A Gentleman's Agreement

I was not enthusiastic when K first suggested we fence off the property. Aside from the obvious: cost and effort, it ran counter to my notion of “ownership” and "property." I wasn’t opposed to creating pasture area, obviously. So we had fenced in an area for our goats, when I noticed how a dachsund-width “path” was being worn from all along the pasture fence line up the hill to the “bad neighbors‘” house.

K's position that fencing exists for the dual purposes of keeping in and keeping out was a salient and compelling one. After much haggling, grunting, squatting, and post-pounding, a fence was erected the entire length of the property between our land and the “bad neighbors’” slice of property.

Then came the Danes. When we lived in the trailer, we didn’t spend much time indoors, so the “fence” was mostly an area the doggy door opened onto for middle-of-the-day potty purposes. The fence itself was only a 4 foot field fence secured to t-posts. My joke was that the fence itself represented a “gentleman’s agreement” between us and the dogs. Since we only intended to live in the trailer for a few months (famous last words), the t-posts were placed about 10 feet apart, and the fence was basically clipped to the posts in three spots. A committed dog could have easily burrowed under, and an able-bodied Dane could have easily jumped over it. To our understanding, the fence represented a barrier, and the dogs honored that barrier.

So we happily lived under the mistaken and misplaced trust in the existence of said gentleman’s agreement. One day, I came driving up the road and turned into the driveway. I thought I saw Emmett running out in the yard north of the trailer as I turned in, but since that area wasn’t fenced, I dismissed this as a shadow or hallucination. Sure enough, when I walked into the trailer, Emmett was among the wiggling, wagging mass of dog that rushed to greet me.

A few weeks later, K was home when the UPS truck turned into the driveway to make a delivery. Hearing the truck, Emmett barreled out the doggy door and completely forgot his ruse, hopping over the fence and running around to greet the delivery man. K stepped out the front door just in time to see Emmett running around the trailer. She exclaimed, “Don’t worry, he’s gentle!” and called for Emmett. The driver pulled a dog biscuit out of his pocket and said with a smile, “I know. It is good to know his name now.”

As it turned out, Emmett had been greeting the UPS man thusly for months.

We have been re-configuring the dogs’ yard now that we have been living here at the house for over a year and have a better sense of how we use the space, and what would be most convenient for all of us. This weekend, I expanded the existing dog yard, bringing it around to the front of the house in anticipation of the installation of an upstairs doggy door. I pulled out the posts at the previous edge of the yard and swung the fencing out, extending it about 40 feet. Emmett lay in the dog yard watching me work, sprawled out at the place where the fence had been previously installed. When I called him to urge him into the newly fenced area, he lay at the edge in the “old“ yard, crying, and refusing to step across the line where the fence previously existed.

My only question is how long this gentleman’s agreement lasts.

Once Again, I Stand Correct(ed)

Trinity barfed in the bed last night. Seriously. In. The. Bed. I was sitting there, minding my own business, reading a few chapters before turning in for the night, and she sat bolt upright, began making that unmistakable retching sound and proceeded to hack up what looked to be about three cups of semi-chewed, mucous-drenched kibble.

And just like that, I was 8 years old. “K come quick! Trinity puked! Gross! It stinks!!!!!”

Thankfully it was on the comforter. Yes, I just wrote that. I can’t hardly believe it myself.

As I stood in the corner of the room, dancing from foot to foot, and whining about the smell, the aesthetic, and the overall ill-advised-ness of allowing dogs into the bed, K calmly removed the comforter, took it outside to shake off the solid chunks, applied some sort of laundry magic elixir, and put the comforter into the washer. Whereupon it occurred to me just how ridiculous I was behaving, so I got another comforter out of the linen cabinet, made the bed back up, and returned to my book.

As we were turning in for the night, I couldn’t resist the urge to point out one last time that the recent events reinforced my overarching bias against allowing dogs in the bed. I turned off the reading lamp and settled down to go to sleep . A few minutes later, I felt the movement of the bed as one and then a second dog crept up to join us. Resignedly, I rolled over just as I was being gifted with a singular, barf-smelling kiss to my chin.

Grooming

One of the major benefits of being owned by Danes is that they are basically wash-and-wear. They don’t have to be taken to a groomer for some ridiculously expensive haircut, and I did not have to invest in some industrial-strength shears and 30-minutes with an instructional video to give them mullets.

Like all of us, they need to be bathed on occasion. We have found across the past two years, as Trinity and Emmett have discovered the joys of skunk-hunting, some of them need to be bathed more than others. And even with our magic skunk-scent-neutralizing potion, the bath-to-skunk-encounter ratio is at a minimum a 3:1 ordeal, and even at that, you will still get whiffs of skunk for months to come, especially around the eyebrow region.

Hair brushing is a nice thing to do, especially around the turn of each season. It only takes about five minutes with them to be disabused of the misconception that they do not shed, and giving them a nice brushing seems to land a somewhat preemptive blow that I assure myself saves at least two house-wide sweepings a day. The way I see it, I can stand and pick the hair off the brush, or I can chase it around with a broom and crouch down with a dustpan later.

Nail-clipping is a major ordeal, with that not being their most favorite thing , nor, truth be told, mine. I can usually get one foot done on one dog before the rest are alerted to the activity, and run off to apply grease to themselves so wrestling them to the ground to submit to my caretaking can be that much more difficult. Four out of six of them have black toenails, which means I either exercise great caution in taking just little bits off the ends with a need for frequent re-trimming, or risk quicking one of them and then running around, mopping up blood spots, apologizing profusely and abandoning whatever remaining nails need to be trimmed on that dog to be attempted another day.

.Now ear-cleaning is an entirely different matter. The dogs take responsibility for policing and augering out one another’s ears on a routine basis. Sometimes we will stumble upon the highly sonorous and slobbery event of a group ear cleaning And sometimes, they offer their grooming services to us, free of charge, whether we want or need it, or not.

Mysteries and Miracles

Mysteriously, a momma Dane and her litter of what seems like 500 pups were turned over to the Rescue just over a week ago. O.k., the term “mysteriously” was used in jest. Under-nourished: check. Filthy: check. And as it turns out, dreadfully ill with a highly contagious and completely preventable condition: check.

Without exception, each of the puppies had Parvo. As a side note here: I have known of several owners who had dogs that contracted Parvo. In those cases, the dogs died. The merciful owners (who did not have the resources to treat their babies) put the dogs to sleep as a pre-emptive measure. In the other cases, the dogs were not treated and died suffering.

Not that I need to remind those of us who commune through this medium, but I am duty-bound to say it: vaccinate. The Dane Rescue has encumbered bills in the thousands of dollars to save these pups for want of someone forking over $15.00 per puppy for the d*mn vaccinations. Parvo is very preventable, but once a dog gets it, life becomes a very tenuous and very contagious proposition for these babies.

Which brings me to my second point, which is that the amazing people involved with the Great Dane Rescue of the Ozarks (and with a nod to Special Castaways in NE Missouri) somehow managed to save every single one of these precious babies, at great personal cost (tears, time, energy), for which no compensation would be adequate, and also at great financial cost. So if anyone out there has some extra bucks, there are some Vets in Missouri who we would like to keep on our good sides by paying in a prompt and full manner. GDRO even has PayPal and a 501c(3), so your donation would be charitable in every sense of the word.

https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_flow&SESSION=JiN87GIVHlHgFRQmgW0N9nRhfgINSw-pPctDeUHyzE2QdBGqbX7BnMFyggu&dispatch=5885d80a13c0db1ffc45dc241d84e953c6c47237de2bc4f5b43fafc6513a8a86

I would include a picture of the puppies here, but they are so devastatingly adorable, it wouldn’t be fair.

OK, maybe just this one because I might be secretly in love with this little guy, although I don’t even know his name:

Real Estate

We have acquired a second king-sized bed. The question has been where we plan to place said bed. There is space in the dog room, but only Emmett uses the room when not otherwise obliged. When he takes his voluntary time-outs to the dog room, he seems to prefer sleeping on the loveseat.

Our bedroom is large enough; I pointed out that we could simply rotate the existing king-sized bed and line the second one next to it. Space for sleeping has become a precious commodity since Trinity and Emmett have taken up residence in our bed. I seem to be particularly vexed by the loss of real estate, notwithstanding the fact I could sleep through the dropping of the A-bomb. K is the one who loses ground each time she gets up to let the old dogs out for middle-of-the-night pit stops.

K nixed my proposal, based on the prognostication that they would still insist on using just the 1/3 of the bed we are occupying. Which appears to be empirically proven.

Something about Emmett

One of the disadvantages of Dane ownership is summed up thusly: floppy lips. More exactly, wet, floppy lips. Wet, floppy lips that can leave an unsuspecting victim of love with a slime coating.
One of the advantages is the belly-laugh shared when standing up from the slobber assault to K's exclamation, "Oh look - hair by 'Something about Mary'!"

Not the Boss of Me

As hard as it is for a control-freak such as myself to admit, I think we may be losing control of the pack, at least insofar as sleep rituals are concerned.

Although consensus does not exist on the etiology of the issue, I am of the belief trouble began with excessive middle-of-the-night toileting activities. First, dogs were asking to be let out around midnight. Then they added a 2 a.m. outing to the mix. The one thing we do agree on is, they have us on this one. The alternative involves more scrubbing than either of us want to engage in as a first-thing-in-the-morning ritual.

Mercy has since added a 4 a.m. rousting – not for the purpose of going outside. Heavens no, it is cold and dark outside at 4 a.m. Which makes it a perfect time to play squeaky-toy smackdown. Like clockwork, she is up and ker-plomping around the bedroom, snatching up squeaky toys. Contrary to her name, she squeaks them mercilessly, tosses them so she can chase them down and pounce on them with all the grace of a defensive lineman wearing a plaster leg cast. We have tried telling her, “Mercy, go back to bed,” but that directive doesn’t seem to exist in the small pantheon of commands she has chosen to heed.

At the other end of the spectrum, we have Presley, who is a very avid communicator. She uses a whine/bark combination, always in an escalating manner, to express her wishes. Obtuse as we are, she has found it necessary to employ this communication method to various tasks throughout the day. If her twice-day feeding ritual is off-schedule, a series of whines moving to short, persistent barks is all it takes to get us back online. When she would like to be released to the front to do her business or investigate the incessant barking from the neighbors’ weenie dogs, we are similarly informed. About two weeks ago, at 9:30 p.m., Presley began doing her whine/dance/bark routine. One of us got up from our position in the living room and walked over to let her out the front door. She stood there with that “stupid human” look in her eyes and did not move to the front door. She slowly sidled toward the bedroom.

K, always the more astute communicator, observed, “I think she is ready to go to bed.” Being the accommodating person I am, and the designated 4 a.m. playmate for Mercy, I acceded to Presley’s wishes and followed her in to the bedroom to get ready for bed. In the ensuing weeks, the 9:30 p.m. bedtime call has slowly inched itself earlier and earlier, so the dancing toward the bedroom and barking begins around 9:00 p.m. these days. I was remarking that 9:00 was a little early for even me, when K pointed out it isn’t if one is to be getting up every day at 4 a.m. As usual, she has a point.

A few days ago, when I followed Mercy out into the dark living room to begin our puppy calisthenics, I noticed a dark lump on the couch. As I crouched down and moved towards it, a single eye rheumy eye opened to return my gaze. Slowly and with a great groan, the pieces fell into place: after she ushers us off to bed each night, Presley assumes a resting place on the basically-no-dog couch and settles in for her beauty sleep.

I could go further and posit that her “plan” has been working insofar as she gets up and moves off the couch before Mercy and I rise for our 4 a.m. playdate, which explains the earlier and earlier calls to bedtime, but that would make her smarter than me and we all know that can’t be true, right?

A Toy Story

K was dispatched to pick up dog food the other day, and she came home with a bonus bag stuffed to the brim with toys. She meekly offered up the receipt, sheepishly smiling and pointing out “they were on sale.”

Of course: irrespective of need, the acquisition of more shreddables should be dictated by the sale rack at the local Petco or Petsmart. And of course, I don’t really care one way or another, it’s just part of the complex dance we engage in over the dogs. I say they don’t need treats – their treat is fresh water and predictable twice-daily offerings of high-quality kibble. She says they need pork rolls, greenies ©, pig ears, and Blue Dog Bakery treats. I say the dozen dog beds we have laying around the house are more than enough. She says so-and-so needs a special one in a special spot where he/she likes to rest. I say they should be happy to have each other for playmates and chewthings, and walls to eat for entertainment. She says they need toys.

So the treat jar runneth over, dogs beds fill up any available floor space, and yesterday evening K gleefully unloaded a bag full of Halloween-themed toys, busily presenting them to me, emphasizing their various features, and lined them up on the table. One by one, dogs walked up and gingerly claimed toys for themselves, pulling them off the table as K had removed tags, stickers and other potential hazards. Their new plaything in tow, they each moved to their respective corners, beds and special spots to explore the squeaking feature, chewiness, and tossability of their new playthings.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I concede the point that even if not completely necessary, the toys are well-appreciated by the krewe. They have indiscernible yet distinct preferences in toy selection. Each evening before bed, I dutifully pick up all the toys and place them in the toy basket, and every day the dogs dig through the toy basket, looking for the toy du jour.





And who I am to try to say no to an evening spent thusly:

The Plan According to the Underpants Gnomes

I am not a professional communicator. K is, but aside from the bursts of inspiration and pleasant aesthetic she offers to this blogging project, she does not engineer most of the communication found within this forum.

I have a B.A. in English from a fine institution of higher education. I know what makes a good story. I know the requisite component parts and pieces. Which would lead one to wonder why characters appear within this forum, disappear and perhaps re-appear, all without any exposition. Periodically I come to the realization that I have abandoned the use of fundamental storytelling mechanisms, and for no readily identifiable reason. The only reasonable explanation is that I have adopted storytelling in the tradition of the Underpants Gnomes: something happens in the middle here ?????, and then – make profit!

As we left things last, The-dog-formerly-known-as-Princess and Merrick were traded off in a cross-state transaction. The-Dog-Formerly-Known-as-Princess had a potential home on the east side of the state; Merrick was in need of some veterinary care following his miraculous recovery from a brutal case of demodectic mange, and there was a family living close to our island in the GDRO universe who were very interested in adopting him after all health issues were resolved.

Aside from the gore factor, Merrick ’s veterinary care was completed without incident. He was neutered (a must in rescue) and Doc corrected a strange situation with his eyelids that I do not completely understand even to this day. For those with a morbid sense of curiosity, the condition is called Entropion, where the eyelids turn in so hair aggravates the inner eyelids and creates a potential for irritation, infection, etc. . . For about 4 hours – 4 days post-surgery, one would wonder if the cure is worse than the disease. Because this is a rated-PG blog, I will not include the pictures I took of Merrick's bloody dripping eyes. After full recovery, Merrick found his way to a family who wanted a baby boy, and who love him with a fierceness that in other situations may require therapeutic intervention. Another happy ending.

While we were happily cutting-and-pasting Merrick into his final adoptable version, The-Dog-Formerly-Known-as-Princess (hereinafter referred to as Presley) was in the process of alienating her potential adoptive family. Not a week after we left Merrick happily ensconced with his forever family, Presley made her way to catch a Dane-train back across the state of Missouri, and into northeast Kansas to return to MisFit Farm, where she looks likely to spend the rest of her days. Her reputed transgressions have been easily corrected, she seems to be content -- even happy, and her health is fine. We could do worse in inheriting her as our latest perma-fost. She has laid claim to any dog bed closest to where I am presently located, has enlisted the alliance of Mercy to star in the role as her co-Diva, plays a great game of Senior Olympic chase, and dispenses kisses tainted with breath that can only belong to a septuagenarian dog or someone who routinely ingests dirty gym socks soaked in fish-flavored, outdated milk. So, we have another happy ending of sorts, although our census puts us out of the foster business for a while.

Which explains why the pretty little baby with a hunched back, infected mouth and intestinal worm collection, Emma-Smudge, could not remain at MisFit Farm. She was immediately dispatched to GDRO headquarters for follow up x-rays, follow-up care and no small amount of petting, cuddling, playing, and general wonderful living. She has gained five pounds in the ensuing week, has determined that her back is going to be a permanent feature, and otherwise looks to be a perfectly fine little bundle of puppy-joy, ready to be snatched up by some loving family with an aesthetic taste in large dogs that runs toward the burnt-and-bent. http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=14840711

So, rest assured that despite the big question mark in the middle of our comings-and-goings, we have once again managed to muddle through another month of blessings, angst, laughter, tears, ups, downs and in-betweens, to reap the profit of satisfaction in a job well-done, and an abiding sense that every one of us is right where we belong.

Hungry

Most folks don’t have to spend much time with me to figure out that I have a large appetite. I generally snack my way through most days; even at that I am able to consume large amounts of food at any given mealtime. I am told this is a longstanding characteristic – my childhood is replete with stories of consumption conquests – entire steaks at age 5, an entire large pizza at age 10, all-you-can buffets munched right into financial ruin. There are also the myriad stories of the variety of foodstuffs of which I would partake – as a toddler in a high chair happily munching down a raw green onion or pushing through my first dill pickle, or cow tongue as an appetizer, a taco filling, or a main course.

Folks in the nutrition business or diet industry will readily distinguish the difference between appetite and hunger. Make no mistake, I appreciate the difference and am thankful every day that, notwithstanding my healthy appetite, I do not go hungry.

When you are the littlest puppy in the litter and something terrible has happened to cause your spine to grow into a hump, you are experiencing great discomfort from the foreign object lodged up into your upper gum, you are being nibbled away at by hoards of fleas, and you are teeming with whipworms, hookworms and roundworms, you know hunger. With that wonderful combination, you probably couldn’t eat enough to assuage the hunger, even if you wolfed down canned food in seconds flat, and then stood for another ten minutes licking the smell out of the dog dish.

And you would be a magnificent creature indeed if even though your little belly was concave, and each and every rib could be counted, you still could enjoy the comfort of a soft bed, and had love to share with anyone willing to offer up a lap.

Mostly, we appreciate the work of the dedicated folks who keep a shoestring rescue going notwithstanding the driving, the expense, the late nights and early mornings, and the repeated heartbreak, so we know this baby will never have to know hunger again.

Steve the Duck

Never ones to look a gift duck in the mouth, and completely clueless on the subject of how to catch two ducks emancipated into the wilds, we did exactly what was expected of us when the mystery ducks appeared on our pond; we submitted to their presence and incorporated them into our animal care routine. In a riff on our beloved neighbor (who finally acceded that the ducks were escapees from his barn) and without any way to tell them apart, the ducks came to be known collectively as “The Steves.”

After my initial stale-english-muffin assault, the Steves remained at the water’s edge, notwithstanding additional incursions such as dog chasings. They demonstrated an ability to fly, albeit not high or far, in escaping these intrusions, but stubbornly refused to reliquish residency from our pond. I would take feed down and deposit it at the water’s edge, but the Steves kept their distance, and I was never certain my meager offerings were consumed by their intended recipients.

Although they demonstrated the ability to escape chase from our pack, one of the Steves became the victim of some other type of attack, so by mid-Summer, we were down to one Steve. Saddened by the loss of Steve’s companion, but without any alternatives except interia we continued to offer refuge for the remaining Steve, such as it is.

At some point in time, our incorporation of the duck into our routine appears to have crossed a line into assimilation. Maybe the assimilation occurred after the great poultry slaughter of June 2009, as an unlikely alliance designed to ensure Steve’s continuing survival. Maybe this was always the more social of the Steves, now left to freely fraternize with his pasture-mates. As I have readily admitted, we are not well-versed in matters of duck so we are at a loss for any explanation for this interspecial mingling.

All I know is Steve the duck, despite, or perhaps because of, his distinct size disadvantage, has appeared to join our small herd of goats and horse.

Ruminations on Regurgitations

We have been asked if we ever think about having children. I won’t lie: we have contemplated the possibility. For now, the dogs provide plenty of instructive opportunities for what parenthood would look like for us.

Late last night or early this morning, one of the dogs began making a retching noise, which eventually turned into the production of regurgitated stomach contents. I have only a vague recollection of the events, as I believe nighttime is a time for rest and repose, not holding back puppy ears and cleaning up the resulting by-product of a grass-eating binger.

I also believe any type of regurgitation is best done away – away from me, away from places where people eat, sleep or nap, away from the indoors, if possible. This means when I am in a state of wakefulness and one of the dogs makes a retching sound, I summarily usher him or her to the outdoors. This generally involves a lot of pushing, running around, arm waving, and I may have been known to shout a bit to expedite the process of moving the gagging dog from the inside of the house to the outside; mostly, I can report this process usually does not work. By the time we make it to the door, stomach contents have been cleared, and all the dogs do is go outside and munch down a thicket of grass, thereby ensuring a repeat of the process at some future point.

I don’t know that I would use this process with a child, but I suspect I might. I remember the first time my nephew got sick as a toddler. When I tried to explain the generally accepted practice of vomiting into the toilet, he looked at me as if I had asked him to bob for apples in the thing. He clearly had no concept of the controlled aspects of the process, and steadfastly refused to project his stomach contents, thereby resulting in a dribbling effect that compounded the difficulty of cleaning.

K, on the other hand, plods patiently behind the dogs, armed with a roll of paper towels, a plastic disposal bag and cleaning solution, mopping up their mess while cooing, “poor baby,” regardless of the time of day or night. I swear she didn’t curse or gag the entire time she cleaned up after Trinity last night. And when I woke up this morning, I found the most unfathomable thing of all: not only had K not sent the heretofore barfing Trinity away, she had allowed her entrée into the bed.

Of lightbulbs and jellybeans

Dinner this evening consisted primarily of end-of-the-season corn on the cob. We ate it until we were blissfully full and then blanched the remaining ears to freeze for a winter delight at some later time.

For now, the warm waning days of August and dinnertime banter is more than enough to delight.

K: (interrupting the satisfied crunching and butter slurping with this completely out-of-the-blue question) Why did you want to be a lightbulb when you grew up?

A: I don’t know. Mom said I could be anything I wanted when I grew up. I was just little – maybe 3 or 4. It was just something I said. Why do you ask?

K: Well, I always thought black jelly beans were cool. They were all black and slick-looking -- almost shiny.

A: You wanted to be a black jelly bean when you grew up? Now that’s just ridiculous.

K: No, I didn't want to be a black jelly bean -- I just thought they were cool! And wanting to be a lightbulb wasn’t ridiculous?

A: Hmmmmm. . . nope.

Sunday Dane Swapping

As we were transacting the Dane trade for the second leg of our Dane train early this afternoon, Steve mentions in passing that Merrick expressed an interest in exchanging his aft-SUV position for a fore-SUV position on the ride from St. Louis. Laughing dismissively, we load Presley, who rode completely without incident, perched demurely in the back of the CRV to our rendezvous point in Columbia, into the back of Steve’s vehicle.
Merrick, in the meantime, hops into the back of our car. He rides along quite nicely for about 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes in the folded down cargo area of the CRV, he slowly moves his front legs onto the folded seat backs.














He responds only minimally to K’s arm-gate block.

He makes a full-fledged move over the seat barrier into the front of the car.

















He seems to have a great appreciation for the view out the front windshield.















He aspired to become a hood ornament.

Whereupon, we pull off the road at some random Central Missouri location to re-assess riding arrangements. I had proposed at one point Merrick could ride in the front passenger seat and K could move to the back. K was not in favor of this. We decided on a compromise: flip the back seats up so Merrick could ride on the bench seat instead of on the dashboard or in the cargo area.

He found this gave him a satisfactory view.















And he settled down for a well-earned nap.

What We Keep

It is a point of grave concern that I do not receive proper credit for the things I do NOT say or do.

Because most people are NOT professional communicators, I cannot readily rely on others to recognize those infrequent instances when I have exercised enough self-restraint to NOT say something that is on my mind. It vexes me that this rare revving of my internal editor goes mostly unnoticed. I have worked very hard to remember that the correct response to a disingenuous, “It’s so nice to see you,” is NOT “Well, it is nice to be visible.” It has been almost two weeks since I referred to someone’s mouth as a pie-hole. Not a single solitary person has said to me, “You know I’ve noticed you haven’t told me to shut my pie hole this week. That has been refreshing.” Even after I pointed this oversight out to K, I was met with a thoughtful, although labored silence.

And that time I was gunning the truck, wholly intending to run the Johnson County jerk in a Camry who just gave me the finger off the right shoulder of the road and down into a ditch to perish in an explosive fire ball, no one thanked me for my restraint in allowing a cooler head to prevail and instead righting the vehicle and going on my merry way. Not a single person acknowledged the herculean effort of will required in that instance. Although the rider in my vehicle was laughing nervously, or perhaps hysterically, she never once said, “Hey, good job not committing vehicular homicide.”

So maybe, in trying to help out the Great Dane rescue, we agreed to try fostering a few wayward Danes while they were awaiting the perfect home for adoption. And maybe, we ended up with a few we just weren’t able to let go to anyone else. We are just talking a few – three tops, and at least one of those wouldn’t have been adoptable in any circumstance, but mostly because she was as rash and impulsive as me. And so we earn the hairshirt of “foster failures,” even though I counted up last night and at least twice as many Danes have left here on adoption as have stayed. That’s six, not that anyone’s keeping count.

Up-to-date

It is almost rule number one in Dane rescue that no one is ever up-to-date on shots. And failing positive proof otherwise, even if the person handing you the leash says the dog she is relinquishing is up-to-date on shots, the dog is not up-to-date on shots until we make him or her so.

We took The-Dog-Formerly-Known-As-Princess to see Dr. Kevin to bring her up-to-date on shots, to have her tested for heartworms and other less severe worms, to get his general appraisal of her overall health, and to solicit his opinion or intervention with some other items of interest, namely a festering, oozing stye in her left eye, a growth that was large enough to fill the area between the pads on her rear-driver’s side paw, large skin tags strategically located all over her body, and what was hopefully just a fatty deposit the size of a golf ball on her belly. A short 24 hours later, The-Dog-Formerly-Known-As-Princess had emerged from general anesthesia sans stye, skin tags, and fatty deposit, and with bright shiny teeth to boot.

The extreme makeover must have done her a world of good, because since then she has become more and more interested in kibble, and more and more concerned about everyone else’s kibble. By the next day, she was feeling good enough to run right out of the protective wrap on her paw, depriving me of the opportunity to use my surgical shears. We are learning to communicate with one another, to the extent both a whine and a single, sharp bark are necessary to rouse us for her middle-of-the night bathroom outing.

So, now that we are up-to-date on our shots and feeling our oats, all there is to do is to wait for the absolute-perfect-made-to-order forever family. Until then, we will have to do.

No Doubt

I was having those last-minute doubts and recriminations – it is one thing to go to visit a friend and meet her family, impose upon them to suffer a major disruption to their schedules and priorities, ask them to entertain you and help you negotiate their city; but it seemed like perhaps a bit much to ask to also provide you with accommodations for the weekend. So, even if out of nothing but a misguided notion of proper manners and genteel upbringing, I felt compelled to ask, “Are you sure you don’t want us to get a hotel?”

But from a hotel, we would have missed the talk and laughter until 2 a.m.

We would not have been able to stumble from our room for early morning snuggles with the MajorDanes.

We would have missed spontaneous outbursts of tug-o-war.

We would have been terribly overdressed for breakfast at Hell’s Kitchen.

No one would have been able to warn us about the teeter-totter crossing.

So in the end, the loving embrace and hospitality of friends won us over, and gave us new reasons to appreciate the joy of the MajorDanes family.

Time

The life expectancy of a Great Dane is 9 – 11 years. Now, some of us see this as a definite mark in the minus categories for owning Danes. For dogs so sweet and so wonderful, it seems like such a short amount of time to share.

Or perhaps you are someone who expects your Dane to live only nine years, and then, well, she’s just marking time at the ripe old age of 9 ½, so you move and leave her behind with enough kibble to last her a couple weeks, as long as she doesn’t eat too much.

Yesterday morning, Princess ate the last 2 cups of the Ol’Roy she had been left.

Yesterday afternoon, freshly washed and coiffed, Princess made her way here to MisFit Farm, which we all expect to be the last move she makes before leaving this mortal coil. While we have an exceptional track record for longevity here at the Farm, we have every expectation Princess will leave us wanting for more time to share.

It's Hot in Toe-peek-ah

This only begins to capture how the 109 degree heat index is feeling here in the Toe-peek-ah area.

The dogs have retired to lay on the cool concrete floor in the basement almost permanently. While the rest of the dogs still want to lay on the tops of our feet, when they are not curled up around the cold air register, Emmett can be found routinely sprawled out in the cool recesses of the dog room. When I let the old dogs out the front door for a potty break, they skirt along the front of the house under the covered porch and dance across the hot sidewalk into the yard. They may be goofy, but they sure aren't stupid.

True to form, my girl, Trinity, bucks the trend by following my footsteps as a sun worshipper. While the other dogs duck-dive for a cool spot in the mud under a shade tree while they accompany me for garden work, Trinity stretches out in the sun, her sleek black coat glistening. I come home from work to find her sitting out in the middle of the dog yard, head uplifted as she drinks in the warm summer air. The other dogs offer, at most, a cursory bark from their positions inside the cool confines of their air-conditioned and ceiling fanned room.

I must remember to add to my list of things I betcha didn't know: chickens can (and do) pant. They may be laying their eggs pre-hard-boiled soon. The ducks, still residing at our pond, spend most of their days languishing under the shade of the bridge, venturing out only occasionally to splash tepid pond water onto their backs. The goats and horse find shady spots of their own, take dust baths, and suck down enough water to keep RWD #6 in full employment.

If It Quacks Like a Duck . . .

This may come as news to everyone, but I am someone who is relatively routine-bound; maybe not bound so much as routine-dependent. That’s it – routine dependent. Even within the chaos of our lives, which are really pretty unpredictable given the scheduling vagaries of K’s work, my impulsive decisions to do things like join semi-professional athletic teams, and our joint decisions to randomly incorporate large stray dogs into our pack, I manage to build patterns into our daily activities that make me feel grounded, centered, and almost-sane.

I have a very specific routine for the twice-daily care and feeding of the goats, horse, cats and chickens. Note the very specific list: Goats. Horse. Cats. Chickens.

Note the absence of: ducks.

Said absence would be attributable to the lack of domestic ducks here at MisFit Farm. Or perhaps I should say, would have been attributable. On Monday, as I was completing my chores with the goats, horse, cats and chickens, something by the pond caught my attention. I shuffled out to investigate, and found a pair of domestic farm ducks, handily un-camouflaged in snow-white feathers, clambering up the bank from the pond and waddling around the pasture.

We have not had historically good luck with waterfowl here at the Farm. Our annual wild goose-couple were alienated after Azure invaded their nest and consumed their bevy of eggs. Coffee-dog chased a beautiful foursome of Mallard ducks given to us by friends as a pond-warming gift were into the neighbors’ above-ground swimming pool. After these events, I sort of figured were had been labeled locus non grata in the poultry world.

Apparently this pair didn’t get the memo. And so my Monday evening routine came to a screeching halt. I try not to overthink these things. I try not to ask myself if these two have arrived to help us reconcile our be-fowled karma. I like to think of myself as a person of action, not someone mired down in the banality of mindless routine. My first action step was to retrieve some English Muffins I had thrown to the chickens over the weekend and offer them to our visitors. I crumbled and tossed the crumbs to them. When this did not catch their interest, I decided perhaps offering a full muffin half would give them something substantial. Tossing it like a Frisbee, I managed to directly hit one of our guests in the side, resulting in a lot of flapping and quacking. Understandably, they retreated out onto the pond, a safe distance from me, my flying food offerings, and my dead-on aim.

We are not off to a good start.

We are committed to taking action to locate the pair’s rightful owners, but are a bit uncertain how to go about (a) locating the owners, and then (b) the logistics of collecting the ducks for return to their owners. Do we post photos on telephone poles? Buy space on milk cartons? Take out a personal ad in the local paper?

Or do I just adjust the routine to accommodate these additional wards?