Sometimes I Disgust Myself

I'm sitting in my bed in a pile of sand that fell off of Buddy's fur during the day while he slept in my bed. I was running late this morning so I didn't make the bed, which meant that he got to do his favorite thing which is sleep directly on the bottom sheet on my side of the bed. The really disgusting part of this story is the thought that ran through my head as soon as I sat down this afternoon and noticed that my not-too-clean sheets were also infiltrated with dog sand. Unbidden my own voice entered my head, "God. I hope I remember to shake these sheets out before I climb into bed tonight." Apparently, it's not enough that my sheets are not-so-very-clean. It's not even enough that they are filled with sand transported by dog butt from bottom of the Mississippi river. Nope, until I caught myself thinking dirty thoughts about shaking them out and letting them go another night, I was STILL not going to wash them. Nasty.

What I Love About Minneapolis

Well, one of the things I love anyway: The dog park.

Today, Buddy and I walked for almost two hours, taking the high ground over our flooded paradise. Below us, a boat of fisherpeople floated past the point where we usually walk.

I clutched a rope to drag myself up a muddy hill to the bluff trail, and instead of trying to make our way down to the mucky bottom land where the waterfall falls, we walked above the falls and past them to a part of the park we rarely visit.

I caught proof of the approaching spring on film (or pixels anyway), and despite knowing that Minnesota expects snow on Monday, my soul lifted to see blue, blue skies between branches covered with small buds. Soon, soon, friends, we will be able to say that we have triumphed over another winter here in the great white north. And this year was the first one in a long time whose winter really earned us our spring.


Oh, we also did not molest any government property. Even though that government property was totally asking for it.

The Things I do for Love

My dog is a lovely soul with a talent for getting loose. When I first put him in my yard, he pulled at the back gate until he managed to separate the chain link from the fencepost, and then he squeezed his lean black lab body through the gap and ran wildly through the streets of the neighborhood. I'd get calls from the nursing home two blocks away, "Hello, I'm calling about your dog, Buddy, he's here - oh - now he's running. He's headed east on 38th street, if you want to catch him." I want to catch him. Desire is never the problem. The problem is that he has four predator legs, and I only have two. He has the lean muscular body of a hunter, and I have only the short bursts of speed of an urban animal. Perfect for catching buses. Not so good for chasing after determined runaway dogs.

When I replaced the gates, he tunneled, like a canine version of Tim Robbins's Shawshank Redemption character. He found a weak spot below the fence which led him to Bev's yard next door, where a conveniently placed rise in the ground gave him just enough lift to clear her fence with a single leap. He was free, long lean body stretched out against the ground. Meanwhile, I stumbled after him, lamely offering treats to his departing figure. What good my biscuits compared to the sweet, sweet taste of liberty?

I tried to get inside his head. I became a dog whisperer of sorts. Perhaps, I thought, he needed more exercise, and so I took him to the dog park to tire him out, and then I watched him flee from the back yard less than an hour after he had run himself weary in the woods.

Perhaps, I surmised, his abandonment issues forced him to run from me. He had to leave me before I could leave him. Hadn't I, myself, practiced this very philosophy on more than one unsuspecting man? And so I lavished him with affection. I tried to gain his trust through pats behind the ears and scratches of the belly. He took the love in the same calm way he takes all forms of affection. "I deserve this," he seems to say. "I'm a good dog." Instead of me gaining his trust, he gained mine. I got lax in the pulling closed of gates and doors, and he pushed past me, mischievous glint in his eyes, "Catch me if you can," he said, "I'm the gingerbread dog."

And so we have reached the age of Loving Distrust. Buddy does all of his business on the end of a tightly held leash. Two to three times a day, I hold that leash, and walk the streets of my neighborhood, and, much as I grumble, it's good for me. However, we have had some dark and cold days here in Minnesota this winter, and so, with Buddy lifting his paws gingerly off of the frozen pavement, I wrap myself in layer after layer of cashmere and down, soft and fluffy garments, covering my rock hard core, clenched like a fist against the goddamn cold. He stops to smell some other dog's pee, and I yank his leash a little too roughly. "Let's go, Buddy," I say, "it's too cold for this." He's waiting, as am I, for the days when we can stroll again through the neighborhood, with something more than irritability and cashmere to keep us warm.

PS There was a photo to illustrate. I can't get it from camera to computer. So imagine a picture of me in the dark, up to my eyeballs in cold-weather gear, in one of those photos you take of yourself from an arm's length away.
I give up. I'm buying a new digital camera tomorrow.

Independence Day

The neighborhood smells like gunpowder. Explosions surround us, small pops and larger ones, and shrieking spinning shouts. When my neighbors aren't throwing meat in the boulevard, I guess they are shopping for explosives and blowing shit up. Buddy hates the 4th of July. Not only does he have to live in some kind of war zone, but I leave him alone for the loudest part, because I just can't keep myself away from the party in Powderhorn just to comfort the dog. He didn't even eat his rawhide while I was away. Too scared. Also, he had let himself into the kitchen and the rawhide was in the living room. Why he was in the kitchen, I don't know, since it's Against the Rules and there was nothing there for him but dirty dishes anyway. The "how" he was in the kitchen has been solved. He jumps my 4 foot tall baby gate. I watched him do it when I returned from the fireworks, graceful in his disobedience. We'll see what kind of trouble he discovers when the baby gate is replaced with a real door. He'll probably take the opportunity to teach himself doorknob technology, and then I'll be sorry.

So, I am not quite packed for my trip. I leave on Sunday. The house is a wreck (dirty dishes rinsed in dog slobber all over the kitchen), and I have no idea what to expect when I get off that plane. This is the least prepared I have ever been for an overseas trip. I'm on my way to bed, so I can finish the packing and cleaning in the morning, before I spend my two hours in the library - and maybe pick up a travel guide that's actually helpful while I'm at it.

What am I doing? I'm going to be in Central Asia in three days, and I don't even know what that means. I guess this is what adventure feels like.

Gutter Meat

First let me say, I love my neighborhood. It's a place where young families and old people live side-by-side in stucco bungalows. It has a nice mix of ethnicities and sexual preferences. Most lawns are are littered with liberal lawn signs, and you actually see people out strolling the streets most seasons of the year. In fact, the other day, I was walking through the park, and I realized that you can tell what season it is by what sports the kids are playing. Right now, for example, it's baseball season, but the basketball hoop is still seeing a lot of action, too.

So, what's the drawback? Well, in a neighborhood where people care about their lawns and keep up with their perennials, I am shocked again and again by how much meat and bones are strewn about in their boulevards. I wouldn't even notice, if I didn't have Buddy, but I do have Buddy, and, seriously, neighbors, why wouldn't you take those rib bones to the trash? What possesses you to throw a chicken bone down next to your tree? Why would you so carelessly toss aside that hamburger and leave it in the gutter?

It's confusing. Is there really this much meat detritus all over my fair city or is my neighborhood just full of extraordinarily careless carnivores? At any rate, it slows down our walks and contributes to Buddy's ongoing digestive dramas. I mean, we can't expect him to walk on by that pile of delicious fast food wrappers without sampling the leftovers (and digging into the paper itself), can we? Somehow I think I'll have better luck convincing my neighbors to clean up after their protein feasts.

Secure the Home

And so I thought, "That Buddy, he sure does suck, but at least he's already done all of the bad things he ever does this week, so he can't possibly do anything else." Then I went to a knitting meetup where I knit with a bunch of strangers in a coffee shop. While I was gone, he ripped the entire baby gate off the wall. He didn't just bust it open at the hinges, like he usually does, because I had bungie corded it shut. No, he had to pull the whole thing down.

Here's the current state of the dog food security, if you're keeping score:
The food is in a bag.
The bag is inside of a metal trash can.
The metal trash can is inside of a closed cabinet.
The cabinet is dead-bolted.
The cabinet is inside of a closet.
The closet door is tightly closed.
The closet is in the kitchen.
The kitchen was protected by a baby gate.
(And the green grass grows all around, all around.)

Today Buddy destroyed the gate. When he masters doorknobs and deadbolts, he takes over the world and we're all screwed.

And, even just writing these words has ensured that no one, ever, will dog-sit again. I guess it's true what they say: you have to be careful what you put on the Internet.

Crap! Oh! Crap!

It's hard to believe that only this week I was telling everyone to get a dog. I take it all back. You don't need a dog. Fish are the new dogs. You need fish. Dogs are nothing but trouble.

The last three days have been hard ones to own Buddy. He broke through my latest fencing technology (a clothes hanger bent to hold shut the back gate) on Saturday, and ran free in the neighborhood for an hour, until he finally got tired and let me capture him again, minutes before I had to depart the house for a yoga class.

Last night I went to the co-op for a long-overdue shopping trip, because I had no human food in the house. I was gone for less than an hour. During that time, Buddy broke through the baby gate into the kitchen, somehow managed to open the closet door, made a mess of my garbage, and ate half a bag of dog food. I got home and his midsection was all swelled up like a balloon. One thing is predictable about Buddy and that is that when he eats half a bag of dog food, it usually comes out the stinky end. I took him on extra long walks last night and this morning, knowing that it wasn't enough. But what can you do? I have to work, and I had to attend an after school meeting, and I had to wait around afterwards for a student who promised to come in for help (and who didn't), so by the time I got home, at 5:20, it was too late. Buddy had lost his shit. Literally. On my floor.

I'm dog-sitting for a standard poodle, so my only thought was that I had to get the two giant dogs out of the house long enough that I could clean up after Buddy and make that awful stink go away, so I let the dogs loose in the yard, only remembering ten minutes later as I bagged up paper towels full of crap and mopped and re-mopped the floor, that Buddy had mastered my back gate. Too late. He was free in the neighborhood again. It was another hour before I managed to get him home.

So, tired, frustrated, and angry, and still smelling the stink, I let him into my house. He looked at me with sad brown eyes, "Aren't you going to feed me?" Yeah. Right. You'll be lucky if you ever eat again, Buddy.

My Buddy

I took the old dog to the vet today, because he was limping. I swear he was limping. This morning he didn't even want to stand up to follow me around the house. How was I supposed to know that it was some sort of quickly passing morning-time arthritis? As soon as we got to the vet, he turned frisky. He looked like a far younger dog. "See, Al, I'm fine. Let's go home now." Perhaps he caught some sort of a whiff of what happened to Stevie when I took her to the vet because she couldn't walk any more.

So anyway, he's not dying, even though I, of course, feel guilty for leaving him alone last weekend (and for the first week in August which he doesn't even know about yet, when he will experience his first time in a kennel.)

As for my other buddy, Mr. Issues, well, he called me today to let me know that he got hit by a car, and could I, please, give him a ride to the hospital to pick up some medical records from the ER docs for his real doctor. My thought, of course, was "What am I? A cab?" This was before I got the full sordid story. It turns out that the accident happened when he was in a real, actual cab, picked a fight with the cabbie about religion, and then got out of the cab and fled while it was stopped behind a turning vehicle. The cab driver then (allegedly by accident) ran him down. He's left with two sprained ankles, a concussion, and an injured back. According to his ambulance-chasing lawyer, he's actually in better shape, financially, if the cab driver did hit him by accident. If the cabbie meant to run him down, then it's no longer an accident and the insurance company washes their hands of the whole thing.

Never mind. It sounds like I'm making this shit up. Long story short, Buddy, the dog, will be fine, and Mr. Issues, well, who knows what is really going on in that world, but I did drive him around to do his errands and I didn't run him down with my car like a professional cab driver would.