put Neosporin on.

So — to the vet this morning. They looked at it and said “ow!” and kept her there all day until they had a chance to “sedate her a little” and fix her up. Her poor eyebrow is shaved now, and glued (?) back together, and under her eye still has some ointment where she can’t reach with her tongue. They think it was “a critter” since there were apparently puncture wounds, plus maybe “a collision while chasing a critter” because of the above-eye flapper. Hooray for the eye socket, though; her eye itself is fine. She gets antibiotics and pain pills and we get to figure out what to do about the raccoon situation that presumably led to this. G. proposes electric fence around the property. We’ll see.

Skip and Oliver came over for Thanksgiving (Day 27)

lauren — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 03:05:09 +0000

Skip and Oliver came over for Thanksgiving, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Rocky came too, but he wasn’t as cuddly so he wasn’t fully in the shot.

Also, yes, I am totally unabashedly back-dating this post so it shows up in the calendar as yesterday.

Miss Ruby June (Day 18)

admin — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:02:13 +0000

Miss June has no hairs on her belly, which is sad for her, sometimes.

SO I MADE HER WEAR MY SWEATSHIRT.

Dear Ruby,

Please blame my sister for the following.

Love,

Your totally annoyed pillow in the middle of the night when you decide to come to bed and lay horizontally at about knee level,
aka,
Lauren.

Serious Ruby is serious — and insulated — in my sweatshirt, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

om nom nom, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Ruby eats the sweatshirt.

Oscar has ennui, and suspicion (Day 12)

lauren — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:12:01 +0000

Oscar has ennui, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Oscar has suspicion!, originally uploaded by laurenipsum.

Alone time

lauren — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:07:37 +0000

I was supposed to go camping today with G. and some other friends, but last night Ruby came in from the woods all limpy and whiny about it. This morning it wasn’t any better, and was actually worse, so we went to the vet. All muscles and joints seemed fine yet she was clearly hurty and stiff when walking, so she got some painkillers and orders to keep quiet and not run around too much. We decided that would be easier to accomplish if we were not camping and visiting an off-leash dog training and herding park. So, Ruby and I, and visiting friend dog Stella, are home in front of a fire, having alone time. I am so rarely home alone, since I have longer working days than Garth, and I am kind of looking forward to it. I am going to spend some time folding laundry and playing with my Wii Fit, now that my ankle is mostly better. Fun times!

At least she’s predictable.

lauren — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:49:16 +0000