Paws for Reflection

We Had a Snow Day....

  ...and it was FABULOUS.

Mom decided to work from home (yeah, front wheel drive and a BMW convertible is not so nice with 8 inches of snow and ice) and since the coffee pot is broken, we decided to run our errands on foot.  Then we decided to take the pups, and the adventure began. 

 

It took about 2 hours to walk a quarter mile there and a quarter mile back, to get coffee and stop by the bank, and it went a little something like this:

Two universes mosey down the street
Connected by love and a leash and nothing else.
Mostly I look at lamplight through the leaves
While he mooches along with tail up and snout down,
Getting a secret knowledge through the nose
Almost entirely hidden from my sight.

We stand while he's enraptured by a bush
Till I can't stand our standing any more
And haul him off; for our relationship
Is patience balancing to this side tug
And that side drag; a pair of symbionts
Contented not to think each other's thoughts.*

* Poem excerpt from "Walking the Dog" by Howard Nemerov.

Jeebus....

All I have to say is - the world should be thankful that I have dogs.  I have such a low tolerance for ignorance and idiocy that there are sometimes days when the only thing stopping me from going ballistically postal is the DoJo HoJo Tag Team of Love. 

I go forth into the world, I expect competence, excellence, and some small level of attention to detail, and instead I find myself surrounded by idiots.  No lie, at least three quarters of the universe should be thankful that breathing is an autonomic reflex - otherwise there'd be a lot more lawn in the world, and a lot less need for condos.

TO THOSE PEOPLE WHO HAVE PISSED ME OFF:

For the sake of Your Future Survival - you should pay homage to this guy:

 

This is his "listening face."  He will hold this position for up to 20 minutes (those ears are HEAVY, man!) while I rant and pace and pace and rant, gesticulating wildly and dropping curse words like a professional that charges by the syllable.  Occasionally, when I am particularly inspired, he will thump his tail in a short wag without moving any other muscle on his body.  He does not berate me for being surprised at the continuation of your previously acknowledged foolishness, does not give little doggy chuckles at my frustration with those of you who should be demoted back down to chimpanzee, and is very obliging at making Barry White-esque grumbles when I rub his ears during the cool down phase and take out my frustrations by vigorous back scratching.

Probably half of you that I have encountered in the last six months owe him your lives.

But life cannot survive on love alone, which is why I'm thankful for my girl, the heavyweight.

She sees you, O Ignorant Ones.

   

Don't let the sweet face fool you.

She will smile at you, and lure you in.

 

Then she will open her incredible maw, which has a history of mysterious sounds and noxious odors, and CONSUME YOU.

Occasionally, if you are Evil Incarnate, it may give her indigestion, but it WILL NOT STOP HER.

 

There will be nothing left of your blight on the world but a lingering smell of methane, and the occasional belch. I will not even mind that her belching will occur within six inches of my face, as I will be grateful to her for eradicating you from the universe.

And our eyes will meet, and her ears will come up, and as I begin to grin in delight, her tail will wag, and we will share our joy together. 

More lawn, less condos. 

Huzzah.

 

UH....What?

Did you ever learn something so incredibly odd that you really have no reaction?  You just kind of stand there and the only thing you can say is "Uh....OK."

Yeah.

Homer is afraid of blue dinner plates.  Not white salad plates, not green bowls, not Tupperware.

Blue. Dinner. Plates.

 

I don't know either. 

I attempted to poll his people, and got this:

 

Yeah, go figure.

Blue dinner plates.

Cheetos.

Singing in the yard at 2.30 am and a fascination with airplanes.

Do I have the awesomest dog ever, or what?

And You Wonder Why I Think He's Crazy...

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but over the last few months our boy Homer Jess has developed the very strange habit of going out into the yard in the wee hours of the morning and howling his fool head off.  We've been working on the "in out in out, JEEBUS DOG - IN OR OUT!" habit for a while, and he's gotten better, but I think the colder temperatures of winter may have sent a part of his brain into hibernation.

For WEEKS I couldn't figure out what was going on - I would only stand there at the back door, hunched against the draft and freezing, waiting with one eye grumpily half open so I could let him in when he finished his business and go back to my nice, warm bed. You can't really blame me, I don't think, for going from sleepy to grumpy in 3.2 seconds when he started to howl at 2.30 am, and I will tell you from experience that not only does the "HEY HEY HEY - CUT IT OUT!" method of admonishment not work on dogs, your neighbors won't appreciate it either.  Not that they appreciate the howling, but when you add cranky swearing to that in the wee dark hours of the morning, expect to have love notes left in your mailbox.  If your neighbors are Italian, you may even receive a pony part or two.

So anyway, I finally saw the light one day about a week and a half ago - I was out on the porch enjoying some unseasonably warm weather, when all of a sudden Homer began running (yes, RUNNING) back and forth the yard, head thrown back, howling for all he was worth.  You'd think they'd just announced a free for all on poodles, he was so excited. Back and forth, back and forth, aaaaaahooouuuuuu!  I was like... what... in... the... hell..... HOMER!

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that I live in the flight path for the airport, and my brave, sweet, adventurous Homer Jess has a deep and abiding passion for...airplanes. Yup, that's right, this little earthbound dog who was abandoned as a pup in the woods sings his little heart out every time a jet passes overhead.  Not helicopters, not single engines or fixed wing aircraft, but the big, honkin', "Land 'em in the Hudson" jet airplanes.

   

I'm not sure whether his howling is the canine version of "Mine, mine, mine!" - if he is warning them off "his" territory - if he is beseeching them to come back and save him from a life of ear rubs, slipcovered couches and Cheetos - or if he simply hears a different frequency than I do and he is trying to converse... it could happen.

After all, Dora "talks" to a stuffed lobster all the time...also at 2.30 am. Coincidence??? Hmmm....

 

I think not.

So, there you have it.  The late night (or early morning, whichever) howl fest has been found out - the culprit identified, the neighbors awakened.  Homer and I are now negotiating over how badly he wants to live to see 3 am on a regular basis, and thus far, he's winning. 

I am definitely not at my best when roused in the wee hours of dawn, and he's got a heart shaped nose in his arsenal.  I really sometimes wish he wasn't one of the cutest damn dogs on the planet, although I'm sure my neighbors have a differing opinion.

They just don't see what I see.

The Particulars of Being a Dog...

Well, Homer Jess is well on his way to settling in.  His personality is coming out more and more, and it sleeps almost as much as he does.  He has definitely laid claim to the landings in the house, and all of the shady spots in the yard.

You'd think, after 10+ years with three Danes, all of whom had personality with a capital P, that I would be used to the idiosyncrasies of rescue dogs.  However, as Homer's quirks come out to play, they still make me laugh. 

Homer likes:

Sunshine, Three Bean Salad, long naps in the afternoon, and secrets whispered in his ear.

Homer LOVES:

German Potato Salad and White Cheddar Cheez-Its.

Homer does NOT like:

People touching his feet while he is sleeping, cantaloupe, and consciousness.

Funnily enough - he really is the perfect dog.  My family calls me "the Dissector" when I eat meat (which is not that often anyway), because I meticulously cut all of the fat and gristle off of every piece of meat, which often leaves the portion I consume to be significantly smaller than the piece I start off with.  Which leads me to Homer's most endearing quirk:

Homer HATES:

Meat with fat on it.

I KID YOU NOT.  We grilled out for lunch, and standard practice in the past has been for me to dissect my lunch, then feed the scraps to the pups.  Let me just tell you, I took the pieces of fat and gristle over to Homer, and he gave me such an Evil Look, I am surprised my hair didn't catch on fire.  He then proceeded to sniff the offering, glare at me again, and most pointedly turn up his nose and turn his head away. 

AWESOME.

Another plus in Homeskillet's report card is that he does not mind participating in my nephew's playtime, though he is often part of the scenery.  Yesterday, he was "the Highway", although he has also played "the Mountain", "the Bridge", and "Clifford".  Bless his heart, he gives his all, although I don't think he'll ever win the Oscar.

 

Homer is in the HIZZOUSE!

Homeskillet spent the majority of the day in the house today! Granted, it poured down rain for several hours, but I think he's finally settling in!  He's developed a routine of scent-checking everyone in the house, and discovered the joys of modern roofs.

He did start out the morning outside, but it was sunny and gorgeous, temps in the 70's, so who can really blame him?  Who, I ask you?

That's right, nobody.  It's Thursday, almost-Friday-but-not-quite, and I can GUARANTEE you that there are a dozen people that would trade places with the HoJo, just to be out on the deck and get some sun.

But anyway, the sky got gray, the clouds started to rumble, and Homer came in for his first scent check.  He started this little trend yesterday - he basically comes in the house, goes up to everyone, extends his nose, and takes a sniff.  Human? Check.  Once he's walked the house and checked that everyone is present and accounted for, he goes back outside.  I'm not quite sure what this is supposed to accomplish, but since he's come back three times to "scent-check" me so far, I'm pretty confident that I don't stink.  (Then again, he sniffs his own butt, so maybe I'm being optimistic).

After the scent-check today, it was pouring rain out, and I have to admit I was curious to see if his love and dedication to the outside was going to weather (ha! ha!) the test of time.  Alas, it did not.  He looked out at the pouring rain, noticed that no one else was rushing out to keep him company, and turned around and came back in the house.  He then discovered his second favorite place - the landing.  All he did all afternoon was go from landing to landing to landing to landing.  I have to say, I am liking the dog's predictability.  Not under the pear tree?  Look by the fence.  Not by the fence? Look by the shed.  There he is! It's pretty sweet not to have to chase him all over the place every time I go looking.

 

Louie also got some good quality time in with Homer today - he showed him all of his Transformers, and spent about 10 minutes explaining to Homer how Jazz went from car to robot. Then Barricade...then Payload... Bless his little heart, Homer Jess was so patient.  He looked, he twitched an ear when appropriate, obligingly sniffed every single car Louie shoved in his face, and just generally was a good sport.

I'll tell you what though, I'm pretty sure that Homer Jess now has the sympathy of every parent alive. After spending 45 minutes being the object of the sincere devotion of a five year old, he was EXHAUSTED.  He pretty much spent the rest of the afternoon absolutely sacked out.  Poor baby - hopefully he'll build up his stamina soon!

 

The Dog needs a cape, and a biscuit.

OK, I've revised my opinion on Homer Jess once again - this is the COOLEST DOG EVER.  I left a bit early today to go see the 2pm show of Tropic Thunder with my boy Jimmy (it's fabulous, Robert Downey Jr. is the MAN, and it's worth the $$) and I left Homer in the house, thinking that my brother and mom would be home within a few hours.  I was running a bit late, so I didn't give Homer a ton of notice, and he did not do his business outside before I brought him in, but he'd been outside since about 6 am, so I didn't think too much of it. 

I get a phone call about 4.30 - my brother came home, and called me to tell me that Homer had peed in the house.  OK, a bit disappointing, but not a huge shocker - he hadn't peed when left in the house yesterday, so I guess an accident every now and again is understandable. 

HERE'S WHERE IT GETS FABULOUS. 

So Homer pees in the house.  OK.  The real story is that Homer actually walked up two flights of stairs to pee in the BATHROOM.  On the tile floor.  In front of the toilet.  I am ASTOUNDED.  I fall a little bit deeper in love with this dog when Todd tells me this.  Are you ready for the kicker?

HOMER TOLD MY BROTHER WHERE.

Todd said he came home, and Homer was waiting by the front door, and then proceeded to lead him upstairs to the bathroom to show him where he peed. 

O.M.G.  He is THE SHIZZ.  Doesn't he deserve a cape, and some sort of "dog-tastic" medal?

Now if we can only teach him to make coffee on Sundays, we'll be golden.

In any event, I think that Homer is doing much better at settling in.  He still spent 98.7% of the day in the yard, but today he actually sat up for short periods of time. 

Okay, in actuality he didn't actually move anywhere, but he did lift his entire upper body off of the ground.  I like to think he was trying to smell the roses, but couldn't get around the raspberry bushes without effort, and so just kind of stopped halfway and parked it.

So the other funny thing that has come about with our friendly neighborhood hound is that we have started diminutivizing (diminutizing?) his name.  We decided not to change it from Homer Jess (it's fitting more and more every day) but now the nicknames are starting to come out.

I don't know whether it is because I was listening to Kool Moe Dee this morning or because I have been seeing a lot of 80's nostalgia around lately (the new JCPenny ad, for example, that is a re-enactment of the breakfast club), but somehow I have started to call him "Homeskillet", and he actually responds.  Come on, Homeskillet, I've got Cheez-Its! 

Maybe he likes the 80's, and that's why he listens?  Who doesn't love leg warmers and Flock of Seagulls? Then again, FoS may be a poor choice - their one hit was called "I Ran", and I'm pretty willing to bet money that Homer's not going to be running anywhere any time soon. 

So, the discovery continues - he responds to "Homeskillet", and even the occasional "HoJo", but "Homer Jess" just gets "the paw" unless he's ready and willing to bestir himself. 

Boy, is he in for a shock when our girl Dane Dora gets here this weekend!  I have the feeling that she is going to lay down the law, and the soundtrack playing in Homer's head is not going to be "Easy like Sunday morning"!

   

The more I get to know you... the more I like my dog...

This dog is just odd.  Maybe it's because he's a hound.  Maybe it's because I'm used to Velcro Danes.  Maybe it's just because he's a chess nerd hidden in a dog's body.  Who knows - but I'll tell you, I have never seen a dog do some of the things Homer Jess does.

We started out par for the course - the first thirty pictures I took of the dog today were, you guessed it:

I am still being ignored (professionally) by our resident hound, although he and I spent some good quality time today, and I learned quite a few things - namely, that something in my grass disagrees with me, and that rolling around in the grass with the dog will make my skin itch for hours.

I think that there is also something in the grass that might be illegal in most states, as Homer was chewing on it for a minute, and then looked like this:

Either that, or he's practicing his drawl for the county fair... "Y'all down from the city? Take a load off and sit a spell...right here in the grass..."

Homer (bright young thing that he is) has also invented a new sit, that I have never seen before, and looks to be slightly painful unless one has several years of Yoga in one's corner...

Is this what they mean by Downward Dog?

Hounds for Helen Keller...

Well, we've almost completed Day Two of discovery on our pal Homer Jess, and so far the score is: Unbearably cute to Hugely Disgusting: 4 billion to 1. 

First and foremost, we have figured out that Homer Jess is an outside dog.  He eschews every opportunity possible to stay in the house and laze on the sofa, laze on the dog bed, laze on MY bed, to go outside and laze on the ground. 

I had originally thought this dog to be highly intelligent, if somewhat aloof, but I may have been mistaken.

Despite the seeming foolishness in his choice, however, he has demonstrated an almost professional ability to sleep, hours at a time, on hard, somewhat damp and cold ground, while scarcely seeming to breathe.  If there were AKC awards for being almost completely comatose, Homer Jess would take the gold. 

Should you doubt me, behold the photographic evidence:

(First thing this morning)

(Mid-Afternoon)

(Evening)

Remember what I said about the eyebrows?  Well, he definitely knows how to use them.  It only took one this afternoon to let me know how he felt about a camera in his face whilst he was trying to nap.

Despite his insistence on being outside (and yes, he does whine inconsolably for a few minutes when brought inside, but he gets over it), there are a few things that he adores about being in the house - the primary one being - you got it - White Cheddar Cheez-Its.  My mother had a box that she was snacking on last night, and almost lost her elbow when Homer tried to put his entire head in the box.

So, Cheez-Its notwithstanding, Homer's not a fan of the house - he's more a "great outdoors" type of dog.  I have little hope that he'll ever be a Lassie though - he still doesn't listen for crap - and we've now added another category to our timekeeping.  BH (Before Homer) - we had RPT (regular people time - where things get done fairly quickly) and SPT (spanish people time - what we switch to when we travel in Latin America and things take a little longer... have a beer while you wait).  We're going to add HJT to this, which is Homer Jess time, or any time he damn well feels like it. Oh sure, he'll come when you call him... eventually.  When he's done sniffing, or snoozing, or peeing, or shaking his head so that big gobs of spit fly all over the yard.  When he's done... he'll be by.

He and Lou spent some QT today, hanging out and "talking" - and by talking I mean that Homer Jess sat and used his eyebrows effectively while my nephew explained the nature of the universe to him, while narrating his activities to me.  "Look Aunt Mel, Homer's peeing!"  "Look, Aunt Mel, Homer's sleeping in the grass!"  "Aunt Mel, Homer's tired, he's going to go back to sleep now."

They were suspiciously in collusion for a few minutes, and it looked from a distance as if my nephew was trying to teach Homer how to do mind control or something.  They perched there with their eyes closed for a few minutes, then went on about their respective businesses.... Suspicious.

Why do I say mind control?  We sat down to eat dinner about 45 minutes later, and here comes Homer, up to the deck, to stand and stare at me.  I could almost *feel* the mantra...give me chicken...give me chicken...go get Cheez-Its....  and I'd seen the training, with my own eyes, not an hour before.

Sorry dude, try your Vulcan Mind Meld somewhere else, and stop taking lessons from a five year old.  Back to the drawing board.

Enter Homer Jess

We added a new member to the family today - a coonhound mix named Homer Jess.  NO, I didn't name him, and NO, I don't know what they were thinking.  He's awfully cute, either way.

We had initially gone up to the FOHA shelter (www.foha.org) in Merrifield to look at a Dane mix named Marcello that they had on the website, but unfortunately the dog was not a Dane, or even a Dane mix. He was also hardheaded, untrained, and didn't care for my nephew, so there went that plan!

We decided to take a look around since we had driven about 45 min to the shelter, and in the last building we came across Homer Jess, just laying in his run, chill as chill could be.  The cacophony in the dog buildings was incredible, and Homer was probably the only dog not barking.  He gave us the eye when we walked in, watched us as we walked, thumped his tail once or twice when we stopped by his run, and in general just put his most laid back foot forward. 

We took him out for a walk, and noticed that he was limping - the rescue people then told us that he would need surgery on both hips for dysplasia. He did pretty well even with the limp, but he is an enormously strong dog, and doesn't walk very well on the leash.  I can already see that I either need to find the Sporn harness I had for Gabe, or get a new one!

We filled out the application, went through the home visits, set our expectations for his surgery, and today we brought him home.  Other than one bad moment when he got in the back seat and tried to go right out the window on the other side, it's been pretty good.  He's settling in, little by little, and it appears he is housebroken.  (PHEW!)  He spent several hours sniffing the backyard - I wasn't aware that there was that level of scent complexity in my grass, but apparently so.

He's really laid back, super chill, and VERY quiet. He's headstrong, and let's talk about STUBBORN - I can already see, less than 12 hours into this - that this pup and I are going to have many loooong conversations about who exactly is boss.  He's not rude, or evasive, or even mean, he just has incredibly fine tuned selective hearing, and my voice seems to be routing directly to the "Junk" folder.  Huh - I'll give him a few days to settle in before I start laying down the law, but he will know that I am boss, or he will spend a lot of time in doggie time out. 

Having said all that, he has really unique coloring, a deep baying hound bark, and paws like a cat.  He's got eyebrows that cock independently, and the softest ears you've ever felt - he makes a really deep Barry White grumble when you scratch them, and he'll sit with his eyes closed and his mouth a little bit open until you're done.   

We've now got a boy who doesn't listen for shit, has a patented "you must be kidding" look with his eyebrows, and likes nothing better than to sprawl out on the couch and snore.  Who knew he'd fit right in so perfectly?