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Fights and Bites


Sep
06.11

Posted in It's A Dog's Life, Random | No Comments »

Maximus The Mini

Welcome to the Dog House.

We have a couple of new additions to the group.  My brother and sister-in-law have gone on vacation (they swear they’re coming back) and left their very own dynamic duo (Bru the Bruiser and Maximus the Mini) with us at Camp MWV.   This is not the first time they’ve come to stay with us and usually with their visits comes an assorted collection of hijinks and chaos.  I’ve written more than one blog on the subject.

But they haven’t been here for a while.  In fact, it’s been probably about a year since the Fantastic Four have all been together in the same room.  Or the same house.  They get along reasonably well.  Most of the time.  Some of the time.  Well, there was that once…

Anyway.  They arrived on Saturday and our first couple days went very well.  The most commonly heard phrases around the house were “Max, stop humping your sister” and “Bru, that’s a door.”

The biggest trouble we had was with the cats.  My cats are reluctantly used to my dogs.  They have learned to co-exist although Vader would be much happier if all dogs would simply cease to exist.  Needless to say, neither Fat Cat nor Vader reacted well to the sudden appearance of a miniature schnauzer and a saint bernard.  Max especially wouldn’t leave them alone so Sunday morning I was forced to relocate the cats to the Code Monkey’s (the guy formally known as The Man) office.  They are much happier now.  The Code Monkey, not so much.

Bru the Bruiser

But apart from that, things were going well.  I was even able to leave a fairly confident Code Monkey home with the entire group while I went to work on Sunday and again on Monday.  Things were going so well I was starting to worry that I wouldn’t have anything about which to blog.

Then came Monday afternoon.  We had just had two separate play sessions and had merged all four dogs together.  This same routine worked great on Saturday and again on Sunday so I don’t know what happened exactly on Monday but the girls (Bru and the Gator Girl) Got.  Into.  It.  One moment we were all friends and the next, there was a full fledged brawl in my kitchen.

So I waded into the middle of It and broke It up because that’s what I do.  I had successfully parted the two— or at least I thought I had.  They were separated but decided they weren’t quite finished with each other yet and wanted to go back for more.  Since I was between them, this meant that they ended up tagging me.  The Gator Girl bit my wrist while Bru ended up biting the same arm a little further up, just below my elbow.

It hurt.  It hurt a lot (truth be told, it still really hurts a lot).  So I shrieked.  I shrieked a lot.  Then I ended the fight.  Then I said some not nice words.  A lot of nice not words.

I’m not afraid of being bitten by dogs.  I’ve said that before.  I’ve been the person in this picture:


So being bitten is not a big deal to me.  But the big difference between that picture and what happened in my kitchen on Monday is the padding.  And, you know, the number of dogs attacking me.  When I do bite work with my Malinois, it’s only the one dog doing the attacking and I have some very nice padding to help cushion the blow.  I was not wearing my bite sleeve on Monday afternoon so now I have some very nice bruises forming.  And a slight loss of feeling in my pinky finger but really, what good are pinkies anyway?

The really good news is that neither Max nor Big felt the need to get involved.  Also, the girls have decided to call a truce.  I suspect my use of not so nice words followed by the Code Monkey’s use of not so nice words had a lot to do with this.  But whatever the reason, let’s just hope it lasts the rest of the week.

And I thought I wouldn’t have anything to blog about.

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The Good, The Bad and The Funny


Aug
25.11

Posted in It's A Dog's Life, Movies, Random, Work Schmerk, Writing | No Comments »

What’s this?  A new blog entry?  But it’s only been a day since I last posted.  How could this be?  Shouldn’t there be weeks in between posts?  Well, let’s just be grateful for small favors, shall we?

Today’s post, as you may have already gathered from my über clever title, is a bit of a hodgepodge blog as I explore some of the good, bad and funny things I’ve come across in the last day or so.

The Good:

Remember the Problem Scene I’ve been bitching and moaning about for the last millennium or so?  You do?  Great.  Well, guess what.  I kind of finished it.  I mean, it’s not the world’s greatest prose or anything but it’s a good solid draft that I feel comfortable leaving to marinate for a time while I move on to the next Problem Scene.  It’s not much in the way of progress but it still progress.  Woo.  Hoo.

The Bad:

Remember those five hundred shirts I said I had to fold yesterday?  Well, during today’s shift I was told that the Corporate offices had changed their minds and decided to make some other shirts the special deal of the week so I had to undo what I did yesterday and then fold five hundred different shirts.  The silver lining is that the new special shirts were taking up too much space in my stockroom.  Now they’re taking up less.

Yesterday, the Gator Girl (AKA, the Deadest Dog In Deadonia) cemented her status as the Most Evil Malinois In All The Land when she, for no reason apparent to the human eye, decided she hated Big’s left ear and tried to rip it off.  I stopped the fun before it got that far but Big did come away from the attack with an actual physical hole in his ear.  It took me an hour to get the bleeding to stop and then another three hours to scrub all the blood off all the walls, floors, cabinet doors and everything else (including myself) that managed to get hit by the splatter.  My house once again looked like a crime scene.  Dogs’ ears bleed like a sonofabitch.  On the bright side, the bleeding did eventually stop, I didn’t have to make yet another emergency vet visit and now Big can finally get those lovely hoop earrings he’s long coveted.

The Funny:

The sight of me, alone on the sales floor yesterday morning (and obviously forgetting I wasn’t alone in the store), wearing earbuds and singing Florence + The Machine’s Heavy In Your Arms at the top of my lungs. Later, the Floor Supervisor tried to get my attention and ended up scaring me half to death. Fortunately, I sing pretty well. The Floor Supervisor is one of my fans.

I had a lady come into the fitting rooms yesterday who wanted to try on a shirt featured on a mannequin.  The size she needed happened to be on the mannequin so I told her I’d take it off for her.  The woman said, “Great.  I can just steal that one and— Oh.  No, not steal it.  I would never steal it.  I don’t steal things.  I just want to try it on.  I promise.”

And last but not least… This video:

4 comments

Tuesday Trials


Jul
05.11

Posted in It's A Dog's Life | 4 Comments »

In my last post, I mentioned how my crazy little Gator Girl was sick.  Well, it didn’t go away.  It stuck around all weekend long so my weekend was spent making rice and boiling chicken and getting out of bed every two hours during the night to take her outside so I didn’t have to spend my days scrubbing my rugs.  So this morning I called the Best Vet In The World and left a message on his voicemail begging him to see and cure my dog because obviously, something unusual was happening here.

He called me back about an hour later and I explained all the no fun we’d been having.  He told me to bring her in and, if possible, bring along a stool sample.  This made me laugh.  My dog had done little else other than produce stool samples the whole damn weekend long so of course I could bring a stool sample.  Hope you like orange.

So I sent the Gator Girl outside and stood at the ready with my sacrificial tupperware container.  She ran, she frolicked, she played, she jumped on me.  But she did not go to the bathroom.  I kept her out there until it was time to leave and still she did not go to the bathroom.

Who knew it would be so damn hard to get a stool sample from a dog with the frakking runs.

When I ran out of time, I put the Gator Girl in the car and went back to the house to give Big some cookies before I left.  Big has been living cookie free since the Gator Girl got sick.  It’s just easier that way.  Of course, it probably leads to Big planning to run away to his Mimi’s house where the cookies run free.  So I thought a Kong full of cookies would soften the blow of having to stay home.

It didn’t.

I got up to the screen door and pulled on the handle.  Nothing happened.  Again and again I tried to open the door and still, nothing happened.  The door would not open.  On the other side of the door, prancing and whining was my Big Brave German Shepherd who had somehow managed to do the next-to-impossible.

He had locked me out of the house.

I called The Man.

Me:  Big locked me out.
Him:  Big did what?
Me:  Locked me out.
Him:  Of what?
Me:  The house.
Him:  What?
Me:  I took the Gator Girl outside to put her in the car and Big was apparently upset that he wasn’t going to the vet so he jumped up on the door and hit it just right and locked the damn thing so now I can’t get back in the house.
Him:  Uh….okay?
Me:  And now I need to leave.
Him:  You need my keys?
Me:  No, I need to leave to get to the vet but I can’t close the front door.  I really think I should close the front door before I leave.
Him: (pause) So you need me to come home?
Me:  Yes, please.

Fortunately, The Man’s office is just slightly over a half mile away so it didn’t take him long to arrive.  As he got out of the car, he played with his keyring to find the house key.  It was then I realized The Man hadn’t heard a damn word I had said.  When he got to the door, he looked confused as the front door was obviously opened.

Him:  You got it open?
Me:  Big locked the screen door.  Not the front door.

The Man then tried to open the screen door.  It still did not open.

Him:  How’d he lock the door?  I can’t even lock that door.
Me:  I don’t know.  He should probably go and buy a lottery ticket after we get back inside.
Him:  I thought you needed my keys.
Me:  Not so much, no.
Him:  How are we going to get in?
Me:  Considering  every other entrance to the house is closed and locked, I’m guessing we’re going to have to sacrifice the screen.
Him:  Really?
Me:  And since I’m late for a very vital vet appointment, when I say ‘we’, I mean ‘you.’  Have fun!

So while The Man was trying to break in to our own house, I took the Gator Girl to the vet where I was met by looks of utter disbelief by both the vet and the vet tech when I said I did not have a stool sample to offer.  We still came away with a diagnosis (speculative in the absence of a stool sample to confirm) of ‘Clostridia Perfringens.’  It also came with a seven day allotment of antibiotics with some super fun side effects.

Him:  It can cause disorientation.
Me:  (glancing at my dog running in small crazy circles in the examination room) Not sure I’d notice.
Him: Also if those meds are mixed with alcohol, it causes projectile vomiting.
Me:  Gee, I wonder what it would be like to have a projectile vomiting dog.
Him:  All right, more projectile vomiting.
Me: (glance at Gator Girl) Did you hear that?  No beer for you for a week.

We went home after that.  It’s an hour drive that ended with the Gator Girl finally getting around to giving me that stool sample.  All over the backseat of my car.

I love my pets.

Right?

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Fenced In, Part Two


Jun
29.11

Posted in It's A Dog's Life, Random | No Comments »

So guess where I’m writing this.  Go ahead— guess.  No, you’ll never guess (well, unless you read “Fenced In, Part One.  Then you might guess).  I’ll just tell you.

I’m writing this on my laptop while lying in the hammock in my backyard.  Not the most comfortable of setups, I’ll grant you, but awesome nonetheless.  Thank you, wireless network, for making this possible.

But that’s not the part making me wildly giddy.  No, that would be the fact that while I am living the good life here in my hammock, my dogs are not watching me from inside the house.  Nope, they’re outside.  Big, staying true to his uncanny ability to find the most inconvenient spot to camp, is lying underneath the hammock.  The Gator Girl, staying true to herself, is running in circles.  How is this possible, you ask?  Well, I’ll tell you.

The fence is done.

Insert Happy Dance Here

The guys wrapped the job yesterday after several delays, none of which involved Fence Guy’s wife going into labor.  Big was his charming, welcoming self throughout the experience but surprised me by only giving one of the trio a heart attack (and a possible need for clean shorts).  This came on the last day when the guy who must have drawn the short straw came to the outdoor outlet (which just so happens to be right outside our door) to recharge a whoiswhatsit (I’m a writer, not a tool person) and was greeted by a 130 pound German Shepherd, using his very best big boy bark,  who popped out of nowhere and attempted to launch himself through the screen door that separated the poor guy from the obnoxious (that’s right, Mimi.  I said obnoxious.  I know you’ll never believe it though) German Shepherd (Mimi maintains Big is incapable of wrongdoing and was only looking out for me.) .  Fortunately, I had had the presence of mind to lock the screen door and the screen door managed to hold (it doesn’t always).  The guy jumped about twenty feet in the air and then beat a hasty retreat.

And he was never heard from again.

No, just kidding.  He’s fine.

Monday was marked by a three hour long nonstop barking marathon as the Dynamic Duo ran from window to window to window to bark.  They will stop barking when given the appropriate command but after a while, I realized that I’d never get anything else done because of the incessant barking so I just put on my headphones, cranked up the volume and let them have at it.  Though to be truthful, I still didn’t accomplish much other than blowing out my eardrums.

Who needs eardrums anyway, right?

The fence will make it all worth while.

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In Which The Bruins Win The Stanley Cup And Whatever Else I Was Planning To Talk About Before That Happened


Jun
16.11

Posted in It's A Dog's Life, Random, Sports, Writing | No Comments »

I like hockey.  I like it a lot but I’m not a crazy wild hockey fan.  It’s not like me and the Red Sox or me and the Patriots.  I watch the occasional game but I don’t watch every single game.  I don’t request days off from work in order to watch games.  I don’t have wild crazy crushes on any of the Bruins players (well, maybe Tim Thomas just for his sheer awesomeness, if nothing else) like I do with Jacoby Ellsbury and Wes Welker.  But I follow them and their progress through the season because I root for Boston sports and tonight, as I’ve done this entire series, I cheered hard for the Black and Gold.

And not to take credit for the Bruins’ win tonight or anything but every time I changed channels from NBC to So You Think You Can Dance and back again, the Bruins had scored again.  It was a little annoying, truth be told, because three out of the four goals scored tonight I missed seeing.  I did get to see the last goal, though, the empty net goal and did a little happy dance.  And then, as time ran out on the clock and Vancouver’s season, I did a much bigger and louder happy dance.  The Man was a little less thrilled with this because he’d gone to bed by this time but wild late night sports related exuberance is really just one of the drawbacks perks of having getting to live with me.

So now I’m in a post game, celebratory haze which means I will likely get very little writing done tonight.  My last all nighter, Monday night, I think was reasonably successful.  Not word count wise but content wise, I think.  The problem that is the secondary male lead isn’t completely fixed but right now I feel like I have an actual path to walk on instead of bushwacking my way through his arc.  I worked all through the night, straight up until 2pm Tuesday, taking breaks at 7am when The Man could no longer put up with the dogs pacing around the bedroom (they’re rather restless when I don’t go to bed when they do) and again at noon when the dogs (again) demanded their lunchtime Kongs (nothing like dogs on a schedule).  So by 8pm Tuesday, I was pretty much unconscious on the couch.  I made it to my actual bed by 9pm and didn’t regain consciousness until 10am this morning.  If you know the Gator Girl, you know how  rare it is that she sleeps past 7am.  I was shocked and awed and grateful because, apparently, I’d been a bit tired.

But now I’m all energized.  Before going to bed tonight, The Man asked if I was going to stay up all night again.  I answered, “Probably not all night” and then went on to explain that I was like some kind of  sleep camel.  I’d gotten fourteen hours of sleep earlier and so now I wouldn’t need to sleep for a couple of days.   The Man doesn’t seem to think it works that way.  He’s probably right but I guess we’ll find out.

Joining me for tonight’s maybe all nighter are Big and the Gator Girl.  As I mentioned before, they’re a little restless when I spend the night in my office rather than my bed.  This translates to pacing.  A lot of pacing.  The Gator Girl, especially.  Big mostly just paces to get to the opposite side of the room as his sister.  But this goes on pretty much all night long (no wonder the Gator Girl slept in…she’d been up all night too!).  The Man came downstairs with them on Tuesday morning and said, “They’re yours.  I can’t take it anymore!  All night long with the back and forth and back and forth all because you weren’t there!  I am so tired now, I’m going back to bed!”  Which, of course, he could not do because he had to go to work.  I suggested he take a nap under his desk.  Don’t know if he did.

So tonight, I decided the dogs will stay with me.  The Man can sleep and if there’s pacing to be done, they can do it downstairs along with me.   Right now, they’re both sleeping (and snoring) in my office, one on the floor at my feet (Big) and the other stretched across the daybed (Gator Girl).

It’s rather adorable.

1 Comment

Twitterpated


May
03.11

Posted in It's A Dog's Life | 1 Comment »

No, I am not blogging about Twitter today.  Although I am on Twitter and can be found @AuthorMJFifield if you’re interested.

The ‘twitterpated’ I am talking about is a reference to the 1942 Disney animated classic that traumatized a generation with that whole Bambi’s mother death scene.  All I can say is Wow, Walt.  Does someone need a hug?  And perhaps a therapist?

And I’m not actually talking about Walt’s potential mother issues either.  Not really anyway.  I’m talking about the scene where all the little cartoon forest animals fall in love.  They get, as the wise old owl explains to poor little innocent Bambi, all twitterpated.

Here’s how the Urban Dictionary defines ‘twitterpated’:

1)to be completely enamored with someone/something.
2) the flighty exciting feeling you get when you think about/see the object of your affection.
3) romantically excited (i.e.: aroused)
4) the ever increasing acceleration of heartbeat and body temperature as a result of being engulfed amidst the exhilaration and joy of being/having a romantic entity in someone’s life.

Okay, great, you might be saying to yourself right about now, thanks for that life lesson but what does that have to do with anything? Well, I’ll tell you…

The unthinkable happened last night.  Big fell in love.  And not with a cheeseburger or a tree on which to pee.  Nope, Big found himself a little girlfriend.

She’s in our agility class.  Her name is Roxy.  She’s a Malinois like the Gator Girl, only more of a spaz (that’s right.  I said more of a spaz.  Ponder that for a moment.  Is your mind now blown because mine is).  However, she’s a spaz who did not try to chew off Big’s face so maybe that’s what did it for him but he could not take his eyes off her last night.

And he wasn’t watching her in his usual “can I take your face off” sort of way.  That’s the way he looks at the neighbor’s dog or the rogue suicidal birds who happen into our yard (Big hates birds. I cannot stress this enough).  No, the way he was watching Roxy fell more into the ‘whoa baby’ category.  Plus, there were other, uh, indications that maybe he was harboring a gigantic crush.  I feel like making a Dr. Horrible reference here.  Can anyone guess which one?  Ultra Mega Bonus Points to the one who does…

And he really couldn’t keep his eyes off her.  There were ten dogs in that class (six German shepherds) and when the other eight were working the course, Big was more or less asleep.  But the second Roxy started her run, Big sat straight and watched her every step.  The woman next to me in line at on point said, “I’m surprised he isn’t drooling.”

I was surprised too.

2 comments

L Is For Lyme Disease


Apr
14.11

Posted in A to Z Challenge, It's A Dog's Life | 2 Comments »

Obviously, L was not meant to be about Lyme Disease but that’s the answer the vet came back with yesterday and so today I am blogging about Lyme Disease.  I should probably thank Big for contracting a disease that lends itself so well to the A to Z Challenge.

So yeah.  Lyme Disease.

I hate ticks.  Now more than ever.  I didn’t even realize such a thing was possible.

We arrived at the vet yesterday afternoon and I launched into a monologue of what had happened between Sunday and our arrival at the office on Wednesday.  We fertilized the lawn but I swear I didn’t let the dogs on it!  Big tripped on a chair at my mother’s house on Monday!  I gave him a cheeseburger Monday night!  He hasn’t eaten since breakfast Tuesday.  He hasn’t had water.  He hasn’t done this.  He has done that.  The Best Vet In The World very nicely listened to my panicky ramblings calm, very calm, dissertation and then proceeded with the exam.

And came back with Lyme Disease.

Here’s what I said when the Best Vet In The World told me:

Me:  Lyme Disease?  Are you kidding me?
Him:  Nope.  Not kidding you.
Me:  But it’s April.
Him:  Yep.
Me:  There’s still snow on the ground.  Especially where I live.
Him:  I’m sure there is.
Me:  Then how- when- how? Lyme Disease?
Him:  Yep.
Me:  But it’s April!
Him:  The incubation period can be weeks but it can also be months.
Me:  But he was negative for it in August.
Him:  Yep.
Me:  And you vaccinated him for it in August.
Him:  Yep.
Me:  That can happen?
Him:  Yep.
Me: (Beat)  Lyme Disease?  Really?
Him:  Really.

Here are the symptoms for a dog who has Lyme Disease:

-Reluctance to move or a slow, painful gait
-Swollen joints that are warm or painful to the touch
-Pain in the legs or throughout the body
-Fever, fatigue or swollen lymph nodes
-Loss of appetite
-Depression

Okay, so maybe there is some credence to this theory.

The good news is that it’s treatable in the form of an antibiotic.  Because of Big’s size, he gets five pills, twice a day, for the next four weeks.

This is what I said when I heard that:

Me:  Five pills twice a day?  So ten pills total.
Him:  Yep.
Me:  Ten pills a day.
Him:  Yep.
Me:  For the next four weeks?
Him:  Yep.
Me:  Swell.

Big’s pretty good about taking meds but that’s when I can put them in some peanut butter or a piece of cheese or something.   This method will not work for these meds because he (a) still won’t eat anything and (b) can’t have dairy products with these meds because calcium renders them useless.  They will also make him sun sensitive.  Or, I guess since the dog’s already sun sensitive, they’ll make him more so.  I now need to be on the look out for sunburns developing on his nose and ears.

And the fun just keeps on leaving.

The Best Vet In The World says the antibiotic will make him feel better soon.  As in Friday or– at the latest, by the end of the weekend.  This is excellent news.  And not just because Big just threw up bright orange bile all over my living room rug.

Clean up, aisle nine.

1 Comment

K Is For Keeping Calm


Apr
13.11

Posted in A to Z Challenge, It's A Dog's Life | 1 Comment »

K was not supposed to be for Keeping Calm.  K was supposed to be for Kicking Ass.  K was supposed to be my love letter to the sublime River Tam and Buffy Summers and maybe even Sydney Bristow.

So why isn’t it?

Because there’s something wrong with Big.

If you’re new to this blog, Big is my 8 year old German Shepherd.  And there’s something wrong with him which means that I will find it incredibly difficult to focus on anything other than what’s wrong with him until I know what’s wrong with him.

Yes, I am crazy protective and possibly over reactive dog mom whose dogs are her kids.  The vet probably cringes when my number pops up on the caller id.

But Big’s my kid and there’s something wrong with him.  So that’s that.

He’s incredibly clingy.  Some of you familiar with Big will be laughing at that idea because he’s such a Mama’s Boy to begin with (in that long standing male German Shepherd tradition), but this is a new level of clinginess that I can’t explain.  He can’t let me out of his sight.  Generally, he’s content just knowing I’m in the same house or on the same floor of the same house.  At his worse (until now), he’ll sleep out in the hallway just outside of whatever room I happen to be in.

But now?  He’s my shadow and the very second I stop moving, he sits on my feet and then lays down so I can’t easily get away.  And since he’s 130 pounds and I’m not, I don’t ever get away easily.

This has translated into a sharp increase in the level of anxiety in our household.  Big’s anxious which makes me anxious.  But this is nothing to the anxiety that the Gator Girl feels and projects.  She knows something’s off with Big too and for her, it translates to a need to tag him at each and every opportunity.

As you can imagine, this has done wonders for Big’s anxiety.

You know that riddle you did in school?  The one with the man and the rowboat and the goat, the wolf and a bag of oats?  The one where the man had to get all three items across the river but could only put one thing at a time in the boat and could only leave certain things together because otherwise things could get eaten?

That’s been my life the last twenty four hours.

Even The Man noticed the anxiety and Big’s new super fun weirdness when he came home from work yesterday.  It concerned him enough to do a Google search (I have no idea what his parameters were) where he apparently found a site that suggested that perhaps Big was clingy because I was pregnant.

Cue spit take.

I’m not pregnant.

This morning, however, his symptoms seem to have expanded from the clinginess.  He’s not eating, not drinking, he’s shadowing my every step with even more voracity and he’s crying whenever he’s had to walk up something (i.e. a flight of steps or even the one step to get in the car).  So I called the vet this morning and left a message because they have later office hours today.  Then I put Big in the car and broke some land speed records to get down in the area (our vet is an hour and fifteen minute drive away.  There are lots of vets in between but this one is the best one) so that when they call back, we can be seen immediately.  Or, if they can’t see Big (they will.  They do every time he’s had an emergency), I’ll be closer to the emergency room vets.

But until then, we’re keeping calm.  Or trying our damnedest.  It is important that I remain as calm as possible (even though I am honestly FREAKING OUT) because dogs are so sensitive to what we’re feeling.  The smallest thing we feel gets magnified for them so Big knows that I’m worried.  I just have to keep him from knowing how worried I am because I don’t want him to be any more worried than he already is.

Oh– there’s the phone.  That’ll be the vet because no one else would be stupid enough to call me right now.  Chat later…

1 Comment

D Is For Dogs and Doctors


Apr
05.11

Posted in Cats and Dogs, I Love Joss, It's A Dog's Life | 1 Comment »

Big at five weeks of age

First of all, before I dive into today’s A to Z Challenge post, I just want to say Thank You to everyone who came out and read and commented on my post yesterday.  I am flattered by your kindness and consideration.  Y’all are the best and I can’t even begin to tell you how much I appreciate it.  Well, I probably could but it would just sound like senseless babbling.  Better to leave it as is.

Moving on…

Yesterday was Big’s birthday.  Big is my now eight year old German shepherd dog.  We call him Big because, well, because he’s big.  I wasn’t going for irony or anything, just plain simple truth.  When The Man and I first got him, my father looked at the puppy and said, “that dog’s going to be 130 pounds.”  This made me laugh because German shepherd dogs, even the males, do not often get that big.

Well, my father was right.  Big weighs in at 130 pounds which means he has a considerable weight advantage over me.  Fortunately, this is only an occasional problem for us as Big is, for the most part, a pretty mellow boy.  Of course, I could just think that because my other dog, the Gator Girl, is a canine whirling dervish.

Anyway…

Big, all ready for his close up

Here are Big’s Top Five Favorite Things:

5.  Sleeping (preferably on the couch)

4.  Agility class (preferably without the Gator Girl in attendance)

3.  Cheeseburgers (preferably from Burger King but he’ll settle for McD’s)

2.  Peeing on trees (only to be trumped by…)

1.  My mom (you should see how damn happy and excited he gets when he sees her.  It’s really funny and sweet.)

This year, Big spent his birthday as he spends most of his birthdays: sleeping late, peeing on trees, a visit to my mother’s house followed by a Burger King cheeseburger all of his own (normally he has to share with his sister).

(more…)

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Big Hurt and Work


Jan
27.11

Posted in It's A Dog's Life, Random, Work Schmerk | No Comments »

My German Shepherd is kind of a jerk.

Of course, if you ask my mother (and you should), she’ll tell you how Big can do no wrong. And most of the time, I agree with that statement. Big is an uncommonly good German Shepherd. As long as you don’t count whole ass biting period he went through a couple of summers back (dog asses, not people.) that is.

But every now and then, he’s kind of a jerk.

Yesterday morning was one of those times.

We were up early because I had one of my rare shifts at The Store. There’s not a lot going on the Valley this time of year and as we’re getting closer to Inventory, the shipments slow down so there’s even less need for me on the schedule (not that I mind this at all). But I was on the schedule yesterday and so we were up early. When I took Big out, he spotted something at the end of our driveway. What he spotted, I have no idea as there WASN’T ANYTHING THERE, but something caught Big’s eye and he decided he had to chase the nothing away.

The results were rather disastrous.  As I’ve said before, Big is not so named because we’re trying to be funny or clever.  No, Big is so named because he’s frakking huge.  He’s a 130 pound dog who has a good twenty pounds on me and so when he gets the jump on me (which does NOT happen all that often), bad things can happen as since I didn’t expect him to freak out about the nothing at the end of the driveway, he got the jump on me.

I went up in the air and down the ground, smashing into the ice underneath the snow.  Then came the dragging as Big dragged me down the driveway in his quest to chase away the nothing.  It took me a little while to get him stopped but I managed it.  Then came the moment where Big realized just how much trouble he was in.

Growing up, we had a German Shepherd named Sheba and every now and then, Sheba would take an unsanctioned walk about the neighborhood.  My mother would stand on our front steps and call for the dog who would then come back to the house, crashing through the woods as she tried to take a roundabout way back to the house in order to make it look as though she’d just been hanging out unseen in the backyard the entire time.  So she’d come bounding around the side of the house, a spring in her step and joy in her eyes.  That is until she saw that my mother had not bought the here the whole time ruse.  Then she starting to slink, head down, toward my mother.  Lower and lower Sheba got to the ground until she was quite literally crawling.

Big didn’t crawl, he can’t manage it with his back problems, but if he could have, he would have.  He’s always been very sensitive and knows when he’s in trouble.   He made his way back to the house, head hung low.  I limped.  My head was pounding, my back was out again, my ankle was throbbing, my wrist was throbbing- hell, my entire right side was throbbing.

I thought about calling out of work but didn’t because I knew my stockroom compatriot, Ruthie, had called out the day before because it was so cold her brakes were frozen (true story).  So I strapped on a couple of ace bandages, changed into clothes that were soaked from a roll in the snow and dragged my bruised ass to work where was I promptly greeted with “I’m going to need you to stay late today, okay?”

You betcha.

Here’s the highlight of my work day:

Me:  (answering phone) Thank you for calling The Store.  How may I help you?
Caller:  Did I call The Store?
Me:  No, that’s just how I like to answer my home phone.
Caller:  Really?
Me:  No.

I made it through my shift, extra hours and all, and made it home just in time to crash on the couch with a couple of ice packs, a heating pad for my back and a bottle of Advil.  I hate being a thirty something with a bad back.  It hurts less now, everything does.  Well, everything except for my head.  That’s still being stubborn.

The good news is that my German Shepard’s freak out did give me a great gift today:  a perfect excuse to sit on the couch watching television.  Hoping things will get back to normal in the morning.

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