Puppy Kisses

I know conventional wisdom tells us that dog kisses are gross, but at MisFit Farm, we accept them as part of our charm. Kisses are just another delight for the inhabitants of MisFit Farm, and just as our barks are completely distinct, so is our style of kisses.

Skeeter is the queen kisser. Skeeter actually likes it best if you kiss her on her snout. She will offer it up to you to receive kisses; if you do a good enough job, she will return the favor with licks to the chin, cheek, and sometimes hand.

Azure is a committed chin-licker. She prefers to climb up onto your lap with her front legs and offer firm, not-too-wet, concise licks on the chin. I refer to the process with Azure as “tenderizing.”

Emmett isn’t a licker so much. He has this funny way of putting his face right up next to yours and holding it so close, you can feel him breathing on you. Then quickly, he “bumps” his nose and mouth into you. Our neighbor, Steve, finds the whole process hilarious. Steve recounts, "Out of nowhere, a huge blocky head appears, and you are expecting the sloppiest kiss ever in the world." Instead, as long as Emmett hasn’t recently taken a dip in the water bucket (otherwise referred to as a drink), you just get a little love bump. K made the comment the other day that actually, this is probably what it feels like to Emmett when we give him kisses.

Mercy has a similar style of kissing, only she pushes her soft, wrinkly mouth and floppy lips up against the object of her affection. She is also inclined to offer a regimen of “flea biting” behavior as a special sort of flourish for her kisses.

Coffee is the exception to the rule. Among Coffee’s many personality quirks, public displays of affection cannot be counted. Given the rigors of medication regimens, he will hardly eat food out of my hand, always wary of an unsuspected pill. On occasion, however, he will give my hand a little lick, when for some unfathomable reason he is overcome with affection.

I am almost embarrassed to report the number of times Trinity has provided me with the unexpected delight of some in-the-mouth tongue action. Trinity freely offers her affection at the slightest provocation. When she is allowed into the bed, she always expresses her appreciation by offering lots of kisses and flea-bites to the cheek, chin, or any other available part (cover up, kids!). When she is feeling a need to be close and I am feeling a need to wash dishes, she will spread herself out on the kitchen floor with her head on my foot and offer my ankle intermittent kisses.

My sister and I took my nephew to the park one time when he was just under a year old. On our way home from the park, as an homage to a childhood family ritual, Lisa and I took C to Dairy Queen. He was young enough we decided going inside the DQ would be best in the interest of avoiding ice cream carnage across the back seat of my car. It wasn’t until we were inside that we realized C hadn’t ever really had ice cream before. So we decided it would be best to cut his teeth on a hot fudge sundae.

As we had expected, he loved it. He was so enthusiastic about his new treat, he was grinning and grabbing my arm to deliver hugs and kisses to my upper arm all the way back to the car. That is what Trinity kisses are like: an excitement and an acknowledgement of a love so overwhelming, it just seeps out as little kisses – a toe as you walk by, a hand that has fallen off the side of the bed, an open mouth asking K what she would like for dinner, or an elbow on a walk under a sky brilliant with stars.

Skunked

K is, for the most part, pretty unflappable. Not much really seems to get to her. Whether she is called upon to provide communication in extraordinarily intimate settings or required to wipe up cold dog vomit, she maintains a generally calm, staid, pleasant demeanor. She does not engage in an excess of emotive displays. She does not raise her voice in elation or crumple to the floor in sadness. With one reliable exception, she is not in the least inclined to dramatics.

Shortly after moving back to Kansas, while K, Skeeter and Susie were living with K’s parents, Skeeter became frantic about being let outside one crisp Fall evening. K took her to the back door, obligingly opened it, and when Skeeter shot out the door, K stepped out behind her, straight into the oncoming spray of a skunk.

K tried every product and every home remedy known to humankind to rid herself and Skeeter of the skunk odor. Hours, days and gallons of water were devoted to the dissolution of the powerful odor. When she showed up for an all-day engagement several days after the close encounter of the skunk kind, the other interpreter, eyes watering, demanded that K leave the assignment at once. K swears that to this day, there are remote corners of her mother’s basement where she can still smell the vestiges of her skunk attack.

A by-product of this experience is that the smell of a skunk can send K into absolute conniptions, a response that unfailingly reduces me to laughter, and reminds me of my own fond memory, a band my step-father played in, the Shyster Mountain Boys, and their rendition of my sister’s only favorite song they played. This isn’t them, but these guys are nearly as goofy as the Shyster Mountain Boys were in their heyday:

Deer Season

The air has begun to turn crisp here in Kansas, an early harbinger of the advent of the Fall season. In Kansas, Fall can last three days or three months, depending on the vagaries of El Nino, the hole in the Ozone layer, population trends or any of a variety of indiscernables. Although how brisk or how brutal the changing seasons will be in Kansas is totally unpredictable, deer season is not.

Aside from the crispness in the air, we know we are moving toward deer season when the sounds of shotgun reports echo through the valley, Wal-Mart becomes inundated with camoflauge and it is time once again to insult Mercy’s panache by outfitting her with a hunter-orange collar.

Despite her attempts to look completely annoyed and utterly unimpressed by our concern that she would be mistaken for a deer by some near-sighted, Southern-Comfort-soaked hunter in the early morning mists, we know that deep, deep down inside, Mercy really does appreciate our care and attention.

Compendium of Inappropriate Chew Toys

The dogs are not always perfect, but few are. On occassion, they will direct destructive tendencies toward less-than-appropriate chewables. Thankfully, we own very little material objects of value. There have been a couple of books destroyed, which are of course sacraments in the home of this recovering English major. CDs, DVD's, PS2 games and VHS tapes have fared well. Various paper products, including the most recent Lawrence phone book have met their pulper somewhat earlier than anticipated. Shoes have largely been the chosen object of destruction, mine in particular.

In response to my proposal to invest in a new pair of Doc Martens for the krewe's chewing pleasure, my friend, Fred, supplied the following:

"Along with Doc Martens, here is an addendum to the list of alternative dog chew toys.

Claw hammers
7 ¼ inch Skil Saw cases
Formaldehyde-treated deck timbers
Live ducks
Countless leather work gloves
Hundred-pound karate kicking bags
Electric fence insulators
Each other
Select Comfort mattress pillow-top
Pioneer VSX-515 audio/video multi-channel stereo remote control units
Live pet bunny rabbits
Holy scriptures left open on the floor
Condenser microphones
Assorted outdoor furniture
Happy Meal prizes
Lawn sprinklers
Garden hoses
Live 110-volt electrical cords
Beautiful blooming rose bushes (thorns and all)
Bicycle seats
Bicycle pedals
Lawn mower starter ropes
Empty beer cans
Full beer cans
Gasoline cans
Oil funnels
Grease rags
Prescription sunglasses
And probably wining lottery tickets (I wouldn’t know.)"

This list is empirically developed. I myself have been witness to some of the destruction to which Fred refers. Unbelievably, this is the work of five or six dogs through the years, at least half of whom fall firmly within the category of "drop kick" or "ankle biter" dogs.

See, don't we feel better now?

Happy Tails to You

K mentioned tonight that I should update folks on the status of Emmett’s tail, particularly given its softer chosen target as documented in our “Economy” post.

As we left the story last, we were in the process of trying an under-the-belly sling to restrain our happy boy’s jubilant tail. K’s brother, the Vet, recommended affixing the tail to Emmett’s rear leg, a trick apparently employed by people who raise and treat Greyhounds. Both systems met with advantages and disadvantages of their own, or perhaps my execution was weak.

Suffice it to say that I was not getting the results I desired within the timeframe I desired.

So, with the family mantra of “better living through chemicals” dancing on my lips, I loaded Emmett into the Jeep one sunny Saturday morning to implore our Vet to give us a jump start with some antibiotics.

A word about our Vet: oh, forget it. I couldn’t possibly proffer up just a word.

A common remedy employed by our Vet is a cocktail shot, cocktail being a word I believe is very near and dear to his heart. The cocktail is usually some combination of antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and steroid. Whatever the cocktail is, experience has made us believers.

Having worked with hematomas, abrasions, skin infections, ear infections, allergies and any of a variety of other ailments that have led us to his doorstep, Emmett was dispatched to the good doctor’s office for a dosing of the cocktail.

Imagine my dismay when the good doctor’s first comment was, “Oh boy, I may have to take that off.”

Never one to exercise an expansive sense of bedside manner, Doc didn’t look up as I responded, “The idea behind this visit is to leave with MORE than we came with.”

“Well,” he responded to Emmett, “we’ll start with a shot and have your mommy give you some pills.” He finally looked at me and said, “If this isn’t a lot better in the next week, I will have to take it.”

Devastated but determined, I returned home, pills in hand, resolved to the salvation of Emmett’s tail. I purchased the entire available supply of Pet-Wrap from the local PetCo, a spray bottle of Bitter Apple, and re-committed myself to our tail-wrapping regimen, bolstered by our week’s supply of antibiotics.

The week came and went, and we did, in fact, make marked improvement. The happy tail remains attached to the happy torso. K feels confident that we have turned a corner. It has been another full week without blood splatter, and healing seems to be occurring, or maybe just scarring. We are certainly not completely out of the woods yet, but feel confident that additional damage will be manageable. Emmett, for one, looks hopeful.

Lessons on Economy

Another very important lesson the dogs have taught us is about economy. Aside from the obvious: buy kibble in bulk and have it palletized and drop-shipped, they have taught us about the value of using all available resources.

Take our feet for example. Up until the krewe joined us, we were completely wasting the top parts of them. Sure, we got a lot of mileage from the bottom parts as they carried us from place to place. On occasion, the sides of our feet were used for kicking, pushing, or holding something in place. One time, I did use the top of my foot to “lever” a door into place as I was sliding it onto its hinges. Other than these few, isolated incidents, feet were pretty much all about the bottom.

Not any more.

Now, the tops of feet are routinely used as cushions, springboards, stepping stones, levers, belly scratchers and headrests.

Our legs serve as supports to hold not only our trunks upright, but also the trunks of dogs. They work as tunnels. They offer blockades for safe passage. And sometimes, as evidenced by this:

They make excellent whipping posts.

In a world where many things are taken for granted, the krewe reminds us again of the gross under-utilization and lack of imagination and innovation inherent to our dulled and bi-pedaled existence.

PoiDog Pondering

By the way, by reference to an earlier post about my abysmal laundering abilities and the song by PoiDog Pondering with the line:

you should wear with pride/
the scars on your skin/
they're a map of the adventures/
and the places you've been

They have disabled the embedded link, but here is the video version from youtube delivered the old fashioned way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrr9eFHKdKM

I (heart) my Wife

Although it is not self-evident by the state of affairs on the pair of jeans I wore to work today, I have a desk job.

Now, if we had human children and they came home from school wearing a previously clean-off-the-hanger pair of pants that returned home looking like this, I imagine I would launch into a strenuous cross-examination a little something like this:

A: Are these the same pants you left the house in this morning?

A: When you embarked the school bus this morning, did it in fact drive you and
deposit you at the schoolhouse door?

A: Were you required to perform automotive maintenance to earn passage on said school bus?

A: Did I miss the Perry/Lecompton running of the bulls event?

A: Are we preparing for the science fair project where you test the empirical
effectiveness of stain remover products?

A: Was this the day your class took a field trip to the Mammoth tar pits in western Colorado?

A: Did you feel that your mother was requiring job security?

Thankfully, K just gives me that sweet, dimpled smile and pulls some magic
remedy off of the shelf to have me cleaned up and looking presentable in two shakes of a goat's tail.

An Open Letter to the Purveyors of Dog Toys

We imagine you enjoy a challenge. If you didn’t, you would have chosen an easier product for production and distribution. Something like: soufflés.

We, like you, enjoy a challenge. We own dogs. Not just any dogs. Big dogs. And some not-so-big dogs, but all dogs with “issues.” Some of our dogs have orthopedic issues, some have sensory issues, and one, in particular, has the ostensible issue that she herself enjoys challenges.

The challenge of a “tough toy” is one she is always willing to rise to meet. So far, she has been the undefeated winner. The challenge, it seems, is a timed one for her. The challenge, rather than “is this toy really indestructible?” is framed as “how quickly can I destroy a toy labeled as ‘indestructible’?”

We spend significant amounts of time and money seeking out toys purporting to be indestructible, tough, durable, everlasting and perfect-for-aggressive-chewers. As demonstrated below, most have met with a most untimely demise.


We have been keeping an admittedly unscientific tally on toy performance. To date, here are the results:

Jolly kritters: 5 minutes, decapitation and then total annihilation
Jolly ball: 15 minutes, handle chewed off
Fat Cat: 25 minutes, ripped and de-stuffed
Combat/Bamboo: 3 minutes, ripped and de-stuffed
Fire Hose: 10 minutes, ripped and frayed
Tuff Toy tug: 45 minutes, torn nearly in half
Tuff Toy Alligator: 20 minutes, eviscerated

Now, we are intrigued with this possibility:

http://www.dog.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=312755

But at a whopping $75.00, we decided it would be more cost-effective to purchase a new pair of Doc Martens for our chewing pleasure (for the record, pieces and parts of the last pair of Doc Martens continue to circulate through the toy box, nearly six months after their initial assault), or perhaps something that would give chase.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it (after your most recent soufflé is done, of course), is to create a toy that can live up to its adjectives when given the true test of mettle, and that we pay less for than a weekly vet allowance. Our vet drives a nice car, but not that nice.

In any event, the human inhabitants at MisFit Farm thank you for the few, intermittent moments of peace you have been able to proffer up until now. The canines, on the other hand, want to know, “Is that all you’ve got?!?!?” If you have anything you would like to truly put to the test, please send it along and we will fastidiously report back. You can use the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, DHL or FedEx for delivery. They all know us.

Sincerely yours,

MisFit Farm

Camping with Dogs

Every year, my agency hosts a weekend campout. I “taught” Coffee to camp out early in our relationship, resulting in the ruination of only two tents before we got everything resolved. Last year when the rapid acquisition of canines began, K was out of town for the weekend campout, so I participated as a day camper and drove home to attend to dogs and chores in between.

This year, we camped. Lest anyone think we are completely out of our minds, we didn’t camp with all five plus one more of the dogs. Just three of them.

Now, a lot of the folks involved in the Dane rescue seem to camp, and they seem to take their dogs with them, even foster dogs. Were that I could claim to be this brave.

When I went for my day trip last year, I took Mercy and Trinity out for the evening. Mercy spent the entire time barking and drooling. Although usually I take this as evidence of a good time in humans; I think not so much for Mercy. So Mercy was out of contention for this year’s camping event.

I knew of some other dogs who would be attending the campout, and Skeeter doesn’t make a very good first impression. Early in our relationship, after K had met Coffee, and after I had met K’s mother and her two dogs, Susie (RIP - old gal) and Skeeter, we decided it would be good to try to introduce the kids. My parents divorced when I was about 10 years old, and I resolved the experience the way I resolve most experiences, by reading absolutely every book I could put my hands on about it. I cannot tell of the many travails and tragedies I read about in these tomes as they described the “blending” of post-divorce families. Let me just say that nothing I had read prepared me for what happened when I brought Coffee into K’s mom’s house and Skeeter went after him.

The end result was: K was clutching Skeeter by the collar and shaking, she was so mad. I was crying and holding an 80-pound male Laborador Coffee-dog. Although she has resolved her issues while at the Farm, Skeeter was not invited to the campout.

Azure. Azure has eaten industrial strength dog beds and chew toys. She could tear through a tent in about a millisecond. That lovely canvas fabric wouldn’t even represent an impediment.

So Coffee (of course), Trinity, and Emmett went camping with us. The campground is a great place – group camping that is relatively secluded with a good combination of cleared fields, high grass, trees, and tick nests. Suffice it to say, we tromped through them all.

The three we took were absolutely wonderful. After the first night, when every single person seemed to be consumed with the question, “You are going to sleep in that tent with all three of those dogs?” folks grew accustomed to having three oversized dogs prancing around the campsite.

Some, you might say, even loved having them there.

Mean Girls

While we are on the movie tangent, count the movie, “Mean Girls” among the many neither K nor I have seen.

In my mind, it is a acht-version of “Heathers,” or a vicious version of “Clueless” so having those as a frame of reference gives me all the information I need to save a potentially wasted 90 minutes of my life.

The reason this particular genre of movies comes to mind is that, like a version of Survivor located in a trailer with gourmet dog food, first aid kits, ample supplies of water and medications, we find strange alliances formed among the krewe.

The first strange bedfellow was the Coffee/Azure pairing. Coffee is bar-none the most mellow, least motivated dog in the history of the world. When he took a shine to Azure, we were stunned. That she seemed ok with his advances left us speechless. Although his love survives, Azure has moved on to form an alliance that may be even more bizarre.

While Mercy is, to bi-peds, quite a sweetheart, she is not so generous with her love for her krewe-mates. Although getting her to eat sometimes takes an act of Congress, heaven help any poor canine who wants to move across the living room in any proximity to her food dish. Mercy has a special animus for poor Skeeter, and will sometimes, just for sport, declare the living room off-limits for the poor old gal.

Azure is, well, Azure. ‘Nuff said.

Notwithstanding the fact that playing with Azure is the equivalent of trying to capture fireflies in a whirlwind, and Azure cruises food dishes like Mark Foley at a little league game, Mercy and Azure seem to have come to terms. Azure is allowed to freely eat from Mercy’s food dish. They play tug together. Mercy occasionally tries to entice Azure into a game of “toss the good cuz.” We caught them sharing a dog-bed over the weekend. Mercy will sometimes lose herself and provide Azure with a free flea-biting treatment.

Of course, in the same instance a playful game of bite-your-face-off can begin, it can spiral quickly into a snark-fest. Neither of them seems to be particularly daunted by a little snarkiness, so the love survives.

Games People Play (with Danes)

I was thrilled to learn of a game played by a Dane friend of ours. Her family has a merle Dane, and they play I-spy with the dappling on his coat. Not being artistically inclined, I have tried this game, and to date, the only thing I have located on our merle boy, Emmett’s, coat has been an upside down version of the little logo guy for the monster.com website.

I was thrilled to learn of this game, because it seemed to validate any of a variety of the games we find ourselves applying to our babies.

We started one such game the other morning, when for some reason, I asked K out of the blue, “If Azure were a character in a movie, what character would she be?”

Among our quirky differences, K and I don’t share a common background with, interest in or exposure to: movies. K’s tastes run toward Disney, mine toward Tarantino. K has a large part of her life where movies are almost altogether missing, which pre-dates the several years in mine where movies were missing, so there is an additional temporal disconnect that amplifies generational and personality differences.

By way of example, we saw a preview for the movie, “While You Were Sleeping” on a friend’s television the other day. K’s response was, “Aw, that was such a romantic movie.” Having actually seen this one on video, my response was, “Yipes that movie was creepy. Who wants some person who doesn’t know who you are to be duped into marrying you?!” Now, I know they don’t get married in the end, but I like my goofy clueless fiancées to be the Moonstruck version, not the Million Dollar Baby version.

The game, as it turns out, is actually quite fun and illuminating. Through it, we are able to learn about one another’s life experiences through movies, what we liked and what we didn’t like, what attracted us about different characters, and how we perceive the dogs. Of course no one character captures all aspects of any one of the dogs, so the conversation continues, pulling different aspects of different characters and movies into the dialogue, respectfully listening, offering counterpoints, and compiling lists that we sometimes forget as soon as they are completed.

So, here is an initial iteration of our list:

Christian Slater in True Romance. (Emmett)

Forrest Whittaker in The Crying Game. (Coffee)

Cher in Mask; actually, Cher in just about any role. (Mercy)

Goldie Hawn in Overboard; Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta’ Give. (Skeeter)

Pipi Longstocking; Angelia Jolie in Girl, Interrupted; Brad Pitt in 12 Monkeys (I was particularly pleased with the whole “Brangalina” angle with those last two selections). (Azure)

Lilo from Lilo and Stich. (Trinity)

Any guesses who selected which movies and characters?

Rescued

December 10, 2004, was the first time I set foot in the state of Louisiana. K and I had spent a series of months dating in fits and starts, mostly with disasterous results, but had come to a place where we were going to have to either saddle up and ride or hang up our spurs. At just about the time we were coming to the place where we each get over ourselves and say, “O.k., I like you. Let’s call this dating, and see where it goes,” K left for Louisiana for a two-week time out.

She drove by herself, house-sat, worked, and held a workshop across those weeks. After we had spent nearly the entire car ride from Kansas to Louisiana on the phone together, we each independently had the idea that she shouldn’t have to drive home alone.

I flew down after work on a Friday evening.

On Sunday afternoon, the friends she was house-sitting for arrived home from their cruise. I was inspected, interrogated and inquisitioned. And amazingly, just as I was falling in love with K, I fell in love with these friends of hers, their wonderful home and family, their friends, and their “place,” being Southern Louisiana.

Two years ago yesterday, we had our routine Sunday morning phone call with these friends. We were admonished that a big storm was coming, and we were not to call. We would be called after the “all clear.” As the next day unfolded, we watched in horror as Katrina unleashed her fury against the Southern Louisiana coast. After it had subsided, we waited for the call.

On Tuesday, the levees breached and the rain continued. The Weather Channel had their correspondent reporting from Covington, a community only a stone’s throw from our friends. The order of the day was devastation and destruction. We waited for the call.

Before we finally got the call (there is some disagreement whether the call came on Wednesday or Thursday), I had violated the commandment of our Southern Belle and began calling, but of course the phone lines were all down, as was the electricity and the roads. When they called, they were able to report that they all were fine. Their house had sustained some significant damage and their property was a wasteland of trees and debris. All of the people and the animals who had gone inland to our friends’ magical place to seek refuge had survived and returned to their homes to survey the damage and begin putting the pieces back together.

When we went down a month later, the roads were mostly clear on the North Shore. Gas and groceries were still in short supply. Our friends still did not have electricity. It was several weeks after we left from this trip that they finally had their electricity restored.

So what do you do two years after a loving God puts his arms around you and the rescuees you have taken in to hold you safe through the storm? Well, if you are two amazing women in South Louisiana, you open your loving arms and rescue again.

When the Cure is Worse than the Disease

Well, I have done it.

Mindful of my reputation for over-treating the sundry ills and mis-fortunes of the krewe, I have tried to exercise restraint with Emmett’s tail situation. When we brought Emmett home, he was so sick from a urinary tract infection, he had blood in his urine. His midriff was hot, inflamed and tender to the touch, yet he didn’t even raise an eyebrow when poked or prodded. He underwent two simultaneous series of antibiotics and by about the fifth day here his tail, which had been tucked under his belly since I first laid eyes on him, had relocated to what we thought was a better location, up and wagging.

We were thrilled. Obviously, so was he, as he began the process of wagging his tail so enthusiastically, he was beating it into hamburger. I would leave for work in the morning having fastidiously cleaned, treated and bandaged his tail, only to come home to find the bandage laying on the floor somewhere and to be greeted by wags that, if they were not actively bleeding when I arrived home, soon became that way.

And now, a break for a corporate endorsement: Zout is a laundresses’ best friend. I myself do not do laundry, or rather I do laundry inartfully. Thankfully, K attacks laundry with the same dogged commitment and zeal that I bring to trimming toenails, medicating, weed-whipping, hoeing in the garden, painting, canning, walking . . .

Witness the blood splatter on this pair of khaki pants. Note the state of dried-ness, indicating two fundamental reasons I am not in charge of the laundry: 1) I tend not to observe things on the back of pant legs in need of immediate attention; and, 2) I tend not to care so much if there are markings such as these on my clothing – I have taken the line from a PoiDog Pondering song that goes, “you should wear with pride the scars on your skin/they’re a map of the adventures and the places you’ve been” to its full, illogical conclusion: scars, stains, whatever.

Our Dane-diva and non-resident knower of all things Dane, Aunty Kathleen, had commended to me a plan, easily referenced at my second favorite place on the planet, the Internet, for restraining an enthusiastic tail to allow it time to heal.

http://www.dogstuff.info/tail_healing_method_arndt.html


K thought it was a joke. Aunty Kathleen assured me that it was not. Ordinarily, I would have moved quickly and decisively. But in this case, the cure involved both breaking out the aforementioned running tights for another bandaging situation, and then securing Emmett’s tail back underneath his body, the place we were so elated to see it leave a few short months ago.

After much commiserating, I downloaded the plan for tail securement this morning, obtained the necessary accessories, and put my own notion of Emmett’s happiness aside for the sake of his well-being.

And so Emmett’s tail-joy goes on sabbatical:

We Can't Have Anything Nice

I am a Spongebob fanatic. I guess “fanatic” is a bit of an overstatement, since I don’t have antannae, satellite, cable, or any other means to capture the signal that would allow me to watch the actual television cartoon, and since I haven’t even seen the movie.

In a brilliant stroke of foreshadowing, my grandmother, Elsa, told me the story of how she came to collect miniature statues of mice the first time I ever visited her home in Hawa’ii. It seems that one of her children brought her a miniature mouse statue home once, and someone got it in their mind that she liked little statues of mice. So he or she (she either really couldn't remember or just didn't want to stigmatize the culprit) just kept giving them to her. And as these manias run in families, the misconception spread to others and the rest joined in on the gifting. Year after year, holiday after holiday, she was the beneficiary of some mistaken family myth about what she liked.

She, of course, did not tell the story thusly. She was very kind and loving and generous notwithstanding having received hundreds of statues of mice to dust through the course of her adulthood.

And of course, my Spongebob situation is not nearly as bleak or overwhelming as the decades-long accumulation of little mice. I like Spongebob. He is cerebral but goofy, willing to learn from his boneheaded mistakes and call others on theirs, generally good-natured and occasionally intense. Not that I can even begin to compare with the ceramic mouse collection, but I do have Spongebob underwear, t-shirts, slinkies, interchangeable dolls, notecubes (three of these, actually), address books, pool toys, towels, shower curtains, and the list goes on. . .

Having put all this thought into the why’s of my Spongebob affectation, you can imagine how horrified I was to come upon this in my living room this morning:


Until some time last week, I had a soft-sided Spongebob lunch pail. His body was the “pail” part, and he had these now disembodied and disemboweled plastic arms sticking off the side, and pants and legs stuck onto the bottom. I had contemplated using duct tape to perform cosmetic repairs and just have my Spongebob be the amputee Spongebob, but decided that others may not take it in the spirit it was intended.

The dogs choose the most random and unpredictable things to pick off of the high parts of the countertop and destroy. All I can say is that it’s a good thing I still have my “Charlie’s Angels” lunch pail or I would have been seriously ticked.

We just can’t have anything nice, now can we?!?!?

Lessons from Grandmother Joey

Growing up, I had the benefit of a multiply “blended” family. The chief benefit of this arrangement for those of us with extraordinary ego strength which, thanks to my mother and many others, I posses, is the exposure to many magical people who you can embrace as “yours.”

One such person was my grandmother Joey (pronounced, a lá her second husband, “Joy”), the mother of the man who adopted me and therefore became both legally and truly my dad. My grandmother Joey was a magical, amazing, light, positive being. She was a student of spirituality and mysticism, and an aficionado of all people without any regard for status or condition. She once took in a wayward young man who had come to Sedona and seemed to need a quiet space for a time; as it turned out, this “nice young man” was a nice young man known popularly as Yanni. My grandmother Joey took tremendous delight in wine-and-cheese picnics, loved hiking the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon, prepared and ate the most horrifying macrobiotic foods, and believed in the existence of fairies, placing treats outside for them alongside the offerings left for quail, squirrels, cardinals and chipmunks.

One of my grandmother Joey’s special talents was taming the wild thing that was me as a talkative, rambunctious, obnoxious child. She had a mesmerizing way of rubbing my back that could stop me dead in my tracks, and hold me still and quiet for as long as the moment would last.

Whatever it was that she did in those magical moments, some of it must have stuck. Absent-mindedly, almost the same way she seemed to do it, I found myself stroking Azure this evening. As I tuned into the moment, I realized that the savage beast had been quieted and Azure stood motionless, my fingertips rubbing back and forth across her back in the same way my grandmother Joey had done for me all those years ago.

And then, just as it happened for me as a wild child, the trance was broken, and Azure was off again like a shot, reading Mercy the riot act, seeking the relinquishment of a much-desired cow hoof, attempting to jump in K’s lap as she sat on the toilet, and bouncing in and out of the rocking recliners in the living room.

My Gift from MisFit Farm

Thomas Hobbes, the philosopher, opined that we are all but selfish creatures who, without a social contract, would live by the law of tooth and nail, motivated by self-interest. Social contracts are our agreement to concede the unencumbered freedom of a life without laws for the security afforded in communal living arrangements, where members trade rights and responsibilities.

Some days, I am inclined to believe in this absolutist, i.e. irrational, mean, survivalist description of true human nature. Some days, I struggle with the social contract and whether it really is adequate to hold the negatives at bay.

I recognize the over-simplification and tremendous injustice I serve to Mr. Hobbes, but on these days, I am searching, and it seems good enough to pick that particular philosophical precept as any other. I think any other political philosophy would serve me just as well, Hobbes’ being in some form or fashion a fundamental enough precept that others flow from it.

On these days, I go so far as to wonder if I have served the social contract in my own small world well, or whether I prove out Hobbes’ theory of absolutist human nature.

The truth of the matter is that, for all the pats on the back, all the accolades, all the attention that we receive for offering our place to others who don’t fit in elsewhere or who just need a place to belong, be safe, be happy, and be healed, I need them. This is probably not a tremendous revelation to anyone outside of me; it is, however, a truism.

I have bad days. I have days when the world just doesn’t seem to want to act right. I have days when I feel like I can’t do enough, can’t be good enough, can’t – for all the screaming and yelling and fit-throwing (metaphorical, of course) – make the world right, Just or fair.

Here at MisFit Farm, that all doesn’t matter. When I walk in the door, there are five, six or sometimes seven enthusiastic faces to greet me. There are hugs, and kisses, and tail wags so emphatic, they bleed. There are reminders that there are things I can fix, and things I cannot, but I am still loved regardless. I cannot get away with curling up in a little ball and wishing it all away, because there are wet noses that push into my dark spaces, and paws that pull my hands out from over my eyes, and trip-trapping hooves dancing back and forth on a bridge too sunshiny and too happy for any trolls to inhabit.

And even on days when I accomplish nothing or I rage in futility against the machine, the only score that is kept is whether enough pats were dispensed, enough kisses were distributed, enough time was spent in the sunshine, enough stars were counted, enough snuggles were shared, and enough love was absorbed, to get up and face the world again.

Azure vs. Marley

I recently shared an e-mail exchange with a wonderful woman and fellow bibliophile about the book Marley and Me. I read the book earlier this summer and I absolutely adored it – I laughed, I cried, I held my head in commiseration.

I am compelled to point out that I did start keeping the blog long before I knew about this book. Being a general recluse, I do not have a lot of exposure to popular media and associated cultural capital. Let’s just say that the latest recommendations from Oprah’s Book Club make it to our reading list only by accident or by some other circuitous route.

We were having this virtual conversation about the blog and about the book, when the issue was proposed that “The only unanswered question for me is why they kept the puppy through all of that -- so much damage.” Ironically enough, I myself had this question as I read the book.

And then I began to make a checklist of Azure’s transgressions, and once compiled, I had to laugh out loud. By the time Azure was brought into the fold of MisFit Farm, she had:

♥ Destroyed the bedroom of one of the Dane train people - completely threw the sheets, cover and pillows off of the bed.
♥ Ran across a Dane train person's coffee table.
♥ Broke through the glass of a french door.
♥ Terrorized her potential adoptive mother into handing over an entire box of treats.
♥ Attempted to express dominance over at least two other Danes and countless cats.
♥ Attacked the windshield wipers of at least three cars.
♥ Tore an empty fast food bag living on the floorboard of my car to shreds, including the empty cup.
♥ Ate mulitple water bottles, chew toys, books (almost an unforgivable) and bones.
♥ Spent the night in a humane society shelter as a place of refuge for a Dane train person's home.
♥ Annihilated two heavy-duty, colossal crate dog beds.
♥ Been medicated with acepromazine repeatedly.

In terms of destruction wrought in a concentrated period of time, I now maintain that Azure makes Marley look like Mr. Rogers.

Hug-O-War

A glimpse into this evening’s conversation:

We are sitting at the table, finishing dinner. We are discussing the possibility of enticing our amazing friends from Minnesota to meet us at some halfway point for a “Great Dane escape” weekend and perusing potential locations on the Internet.

Clearly bored with this conversation, and sensing that she will be excluded from the festivities, Azure begins bumping my arm with a slobbery object. Checking the object for “appropriate play” status, I observe that it is the mostly intact remnants of a previous shoe sacrifice. I grab a hold of a spot which gives me adequate grip, give a little jerk, and the game commences. Azure and I are intently staring each other down, an integral part of the game.

K: She never plays that way with me.

A: Hmmm. . . I wonder why that is. . .

K: I don’t play that way with her.

A: Well, that probably explains it.

Azure is tugging as I continue to hold on. She tries a “jerk lose” move. I cling to my end of the shoe. I gently pull towards me, dragging her along the floor. She jerks and I let go as she careens backwards.

Before I can awake the computer from sleep mode, Azure is back at my arm, nudging me with the slobbery shoe. The game recommences.

K: What kind of floors do you think will withstand this?

A: Concrete.

K: No seriously.

A: I am serious. We can paint the concrete floors at the new house. We can do parquet or hardwood patterns, tile, creek bottoms, name it.

K: (pretending to pout) But I don’t want concrete floors in the new house!

A: Hmmmm. . .

Azure is trying to exert authority by subtly pulling backwards. I am holding my ground, but the effort is dislodging the tablecloth and pulling my beer and the computer precariously close to the table’s edge. Because she loves me, K. moves my beer to safer ground.

This time, I try to the “jerk lose” move. Azure holds on but thinking she may have the upper hand, vigorously tugs backwards at which point I let go and she careens backwards.

Azure gains her footing and returns to nudge my arm with the slobbery shoe again.

K: I guess she must want to play.

A: Hmmm. . . I guess so. . .

K: Why does she want to play the tug game with you and not me?

A: Must be saving herself for your snuggles later.

K: Yeah, I’m a lover, not a fighter.

A: Pretty much, yeah.

MisFit Farms True Foundation

While I can’t compete with the stories told by A, I thought I would give a shot at describing the wonderful world we live in here at MisFit Farms due in large part to A. A is the eldest of three, this is apparent in her ability to mother and care for everyone here. A is our foundation, chef extraordinaire, maintenance person, gardener, yard person, and the chief nurse/doctor; a neurotic, obsessive compulsive care giver, not a scrape is missed with antibiotic ointment or as in Emmett’s case, a happy tail not bandaged before turning in for the night. Medicine is dispensed with vengeance in order keep allergies at bay, sore joints moving, and thunderstorms from causing a number of maladies. Without A we would be lost. A has little quirks such as: A can only write blogs on A’s laptop (my laptop has all the keys, I guess this throws A’s creative thoughts off.) As much as A dislikes birds or some would categorize A’s response to birds as “terrified of birds”, A is determined to raise chickens so we can be safe knowing the eggs we consume will not be affected with any weird feed disease. A tries to convince me and others that Azure is psychotic and a pain (okay, I admit Azure is not for the faint of heart human companion). There is no way A will convince me she isn’t in love with Azure as much as I am. (I have caught Azure receiving kisses from A on many occasions even though A denies it.) A also has special talents: A is a photo bug, no one is safe from her incessant picture taking. Flash bulbs will burst at the most innocent of feats. (Mercy is still disgruntled from the one snapped of her napping with the record 12 inch drool hanging from her bottom lip while she slept sitting up in a chair). Mercy is after all a model, she is the resident Diva, Mercy is the calendar girl for December 2007 in the 2007/2008 Great Dane of the Ozarks Rescue Calendar. A will try anything to repair a scrape, cut, gouge, or bleeding tail. As Skeeter discovered with the maxi pad bandage held in place with a section of 1980’s running pants. (She is still recovering from that humiliation.) What I find most interesting is that it seems the dogs must have secret meetings. For example, While Emmett was not a member of the MisFit Farm menagerie when Skeeter was outfitted in what our neighbor Steve referred to as a “speedo” Emmett has been suspicious of any bag we bring home from the store. A was sent the directions of how to make a garter belt style tail holder for Emmett’s tail. The purpose is to hold his tail under his belly until it can heal. Emmett obviously overheard us talk about the contraption and even though he was not here for the whole maxi pad running pant outfit, seems concerned about what might be in store for him. I am still holding on to the band-aid and tail wrap treatment that does not involve a swivel hook and a clasp hook. We will see who wins out. One of my favorite talents of A’s is the teaching techniques used for newcomers to MisFit Farms on the use of the doggy door. I have always heard a good teacher uses verbal, visual, and hands on approaches to make sure the student gets the message in the best way suited for their individual learning needs. A covers all bases as documented in this photo. Living here at MisFit Farms is the greatest blessing I could have ever received. I am surrounded with love, laughter, and the wonderful antics that A comes up with in an attempt to keep us all safe and healthy. A’s renditions of what goes on here at the Farm only scrap the surface of what we experience every day. We recently met a new friend while at a conference in San Francisco, A was retelling some of the high points here at MisFit Farms, her comment was “you have to be making this stuff up, no one could have all this happen” The truth is each and every day is an adventure and another page in the Adventure of MisFit Farms. I have never laughed or loved so much in all my life. I am truly blessed to be a part of this incredible Krewe with A. A has turned my life upside down and I am enjoying every second of it!

Just Another Service

Living with these wonderful crazy dogs with disabilities has given us a new appreciation for many things.

Every time I try to pivot in the kitchen in an effort to execute some amazing culinary move and find that my foot is pinned under Skeeter, instead of getting frustrated, I remind myself of the short time we have together, and that some day I will miss not tripping and falling over her as I move across the room.

As we crawl around with a Clorox wipe-up and try to erase the blood splatter from Emmett’s tail off the appliances, newly discovered Pepto-Bismol shrapnel from the walls, or crusty drool from anywhere and everywhere, I think of all the messes and laughter we will share in the next weeks and months, and hope for years.

Mercy, in particular, has given us a sense of urgency and appreciation. When we adopted her, we had not realized that her prognosis was so glum. At our last visit, our Vet announced that she has outlived his prognosis by a good six months, and appears to be going strong. Aside from being the one who made me fall irretrievably in love with Danes, Mercy is the one who our Vet crouched in front of and proclaimed, “I can tell now, you are going to break my heart.” And she will. All of ours. And to be clear, I would do it a million times over for her.

In the meantime, she muddles on, seemingly nonplussed by her repetitive sit-and-spins, spills and shenanigans. When she decides it is time to get from point A to point B, there is nothing that is going to stop her, not these gangly, unworkable back legs, not solid objects in her pathway, and definitely not embankments. Through the amazing work of her original foster family, Mercy was essentially taught to walk, because she does not have the neurology to make it happen otherwise. Since coming here, she has developed some other adaptations, including the moves we refer to as the “sit-and-spin,” the “fishtail,” and the “bunny hop.”

When she comes careening down the path, her ability to control and most importantly, to stop, is nonexistent. Thankfully, the adage that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks turns out to be patently false, as we have been able to teach Coffee and Skeeter the commands for “run!” “watch out!” and “get out of the way!” since Mercy’s arrival.

So really it can be said that Mercy has made us much more appreciative of our neurological functioning in general. More specifically, however, Mercy has taught us of one other terrible consequence of not being able to feel or really to control the parts of our bodies below our torso.

Mercy is a world-class, unannounced, uninhibited flatulence machine. We are beyond being offended. We are beyond thinking that it is the food, or nerves, or barometric pressure. She can’t feel her hind end, and so anything goes, and since she is holding nothing back, it goes quite loudly.

I wish I could quit giggling each time she does it, but it always serves as a reminder of another thing we will miss when she is gone. I have thought about that line from the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” where they say that each time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings. I wonder if there is a similar deal for Mercy’s eruptions. I would like to think that each time Mercy farts, a Dane finds a forever family. Somehow I doubt there is that robust an adoption market.

Random, flatulence-induced giggles, just another service we provide.

Azure Gone Wild (the video)

Here at MisFit Farm, we are big fans of two comedic staples: irony and sarcasm.

After my previous post and the various and sundry others demonizing our poor, sweet Azure, I took a step away from hyperbole to realistically assess her behavior. We know that there are at least four other folks out there who can appreciate the antics of this little dervish, and we would not want to mis-represent her or them.

It occurred to me that the best instrument available to express what a day in the life of Azure is like was sitting at my fingertips. So this afternoon, we picked up our trusty digital camcorder and set about to document what life is like living with Azure the crazy, out-of-control, psycho puppy.

Buckle up kids, and keep the antacid tablets handy. What you are about to see will shock and amaze you.

It did us.

The Care and Feeding of Azure

The house sitter was not entrusted with the care and feeding of Azure.

Azure is a special case. Since she is Deaf and we do not have all of the Farm fenced off, she joins in on our walks and outings on a leash. Although she has earned the privilege of overnight furloughs from her crate, when we leave the house for more than an hour, she is crated. She goes into the crate quite happily, with the sign-command for “home” – which we prefer to the sign-command for “jail,” although it may be a more appropriate location for our little delinquent. Sometimes, she expresses her consternation with being crated by giving the door a good lunge. So far, the door always wins. The combination of restricted freedoms and foreign language for communication, along with an overall high-strung-ness results in her time away from us being spent at a kennel.

When I retrieved Azure from the kennel, I had Coffee-dog with me. The heat here has been unrelenting, and even with the car running, I did not want to leave him outside waiting for me as I completed paperwork, wrote out checks and waited for the kennel people to gather Azure and her belongings. I snapped a leash on Coffee, just for looks, and in we went. There were other people in the waiting area as I was finishing up the paperwork and payment portion of our visit, so I asked if I could go to the back to collect Azure. Giving me a knowing look, the kennel tech agreed.

I could see through the window in the door as the kennel tech was jerked around the corner and began hurtling down the hall towards us, a white bag with Azure’s puzzle ball, Charlie Bear treats, and the only other remaining chew we sent along, a cow hoof, flailing around in the air. They burst through the door, and when Azure saw me, she started jumping and twisting and jerking the young woman around like a rag doll. With her hair flying in all directions, the woman looked me in the eye and promptly let go of Azure’s leash.

I dropped Coffee’s needless leash, and placed my hands all over Azure, working to calm her, get her attention, and focus her so she would look at me and begin the process of taking commands. By the time I was able to render some sanity to the area, the leashes were a tangled mess, but Azure was following her “sit” command, and I was knelt on the floor holding her in what may look to uninformed third parties like a head-lock, rubbing her head and chest. Now, my hair was flying in all directions and I was lathered into a nice sweat. Glad to have his one true love back, Coffee was sitting with his hip pressed to hers, wagging his tail maniacally with his tongue lolling out from the effort of trying to stay above the fray.

The kennel tech continued to look stunned. I apologized and explained that she gets a little hyper. She responded with a derisive laugh which sounded a lot like the air being squeezed out of a chew-toy, “When I brought her out and she saw you, that was actually the calmest she has been all week. I had no idea she was capable of this.”

Oh yeah, she is capable of plenty. In between naps, that is.

Neurotic

Does it seem excessive to feel compelled to impose a three-page limit for the kritter instructions for the house/pet sitter who will be left in charge as K and I take a weeklong sojourn for education and world exposure purposes?

The page limit was not so much a spoken restriction as something that I must have held in my subconscious as I was re-formatting the instructions for clarity, precision, comprehensiveness and readability. My internal editor was saying, “Oh, if you eliminate that carriage return, it won’t take up as much space.” I thought to myself, "Hmmm. . . I wonder what the margins are set at?" And then it dawned on me just exactly what I was doing – trying NOT to look as neurotic about the care and feeding of the krewe as I AM.

After we met with the house-sitter last week and walked her through the “routine,” I stood and held my breath, expecting she would run screaming from the trailer. She giggled and asked if we would mind if she used the washer and dryer, which of course we don’t. She could open a laundry business here at thetrailer for all we care, just so long as the krewe are well-attended.

Here is another random and unnecessary confession: until K moved into the trailer, I didn’t own a washer or a dryer. I would leave my dirty clothes in a basket on a chair inside the door, and a laundry fairy would come to the house, pick up the basket, and return it a few days later with clean, folded clothes inside. I know good and well I was old enough to do my own laundry. Then again, I was also probably old enough that I should have known Scooby Doo was a Great Dane.

The final page count: four.

Single spaced.

In my defense, the carriage returns were re-inserted, and margins were left at the standard one inch.

World's Greatest Big Sister

As much as she pushes my buttons, Azure has to be credited with the ability to bring out the best in us.

Her boundless energy keeps me active. Her enthusiastic destruction has helped us identify the highest quality chew toys. She keeps toys that would otherwise repose at the bottom of the toy box in a state of constant rotation. As noted in a previous post, she has unbound me from my ridiculous idea of the private ownership and excessive acquisition of shoes.

Had it not been for Azure, we would not have realized that Trinity makes a great big sister.

There is no shortage of appropriate chew toys here at MisFit Farm. We have dog food, treats and toys drop-shipped in multiples. For every toy or chew-bone, there are generally two or three replicates available for the taking. This matters not to Azure, who is convinced that every toy or chew-bone Trinity selects is the absolute-most-fabulous-one-and-only-most-desired object in creation.

Azure may be on the other side of the room, deeply engrossed in the destruction of some innocent object, and from the moment she realizes Trinity has something – anything – the purpose of her life becomes to dispossess Trinity of her engagement.

Azure begins this process by hovering. She does a mean imitation of the Snoopy-vulture look, which Trinity is generally able to ignore. Deciding that her elevation is the reason her demands have not been fulfilled, Azure then drops to the floor and army-crawls as close as she can get to Trinity. Finding it difficult to continue her processing of the object of Azure’s interest with Azure’s nose pressed against hers, Trinity will then turn away. Shocked at Trinity’s rudeness, Azure bolts upright and begins articulating her displeasure, audible to everyone but her.

She will continue with this series of rejoinders until, driven nearly to insanity, Trinity will relinquish the object of Azure’s momentary obsession.

Azure settles into Trinity’s spot with a satisfied look and the object of her affection. Trinity inevitably retires to her chair with a sigh and a resigned look cast our way.

Is it ever enough for the good big sister to be acknowledged for being a good big sister?

I'm So Happy, I Could Bleed. . .

K felt that it was necessary to clarify from an earlier post that we are not the family who could not afford to provide Emmett with adequate veterinary care. Of course, we are not above using home remedies when necessary.

Ever since Emmett’s tail emerged from its position tucked under his body, he has walked a very fine line between happy enough and painfully happy. Periodically, he experiences a burst of the painful variety of happy, and the result is a mangled, bloody tail. The next step is blood smears across the wall, on the dryer, over the front of the refrigerator, along the knees of pants, etc. . .

Emmett has an amazing capacity for happiness. I have stepped into a wag where his tail hit me so hard, it nearly brought me to tears. We took him with us to visit K’s brother and his family. Her two-year-old niece complained loudly at one point, “Make him stop wagging me!” It is these power wags that sometimes result in physical damage to Emmett, as well as others.

If left unchecked, we have found it necessary to affix the outside of a very large syringe to the tip of his tail, to provide a “splint” and extra protection for healing. The unfortunate side effect of this arrangement is the welts and bruises experienced by others who are standing in the way of this most enthusiastic and most powerful wag. Otherwise, we keep plenty of this self-adhesive veterinary gauze on hand, apply a generous amount of hydrogen peroxide followed with a slathering of Neosporin, and wrap up Emmett’s powerful, stinging, gleeful tail for a healing period.

No Such Thing as Plan A

As is usually the way of the world, neither scenario A or scenario B played out as I had planned.

K arrived home late last night, exhausted and completely incapable of processing another event, activity or anything other than the exuberance every last inhabitant of the trailer was expressing upon her entrée through the door. I was jazzed; my preferred plan A was coming to fruition!

I woke up this morning, filled with the anticipation of a kid on Christmas morning, only five hundred times worse. I imagine my father must have felt this same way a thousand times over every Easter as he watched the agonizing process of my sister and me looking for the hidden Easter eggs. Inevitably, we would miss one or two, which would be found at a much later date in a much less appetizing state.

I was beginning to think this morning that I, too was destined for this agony. Like Sisyphus, doomed to push the boulder up the hill and helplessly watch it roll back down, I was growing more and more certain that none of the parties to my big surprise were going to cooperate. The boys, Tumnus II and Digory, are so docile that, unlike the other kids who have resided in the trailer-side kennel, they don’t cry out a lot. I made up reasons to go outside and try to stir them up. I repeatedly looked out the window at them, encouraging them to say hello, feed me, jump in a lake, anything. . . to no avail. K got up briefly, but retired back to bed, exhausted, and fell back asleep, certain to incorporate any kid calls I could coerce from the boys directly into a dream.

When K finally made her way to the window and saw them there, she was breathless, speechless, giggling, crying tears of joy. She did that absolutely adorable thing where she covers her mouth with both hands and squeezes her eyes shut.

Phoebe and her husband have really done a phenomenal job with these boys. They are as sweet and as tame as can be. We took them out into the yard, and then they walked all the way around the pond without leashes. They just followed K along, stopping to graze and sample various and sundry leaves and greeneries along the way.

I was able to catch some video footage:

So, although my “picture perfect” image of how everything would go once again fails to predict the actual course of events here at the farm, I got plenty else that turns out to be better than I could ever have imagined.

A Home-coming Surprise

No, this is not a Siamese goat as the latest edition to MisFit Farm.

These two cute little fellows, and as shown here:

there are two of them, were brought to the Farm this very morning as a surprise birthday gift for K. Thanks to laws against driving while logging on to the Internet, K. hopefully will not see this dispatch from MisFit Farm before tomorrow.

I always thought I was good at keeping a secret. This has been absolutely the hardest thing to do. Logistically, it was a snap. With K out of town and a very, very thin story about running to look at the pens at an exotic poultry farm with our neighbors, Steve and Carolyn, the aspiring exotic bird breeders, to get an idea of what the proper pens should be built like, grabbing a few hours of un-accounted-for time was easy.

This ruse would place me out of pocket long enough to drive to Florence, KS and back, and was boring enough to not elicit too many follow-up questions from K that will require heaping tall tales on top of tall tales. It has been the almost-slips in casual conversation that have nearly busted me. An offhand comment about the ridiculous price of gas at a Lawrence gas station nearly prompted a comparison to the price of gas on the turnpike. Which, I should not know because I would not theoretically have taken the turnpike for any reason today, and which, for those interested, is $.20 more expensive in Lawrence.

These guys came from the same place where we have obtained the rest of our herd. They are full-bred fainters, born March 2nd. They are not brothers, but they were born within minutes of each other and have been fast friends since then. When I pulled up at the Janzen’s farm, they were both out loose just following Phoebe around in the yard. Phoebe was absolutely correct, these guys are amazingly docile.

So here’s the ideal plan for the surprise: K should get home very late tonight. With any luck, it will be late enough that it will be too dark to see into the pen we have set up where they are staying. The boys should be asleep for the night, so they won’t make any noise, and we will just mosey on into the house and into bed for the night. Tomorrow morning, as the sun is coming up, the boys will begin to cry. So just outside the bedroom window, there they will be. As our friend, Ev, pictured K’s home-coming like a Christmas morning, this is how I envision the ideal surprise goat discovery. I have this picture of K rushing outside in her bathrobe, grinning ear-to-ear, baby goats scrambling all over her lap.

Just in case this scenario plays itself out, I have cut back all the cockleburs. This is the voice of experience speaking: there is nothing worse than cockleburs in terrycloth.

The other potential scenario is that K gets home tonight and is unusually alert and observant. She notices something in the kennel, goes over to check it out, and finds her birthday surprises. Then she rushes into the kennel, grinning ear-to-ear, baby goats scrambling all over her lap.

Either way, I win. K is homecoming, ear-to-ear grinning, baby goats scrambling, dogs dancing, life is good.

Cinder-Emmett

My paternal biological family lives in Hawa’ii. I was visiting them about five years ago, and among the many, many gifts of aloha I received was bar-none the largest dog collar I have ever seen. Its intended recipient was my boy, Coffee, but he would have to balloon to double his size to fit it.

It is a gorgeous collar. It is leather, with impressions of turtles, or Hōnu, as they are called in Hawaiian, pressed around it. Hōnu are a symbol of luck to the native Hawa’iians.

Perhaps it is a deep-seated psychological dysfunction that makes me associate the leather collars with boy-dogs, but after it didn’t fit Coffee-dog, I just held onto it; I guess I must have been waiting for the right boy to come along. I didn’t try it on Mercy or Trinity when they came. When our foster boys, Clapton and Alistair, came, I tried it on each of them, and although it “fit,” it didn’t seem quite right.

Emmett had been here for about three weeks before I tried it on him. It fit in every sense of the word. Naturally, it was sized just the way I like collars, not big enough to slip over his head, but plenty loose in case it is caught in underbrush. The color, which looked strange against Clapton and Alistair’s black coats, seems tailor-made for Emmett’s dappled merle. As he has worn it in multiple splash-fests into the pond, the collar has darkened and it now takes effort to discern the turtles, but it looks better on him with each passing day. We know the turtles are there, and that seems to be enough.

Somehow, wearing a “lucky” collar suits Emmett. Were he a human, he would religiously purchase Powerball © tickets, fully expecting that his day would come. Until then, he would be happy living with a family who couldn’t afford to get him adequate veterinary care, in a crowded trailer brimming with love, on a farm with room to run and a pond, or any other place he landed.

I have no doubt in my mind that Emmett could love anybody as much as he loves us. But I don’t know that there is any place in the world that would fit quite as well.

Good Girl, Azure (good enough, at least)

K is out of town for the week, so the dogs have been left to my care and control, such as it is.

K’s work schedule is . . . flexible. As a freelance interpreter, she tends to go where the work takes her, when it takes her. I have a basic 8 to 5 Monday through Friday gig, which can have a tendency to stretch a little beyond. This is all to explain that the dogs have human companionship, thanks to K’s job arrangements, for a goodly part of each and every day. Although Azure has slowly earned the trust of being left out of her crate overnight, we rarely afford her this luxury for the brief periods she is unattended by humans during daylight hours.

Even when we are here, it is sometimes difficult to keep up with her. Last night, as I was working on the computer, I was distracted by a ripping sound. I turned around to find Azure tearing at something soft-looking and day-glow green. As she and I were contemplating one another, me thinking, “what the dickens is she destroying now?” and trying to process. . . green. . . soft . . . tearing, she was coolly regarding me thinking, “what the dickens is she looking at now?”

And then my beer-adled mind put the pieces together: green, soft, tearing. . . my neoprene beer koozie from Devil’s Tower, Wyoming!!!!! I jumped up, snatched it from her, salvaged what I could, and decided that I didn’t really need that one portion of the koozie anyhow. I tried to amuse myself by chanting “The devil dog ate Devil’s Tower,” but no one else seemed particularly entertained.

When K is home, Azure doesn’t need to spend substantial amounts of time in her crate. K is, as mentioned previously, out of pocket, and here I am with my silly job that keeps us in these luxurious accommodations and kibble. Today was an especially intense day: I had a trial, meetings stacked end-to-end, and then an after-hours evening meeting with a group that is long overdue. Azure was facing the specter of a very long day in the crate. As I began to calculate it up, it was looking like a veeeeeeerrrryyyy long day to be left in a crate.

So I made the executive decision to leave her out of her crate for the day. We have a doggy door and a large fenced-in area. I still don’t like to leave the kids alone for too awful long, but today I had very little choice in the matter. I scoured the house for all things within reach and tempting for a destructive she-devil to shred, and filled with the dissonance of temerity and necessity, I left behind a wealth of stuffed Kong toys, bones, and pig ears, and off I went to work, a hopeful mantra chanted under my breath.

As I walked up to the front door of the trailer this evening, I was admonishing myself to visualize a positive outcome. I was squeezing my eyes closed with the effort I building the mental image of the usual toys strewn across the living room floor absent any un-toy objects. I opened the door and slipped in over the baby gate to meet a crazy, jumping, gurgling, licking mass of happy babies. A quick look around the room was quickly followed by a sigh of relief and unleashed any inhibitions I had been exercising in my greeting.

The casualty of the day was the toe of one of a pair of my shoes, which was then joined by the other shoe because what really was I going to do with just one un-chewed shoe. For the record, the shoe had to be removed from a hanging shoe tree to meet its demise.

All-in-all, I was not displeased with Azure’s performance. Of course, after the attempted assault on the Devil’s Tower koozie, she had nowhere to go but up.

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

Despite my mother’s exhortations to the contrary, we all have a job here at MisFit Farm. In a Maslowe-ian sense, I am in charge of primal needs: physiological, i.e., food and shelter. It isn’t always sexy, but it’s my job, and I think I am reasonably good at it and I like it.

On a good, aspirational day I can bleed over to the secondary needs: safety and security, if only because I am one crazy little chick who will mess you up if you mess with my family. When a wild critter ate our chickens, I tore through the barn like blazes reinforcing walls, doors and ceilings to prevent further carnage. On some level, I share this role with the dogs. My mother commented the other day that she would come to visit more oftem, but she is intimidated by all these dogs. When I told my sister this story, she guffawed and said, “I didn’t think anything intimidated Mom.” Suffice it to say that the notion that an unwanted visitor would dare breach the threshold of our space doesn’t keep either of us awake at night.

As we have pointed out in other places, the goats’ job is to keep us from being enveloped in overgrowth. Charlie and Miss May, the cats, keep the barns free of rodents and snakes (mostly). Trinity makes everyone feel welcomed and loved. Mercy keeps us all in our paces. Coffee gets me to work every day. Skeeter alerts us to impending foul weather. Emmett holds us up with the sheer magnitude of his lean. Azure; well, she keeps us on our toes.

K is the “higher order” needs satisfier. In Maslowe’s hierarchy, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization are in her realm of household fulfillments.

K is chief dog treat-er. K is the head ice-creamer dish-er.

She praises the dogs as they all take their morning pee breaks. She calls me in the middle of the day to remind me that there is sanity in the world.

K signs “good dog” to Azure with such an alarming frequency and intensity, I worry she will rub a spot off her jawbone. (I can’t ever tell if this praise is delivered as an affirmation or as an aspiration.) She reminds me that my belief that “we can do better” in this world is not a criticism, but a statement of hope.

K’s creativity and sense of aesthetic keeps us in ready supply of matching leash/collar combinations and reminds me to do silly little things like brush my teeth, put on deodorant, and stain-treat the shirt I was wearing when the goats jumped up on my back.

So what happens when there is a vacuum in those higher order needs?

We take our walks like we always do. We run and splash in the pond. We get our twice-daily kibble, sometimes with a special addition like scrambled eggs. We perfunctorily deliver our animal crackers and raisins to the goats. We pick vegetables from the garden that just aren’t as much fun to eat without her, so we can or freeze them. We joke about eating buffalo wings and beer, but really, that is dinner. We mow the lawn, water the garden, clean the house and do laundry the old-fashioned way: looks like enough to make a load, toss ‘em in there! Azure is willing to tolerate my presence, since it means she can sleep in the people bed, and as long as I keep the kibble coming.

In other words, we survive until that time when she comes home and she smiles and fills this place with her sunshine, her scent and her softness. Then, we thrive.

It's 3 a.m., I must be lonely

In a nightly homage to Rob Thomas and his old pals in Matchbox 20, Mercy has developed the mid-night ritual of a 3:30 a.m. barkfest. Some nights, she wanders outside to share her barking with the wide open sky and all neighbors, friend and foe. Some nights, she makes her pronouncements from the comfort of “her” sleeping couch.

Azure has earned enough trust that she is not relegated to her crate to sleep at night, and some times, Mercy’s barking must be loud enough for Azure to hear, so Azure stirs and joins in on the fun. The difference is that Mercy can hear me when I shout, “Hey, knock it off!” from the bedroom. Azure, being deaf, can’t and doesn’t.

We have modified sleeping arrangements here at the Farm, so Skeeter, Emmett and most nights, Coffee, sleep in the bedroom with us, safely behind a two-baby-gate pile-up in the doorway. This leaves Trinity the insistent snuggler, Mercy, and Azure on the non-bedroom side.

Whether we are fortunate enough to escape the 3:30 a.m. barking or not, we are always entreated to a 5 a.m. wake up call as Trinity stands outside the bedroom door, peering through the gates and calling out for her buddy, Emmett. Trinity doesn’t bark, so much as she articulates. Her communication is occasionally punctuated by a bark, but mostly it more closely resembles talking. There is a grumble, but not a growl. There are long, guttural sounds and variations in pitch and tone. And for a teacup Dane, she has one heckuva’ low voice which amuses me at all other times that are not 5 a.m.

Trinity begins exercising her voice at 5 a.m., seemingly directed at her best pal, Emmett, more so than us. Emmett then wakes up, begins nuzzling my face, arm, back, or any other part that is handy and exposed, and begins his responding whine.

If I were fluent in dog, I believe the conversation would go something like this:

T: Psssst [stage whisper] Emmett! You up?

E: [High pitched whine] Trin! Why do you always sneak up on me like that? You know I’m sardined in here between the bed and the wall.

T: Sorry. I missed Mercy’s 3 a.m. sentinel. Hey, are the bi-peds stirring? Check that one’s pulse, will you?

E: Well, let me ask them first. I don’t want to be accused of “bad touch.” [recommences high pitched whining until a hand pokes out to pet him]

T: So what’s the prognosis?

E: Alive - but trying to placate me with head patting.

T: Oh no! Don’t give in to that! Resist! Revolt! It is time for us to run and play!

E: I could try to turn my head and twist her arm until she gurgles. That usually works.

T: Try pushing your head up there some more. Your nose will fit under the covers. If that doesn’t work, place a paw on the bed.

E: Ah, here come her feet. Time for me to do my happy dance under them! Here we come, it is time to run!

Whereupon I grab my morning chore clothes, manipulate the baby gates in pig-chute fashion to
shepard bedroom dogs into the living room while keeping living room dogs out. On my
way up the hall, I slip into the bathroom, where I am joined by four dogs, all
happy and dancing and chattering their various morning incantations.

And so begins another glorious day at MisFit Farm.

A Date with the Nephew

We took my precocious nephew (referenced previously) and K’s very quiet, very sweet 14-year-old niece for dinner and a movie this evening. The following story puts a fine point on the exchange from the preceding post and may explain a lot for the reading audience.

[We are driving in the car on the way to dinner. I am driving, K is riding shotgun, C and K2, nephew and niece, are riding in the backseat.]

C: “Knock, knock.”

Me: “Who’s there?”

C: “Alaska”

Me: “Alaska who?”

C: “Alaska to shut the door one last time!” [erupts into laughter and is joined by me
and the other victims riding in the car]

C: “What do you call cheese that doesn’t belong to you?”

Me: “I don’t know, what do you call it?”

C: “Na-cho cheese! [erupts again into laughter that is joined with hesitation by me and the other victims in the car] Get it??!??! NOT YOUR cheese?!?!?! Like – it is not yo’ cheese?!?!?!?" [more laughter eruptions]

Me: “You shouldn’t have to explain the punch line.” [Cedric continues to laugh]

C: “Yeah, but it’s NOT YOUR cheese. So what do you call chips that don’t belong to you?”

Me: “Na-cho chips. [no laughter] Get it??!??! NOT YOUR chips?!?!?! Like – it is not yo’ chips?!?!?!?” [we both laugh and the other victims in the car join in]

C: “I got it – it’s just the same as not ‘yo cheese.” [we laugh and the other victims in the car chortle uncomfortably]

K: “You know, the apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Me: “I know, he is just like his father.”

Anyhow, we went to see Ratatouille. It was a delightful film that outlasted the attention span of everyone in the theatre under the age of 20 by about 20 minutes or so. The story line also seemed a little esoteric for most young ‘uns. It is about a rat who wants to become the greatest chef in Paris. I think you have to bring quite a bit to the party to get totally on board with that story. I mean, I myself was a hard core Iron Chef © fan when I used to do the whole TV gig, and that yummy Rachel Ray appears to be at a zenith of popularity, but I don’t know that “chef” is taught as part of the career day curriculum at most schools.

C had already seen Spiderman 3 (twice), Shrek 3, Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer (and yes, it must be referred to thusly every single time it is talked about), and any other plausible seven-year-old boy films, so that is how we ended up at Ratatouille. Having grown up in the age of “The Secret of Nimh,” I was just glad for the opportunity to re-visit the image of rats in theatrical performances. I think this film should do wonders for their image.