laurenisms » dogs

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

Don’t question why she needs to be so free

lauren — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:19:43 +0000

At the new house, there is a fence all the way around, but it is not a very reliable fence. We keep patching it in bits and pieces, because Ruby is an escape monster, and she finds new holes pretty regularly. This wasn’t too bad, for a while; she would just stand on the other side of the fence and wait to be let back in. Then last week she went down onto the road, which is pretty busy during commute times; then the next-door neighbor scared me by telling me their last dog died on that road. So this weekend we (mostly Garth & helpful pal Scott) spent a bunch of time finding and patching all the places where she went under/over/around/through. No trouble so far.

Also the new house (which has about an acre of woods) came with some really nice pre-started leaf compost back in the forest, just from leaves that had fallen and been piled up. One of the first things we did was build a compost pile with some metal fence posts and chicken wire, so we have about a 4 x 4 foot area back in the corner, which we filled with some of the leaves and have been adding our regular food waste to as we go. It’s a bit far away from the kitchen, but we have the relatively stylish compost bucket, which looks nice on the counter, doesn’t smell, AND holds a lot of stuff between emptyings.

It snowed out here last night, so Garth got to stay home, which led to the following conversation:

[08:33] garth: so , about your dog and her fondness for fences
[08:34] Lauren: oh, damn.
[08:34] garth: there is one fence she can get under
[08:34] garth: it’s not the outside fence
[08:34] Lauren: ?
[08:34] Lauren: into the next door yard?
[08:34] garth: I went looking for her and found her
[08:34] garth: cowering and shivering
[08:34] garth: looking very guilty
[08:34] garth: in the compost pile
[08:34] Lauren: oh haha
[08:34] Lauren: did she eat it?
[08:35] garth: I don’t know. I kept calling and calling but she couldn’t get out
[08:35] garth: so she just looked sd and guilty
[08:35] Lauren: poor ruby
[08:35] garth: it’s hard out there for a ruby
…
[12:40] garth: (UPS is here. soon the dogs will go insane)
[12:40] garth: Speaking of which, ruby is *obsessed* with the compost pile
[12:40] garth: she still can’t get out though
[12:40] garth: she just sits in the cage and looks sad
[12:42] garth: it’s really funny
[12:42] Lauren: did she do it again?
[12:42] garth: yep. twice
[12:43] Lauren: oh, ruby
[12:43] Lauren: i wonder why
[12:43] garth: I think she just likes garbage
[12:43] garth: which is fair enough, on account of she is a dog

(Song: “Ruby Tuesday,” The Rolling Stones. I didn’t mean for it to be, but this is pretty much her theme song.)

Shining on the silhouette

lauren — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 06:57:04 +0000

Last night I went for a run with the dogsters and I could have sworn it was spring. Could have sworn it so much that we were both independently worrying about getting seedlings started. (G. and I, that is, worrying, not the dogsters. The dogs said YAY RUNNING ZOMG RUN RUN YAY RUN ZOMG, and not much else.) It is about time to start tomatoes indoors if we wish to have them from seed, and time to start planning the outdoors situation. He really wants potatoes, which I fully support, so that will take some planning, as they need to have extra months in the ground. I am also interested in garlic, onions, and broccoli.

All day I have had in my head this totally ridiculous country song from when I was, like, nine, and listened to the pop country station. It was quite risqué, at that time, including the song “Black Velvet,” which I now know/suspect to be about young Elvis. Additionally, today’s title, which is about women who use men for their own nefarious purposes. I have something snarky and feminist to say there but I can’t find it among all the wine currently in my mouth.

Everything makes me cry lately. There are dogs who have died (not mine, knock on wood, but one of Oscar’s oldest friends) and there are grandmas gone too (not mine again, knock on wood again) and then there are so many new babies come into existence (not mine, knock on wood more than ever, and hi baby Ciaran! hi baby Mina! hi baby Hank!) for whom life is so small, I am worried for it. And if I spend even a minute on that thought, I become distracted and distraught with how small life is for us all, because really it is, and we are so tiny and chronologically insigificant, and then I will cry for nothing; I will cry for imagining all the so many things that could change all the other small lives so much. I will be forever changed when these dogs and these grandmas and these babies are lost. And it is too selfish to wish that I should be lost first, but I do not know if I can bear the loss of them.
What is the solution? Are all adults just veterans of the war of aging, where there are daily casualties (parents, children’s childhoods, pets & loved ones, garden plants, bus routes, hair lines, waistlines, roadkill, favored shoes chewed by new puppies, all the things large and small in which we used to rejoice but that are now gone)? Or is there some way to avoid it? Must we all submit ourselves to that? Can I opt out of one section of growing up and thereby shed all the rest? If I choose to devote my child-caring to another’s child, not my own, do I mourn with the parents when that child changes, grows, is gone, or do I mourn alone? And do I mourn less or more — does the sharing increase or mitigate the pain? Or do I merely mourn the recent demise of my glass of wine?

I hate being the youngest. Everywhere I go I am the youngest, and I feel inexperienced and foolish. I want to know what will happen to me, and to know if my current situation of conflicting heartache and jubilation will be henceforth a constant. (Big words!) I suspect it will, but more than anything I fear I will be surprised by something that experience (that I don’t have) should have prepared me for. What do I do? What can I do? I can, I guess, love my dogs and my husband and my surrounding friends and family and babies, and I can know that all of that is contingent on their continuing existence. And that love requires acceptance of the fact that they may not continue to exist. And I will deal with that when it comes, I guess.

PS. any post that starts with “I went for a run” and ends with drama and tears and wine and discussion of the meaning of love is PURE WANKERY.

(Song: “Fast Movin’ Train,” Restless Heart. Woo, 1990!)