Category: Pets Page 2 of 3

My dog’s stomach is growling. She had a batch o’ rib bones and now I can expect puddles of barbecued barf in my bed tonight. Disgusting, huh? But wait, there’s more.

This ten pound dog is by my side night and day. She’s lying snugged up next to me on the couch while I type, right in the path of the 340º heat blowing out of my laptop. She’s a heating pad strapped to my leg.

I generally like heat – love my car’s seat warmers. One of my relatives likes to drive my car when we go anywhere because it’s nicer, and in the winter I’ve got the seat warmer on. He’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, talking about his latest BM. Don’t ask me why.

“You should have seen what came out of me this morning.”

“I do NOT need to hear this,” I say.

“Black as coal and all of 12 inches, coiled up like a cobra, part of it floating like it was ready to strike.”

“STOP!”

“It was remarkable,” he’ll say. “Never seen anything like it. I got a picture of it here on my phone – take a look, you won’t believe it. Here, see? Owww, why is it so friggin’ hot? My nuts are roastin’!”

He says it every time we’re in the car – like the seat has launched a sneak attack against his scrotum.

As bad as his bodily function stories are, my dog barfing in the car while she’s sitting on my lap is worse. I hear this little burbing noise and a nano-second later she heaves, and there’s a puddle the size of a spilled glass of milk on my thigh – slimy and the color of the last nauseating thing she ate. Sometimes it’s grass in a clear slime like a sickening version of lemongrass soup. Other times it’s brown and lumpy.

The awful part is that you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be on the freeway going 65 mph when she Ralphs on me. I hear the sound, and I try to get her off my lap but I’m never fast enough. About the time I get my hands on her waist and snatch her up, I feel the warmth on my thigh, then the wetness.

Anyone who’s had bad timing snuggling a baby knows what that feeling is like. The baby’s happy and coochie cooing one minute, and the next minute you’ve got this foul wet vomity-smelling ooze heading south down your shirt.

At least the dog barf doesn’t smell so bad. Usually.

Oh my gosh. You talk about smells, I went into the ladies bathroom at the permit office the other day. Mercy! Women’s bathrooms, just after their morning coffee break, are worse than paper mills. Woo-whee! Brings tears to the eyes.

I don’t know what’s made me write about these things. Oh yeah, it was the dog’s growling belly, which led to this lament of the unwelcome bodily functions we all encounter daily, of which I seem to experience more than my fair share.

Yesterday was a gorgeous day so I decided to take my camera out and get some shots of spring flowers. I took my little Yorkie Poo along, and on the way to the park we passed a carwash, so I decided to give my car a bath.

My dog doesn’t like the carwash. She freaks out when the giant shammy cloth starts slapping against the car. I have to hold her and reassure her that the blue monsters are not going to get her, but she still shakes like a vibrator the whole time.

Yorkie Poos shake for any number of reasons. If they’re happy, they shake. If they’re nervous, they shake. My dog will shake if she needs to do #2 and no one’s jumping off the couch quick enough to suit her.

“Oh your poor little doggy must be cold,” people will say. It can be 90 degrees outside, but people see a vibrating dog and they think it’s shivering. Once my daughter’s friends were over and someone made a loud popping noise. Did I mention the dog shakes whenever anyone bounces a ball or pops a piece of bubble wrap or slams a door?

“Or your poor little doggy is scared,” one of the friends said, sounding like she was heartbroken. I wanted to cheer her up. “She shakes all the time. Do you have any aches and pains? I’ll press her against your back and you can get a free massage.” All the girls giggled about that, and I pressed my dog against one to show I was serious.

The dog shaking has nothing to do with the story I’m telling about the carwash, I just thought you might find it interesting.

So before I went through the wash I decided to vacuum the car. My dog is not nuts about vacuuming, either.  At home she tries to bite the vacuum cleaner. You’d think she’d just go to another room, but instead she plops right in the middle of the rug and waits for the vacuum to come close. She stands her ground, and when it gets inches away she lunges at it, baring little teeth that look like rice stuck into bubble gum, and tries to bite it. Of course the vacuum is too big but that doesn’t stop her. She would rip the thing like Henry the VIII tearing at a turkey leg if her mouth was bigger.

At the car wash, they had a really nice vacuum hose with a wide, narrow end that you can get into tight places between the seats. I love those things. This baby knew how to suck, too. Pine needles held on like leeches but they were no match.

I was really getting into vacuuming the driver’s side floor while my dog was on the passenger seat eyeing the vacuum like it was some alien beast encroaching on her territory. When I went to vacuum the passenger side, she dove onto the floor and attacked the thing. Because the nozzle was narrow, she could get it in her mouth and she clamped down like an alligator. I tried to wrench it away but she held on like it was a juicy bone and wouldn’t let go. Meantime seconds were ticking away on the timer and I didn’t have any more quarters. I kept trying to wrestle it out of her mouth but she hung on like it was one of her tug of war rags. The vacuum was sucking up her ear but she didn’t care. All those years of attacking the giant vacuum at home and getting nowhere – she wasn’t about to let this thing get the best of her.

Desperate to finish before my time ran out, I forced the nozzle down onto the carpet and moved it back and forth, dragging the dog along, back and forth, back and forth, until I got the passenger floor done. I jerked the hose out of her mouth and was headed for the back seat when she pounced on it again, teeth bared like a piranha. I got her tucked under my arm and freed the vacuum again and lunged for the back seat. I worked like a dervish on those little back seat squares, trying to beat the timer. When I got done, the thing was still sucking so I let the dog have another go at it. She sprang forward like she’d been catapulted and clamped down, tugging with all nine pounds of her might. The motor gave four or five warning beeps and the vacuum stopped. The dog let go immediately. She’d killed it. I guess there’s no sport in gnawing a dead vacuum.

I checked the nozzle for damage and, I’m sad to say, there wasn’t even a scratch. The pitiful little dog chewed and tugged with all her might and didn’t even make a dent. But she didn’t know that. She thought she’d killed the hissing beast.

When we went through the carwash, little Miss Mighty Dog didn’t shake. Not even once.

My brother was over today and I was telling him about my dog getting the canine version of a torn ACL and needing to be on bed rest for 3 weeks.

“How do you put a dog on bed rest?” he inquired. “And how did it happen?”

“She was chasing a squirrel and came in limping.”

“Aren’t you afraid she’ll catch the squirrel and get hurt?” he wanted to know.

I wasn’t. “Squirrels are pretty fast.”

“Squirrels are pretty fierce,” he said.

Which I totally agree with. We had this squirrel one time that the kids befriended by feeding it nuts. It was a very fast squirrel. When it saw the kids come outside, it would outrun a Ferrari to get over to the nut. They decided to name him Rocket.

We all became great friends with Rocket. We have big windows down to the patio on the back of our house and he used to come up to the window, stand on his hind legs, and look cute until someone came out with a nut. What a charming little rascal he was.

Between the three of us, Rocket was getting nuts about every half hour. If someone was over, and there were always kids over, it was probably more because the new people wanted to see what the squirrel would do. Rocket stood on his hind legs and let you hand him a nut. At first he’d scurry away with it, but he got to where he’d just sit there and eat hoping for another one.

After a couple of months of this, we went on vacation for a week, and when we got back home, Rocket was out front waiting on us. He had his arms crossed over his chest and was thumping his leg, saying, “Where the heck have you been? I’ve been starving around here.” We have a rock wall, and my daughter, who was about 6 or 7, saw Rocket on the wall when we drove up. She jumped out of the car and ran over to say hi to him. He reached out, apparently thinking she was going to give him a treat. She reached her hand out like you’d do to pet a kitty, and Rocket, seeing the hand was empty, bit her hard on the finger.

She screamed one of those high-pitched little girls’ screams that can break glass. Blood started running down her hand, and she started sobbing, Rocket was at a little distance chattering his disdain, and I was freaking out thinking about rabies. Friggin’ squirrel.

I washed her up, called the pediatrician, and found out that there was nothing to worry about. “Kids get bitten by squirrels all the time. Just put some Neosporin and a Band-Aid on it and she’ll be fine.”

I took a stand that day. No snot nosed squirrel was going to bite my child and get away with it. I told the children, “From now on, no more nuts for Rocket. It’s made him mean.” My daughter was fine with it, the throbbing finger a reminder of the violence of Mother Nature. My son didn’t think it was fair because he loved entertaining his friends, but he gave in. From then on Rocket got nothing from this family, in spite of his cute little begging.

A few days later I walked out on my patio to do something. It was summer and I was barefoot – maybe I was dashing out to take out the trash. Rocket zoomed out of the tree and ran down on the patio right in front of me.

“You can forget about the nuts, mister,” I said. “You shouldn’t have bit one of us. No more nuts for you.” I felt like the soup Nazi on Seinfeld, and it was a good feeling.

I didn’t realize the squirrel could speak English. I started walking back toward the house, and he ran up behind me and bit me on the heel. Hung on, too. I’m shaking the friggin’ thing and it’s got me by it’s beaver teeth, clamped on like a leech and not about to turn loose. I screamed and gave one good shake, which sent him flying. I dashed through the patio door before he could regroup and strike again.

When I calmed down I was livid. Friggin squirrel. I had blood on my heel. The thing had drawn blood! If I could have caught it I would have strangled it until, well never mind.

Instead, I got a broom and went after him. He met my charge, coming right up to the end of the broom as if to say, “C’mon bitch. Bring it.”

“You better GET your ass up to the woods,” I said. Truth be told, I was a little intimidated. Those were sharp teeth, and the little crap was fearless. I feinted like I was going to poke him with the broom, and eventually he backed down, or more likely got bored. He headed to the grass. I followed, feeling brave. “And don’t come back either,” I shouted. He turned around and stood up like a grizzly bear, and I took a few steps backward. You never know how volatile a squirrel is going to be.

I didn’t go outside without the broom for days. Finally he figured he’d milked our gravy train as long as he could. It was getting to be Fall and he started doing the decent squirrel thing – collecting his own nuts. Crazy thing is, when his winter coat came in, it was all splotchy – like he had the mange. I secretly hoped that it was all those rich nuts we gave him that caused the problem. He was around all winter and spring, then I lost track of him. Now we have one million squirrels, all of them his offspring, I suppose. They come up to the window and taunt the dog. And now they’ve caused my dog to walk on 3 legs and probably require $2,000 worth of surgery. I see them out there laughing, and I bet their grandfather is up in a tree egging them on.

This dog of mine has some pretty interesting behaviors. For one, she tries to bury her food, especially if she doesn’t like it. Since there’s no dirt in the house, she pushes imaginary dirt in the direction of her food. Her head goes back and forth, the nose dipping down toward the floor then rising up as she pushes the “dirt” toward her dog bowl. If she doesn’t like what I’ve given her that day, she’ll push the dirt so hard that her nose bangs into the dog bowl and lifts it up off the tiles. It bangs back down just in time for her to raise it up again. This goes on for about a minute. Anywhere I am in the house, I hear this clomp clomp clomp sound and know what she’s up to. The more she hates the food, the longer and louder the bowl clomps. She wants that thing six feet under.

We have floor to ceiling windows in the back of our house, and we live in a wooded area, so there are deer, raccoons, crows, cats, and lots of squirrels tromping through the yard at any given time. The squirrels come down on the concrete patio and sidle right up to the window, teasing the poor dog, whose name is Shelley. She gets this high-pitched, excited bark and starts running around the window, which delights the squirrels. They come closer. When I hear the commotion, I come out of my office and sneak over to the front door so as not to tip off the squirrel, then whisper Shelley’s name. She darts over and I open the door as quietly as I can. She races out the door, around the side of the house, and tears across the patio after the squirrel, looking like a black bullet flying over the ground without legs because they’re moving too fast to be detected by the human eye. The squirrel flicks his tail in the air and heads for the trees, which are close enough that the squirrel always gets away. We have a giant maple tree with a crotch that she jumps into so she can stretch up the trunk and bark at the squirrel, which is flicking its tail just out of range. This happens several times a day. Those squirrels are having the time of their lives!

Another thing Shelley does is hide behind my legs when the kids want to pick her up. If they go to one side, she goes to the other. So they try that side, and she goes back to the other. “Mom, make her be still,” they say. Actually I’m on Shelley’s side, because they’ll just torment her. My son blows in her face to make her snap, and my daughter holds her on her back like a baby and talks to her, which she doesn’t like. So I stay out of it and make them catch her on their own. After a little while Shelley gets tired of going back and forth and starts barking ferociously, which delights my son because the dog is a black, 9 pound dust mop, and when she barks and snarls her white teeth look about as scary as grains of rice. It’s ludicrous that she acts like a tough character. My son will finally catch her, she’ll bite him, he’ll get mad and put her down, and life returns to normal.

Dogs are always leaving their scent everywhere. Luckily Shelley doesn’t do this in the house, but outside she’s like a water pistol, soaking everything in sight. I read once that dogs try to one up each other by making a squirt a little higher on the tree than the last dog. This is a definite disadvantage for small dogs like Shelley. She can’t possibly get a squirt as high as a German shepherd with legs that aren’t even six inches long. So she goes up to a tree and stands on her front legs like she’s doing a handstand and fires her shot off. It’s the silliest thing you’ve ever seen with those back legs up in the air. When she gets done she scratches the ground with all four legs like she’s trying to throw dirt on the other guy’s scent just in case she didn’t get high enough. She does it with such vengeance – really digging in and spraying little tufts of grass behind her several times, making sure she’s got the job done.

This dog is a delight to our home, and we love her. Right now she’s sitting on the chair beside me, patiently hoping that I’ll remember to toss the little yellow tennis ball that’s about the size of a golf ball so she can try to catch it on a bounce. Normal tennis balls are too big. Maybe I’d better go do that right now.