Sunday, January 28, 2007

No Bones About It


The aforementioned mystery bones were creating a problem. Aside from totally grossing us bi-peds out, some of the krewe were obsessing over it. It was like Bilbo Baggins and Gollum’s ring. I tried throwing the bone out in the trees and overgrowth, but one or the other of the dogs would snuffle around in the snow until it re-surfaced and then there would be the whole dysfunction all over again.

Finally, out of desperation, I was able to get it and touch it long enough to toss it on the roof of this slated-for-demolition shed on the property. I thought to myself with great satisfaction, “That’s the last we’ll hear about that bone until the Spring thaw.” About 5 days later, after Azure had been on one of her crazy I-can’t-hear-you-so-I-don’t-have-to-come-when-called runs around the property, she returned to the front porch with THE BONE in tow.

I have to admit, I was confused. I was disappointed. I had thought I was so darn clever. I was baffled, and as I am likely to do when baffled, I scratched my head and then moved on to the next thing. I collected the bone, this time placing it in a garbage bag and the garbage bag in the car for delivery to my office dumpster the following morning.

K. e-mailed this photo later that day. Mystery solved.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Grosser than gross


Ooooh, lookee at what the Kanine Krewe found on this morning’s walk.

It is hard to say where this originated, or rather, from what type of animal this hails. Mostly it is hard because neither of us can stand to look at it for too long.

Steve and Carolyn stopped by to ask if we needed anything from town. This greeted them at the front door. Oddly enough, they were nonplussed about the piece of animal carcass laying on the porch. When I stepped out to talk to them, I pointed it out, and Carolyn opined that it must be from a deer. A small deer. Like Bambi.

It gets worse. The bend appears to actually be a knee joint, or some type of anatomical “ball joint.” So when a three-legged dog has one end of this in her mouth and is running across the yard, the bottom portion swings around.

It has started snowing today, and we have shut ourselves into the trailer. Periodically, we entertain a discussion about how to dispose of this animal remnant, and then engage in a larger discussion about where the rest of this poor animal may be.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Things we have learned

The cardboard roll on the inside of a roll of toilet paper can be removed, with the remaining toilet paper still usable.

The Styrofoam pellet filling of a 30 x 40 inch dog bed has the ability to cling to vertical surfaces and has the half life of carbon.

A 10 inch fleece toy contains enough polyfill stuffing to cover an entire living room floor.

Squeaky toys are best initiated through the removal of their squeakers.

Once the squeaker and stuffing have been removed, the shell of fleece toys retain value as tug toys.

The bimples from Booda © Bimple bones are a dog-owner’s equivalent of legos © on bare feet in the middle of the night.

There is such a thing as the exactly just perfect, no-other-will-do toy that may be at the bottom of the toy box. Or, there might not be. Either way, it is best to pull out all the toys to see.

The peanut butter in the other Kong toys doesn’t taste better, but it is good to try to gather them all together for a taste test.

A dead thing consumed will eventually return in an aromatic form, only 50 times more repulsive than it could ever have smelled prior to ingestion.

Behavioral training is not best acquired through the internet.

The “pennies in a can” aversion technique for training can result in the un-housebreaking of a dog.

Dogs can be un-housebroken.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is not unique to humans.

It is possible to fall asleep petting a dog, wake up in 6 hours, and pick up right where you left off.

Monday, January 15, 2007

I hadn’t realized the extent to which I had marked chapters in my life with things. There was the pair of very unique but likely overpriced Doc Martens©, not purchased on sale, at an outlet, or under any other pretense than to get over a short-lived and not particularly promising relationship gone sour. There was the perfectly beat-up brown leather belt grudgingly handed over to me by an ex who mostly couldn’t stand the cheap belts I was prone to wearing. There were the bowling shoes friends and I had stolen from a bowling alley some drunken night when I was in high school. There were the blue slip-on Nikes purchased on a business trip in West Virginia – the last trip I ever took with a good friend who is now on a ventilator and likely will not travel again. Not to mention the Land’s End slippers my mother bought me as a housewarming gift when I moved to MisFit Farm. Or, there is always the candy-cane holiday push-up bra purchased for pure aesthetics, and which seemed to do the trick nicely. Things.

The great thing about having Azure has been that she has helped me close these chapters with finality. Here she is, a breathing, snarling, chewing, chewing, chewing, living creature, sent to help me let go of all of this baggage, not to mention 20 years of shoes. She has a seek-and-destroy radar which has honed in on most of the emotionally-endowed shoes in my dwindling collection, and demonstrates a particular penchant for my underwear. She is willing to climb, dig or dive for any of these chosen items of her affectation. No shelf is too high, no door truly closed, no spot deep enough down in the laundry basket to deter her for more than a fleeting moment, during which you can race into the room, only to find her streaking past you and headed for the doggy door, the object of her search dangling from her mouth and a maniacal puppy grin on her face.

I have turned most of the shoes over to her for continued destruction, and as I sweep, vacuum, and pick up the shards of shoes of the past, I deposit each one lovingly into the wastebasket and turn my eyes forward to a breathing, living, future. When we are done cleaning up the remnants of Azure’s latest search-and-destroy mission, I laugh, and tell K I need to go shoe shopping, this time for just the right reason.