Paws for Reflection

Around the Corner...

Around the corner from my house, at the end of the street, there is a dirt path that leads back into the woods.  I've noticed it growing wider over the last few months, and though I've never seen any vehicles back there, it's obvious that it's a fairly well-used shortcut through to the neighborhood behind us.  It was such a beautiful day today, though a bit chilly with the breeze, that we decided to take the pups for a walk, and this mysterious path seemed like a perfect opportunity to explore. 

It's been a bit of a tough week - the first half of the week was spent in Inova Alexandria hospital with Mom - we thought initially that she'd had a TIA (mini-stroke), but it turns out she's just in very poor health and needs to take care of herself quite a bit better.  In addition to the stress of the unknown, there was quite a bit of incompetence in Inova that about drove me crazy - I'll spare you the incredible rant on managed healthcare, and simply say that I'll bleed to death in my driveway before ever going back there.   Oh, and it's been raining all week - so we were definitely ready for a stroll in the sun. 

 

So we took a stroll down the dirt path, just to see where it led.  It was absolutely chock full of mud puddles, to Dora's pouncing delight, all filled with brackish water and skitterbugs.  Homer, bless his hip-shaking little heart, was simply along for the stroll.

 

Unfortunately, we noticed as we went deeper into the woods that there was garbage everywhere - food wrappers, broken bottles, discarded furniture.  It seems that instead of paying the dumping fees to the county facility, people have been using the shortcut to get rid of their trash. We'll have to come back soon and clean up as much as we can, though I wonder if it will make much of a difference. 

Once we got past the refuse, we decided to stray a bit off the path, and take a small trek through the woods, to the pup's enthusiastic approval.  We'd only walked about a hundred yards through the marshy woods when we came upon an overflow pond - how have I managed to live in this house for more than a decade and not notice this?

 

It was a surprisingly pretty place, even though the banks were filled with discarded tires and floating jetsam.  The far banks were cleaner, as they were not accessible from the path, and the pups went wading merrily in.  Dora found a small sinkhole and tumbled in headfirst, though she bobbed back up immediately and went back in for more.

 

Homer, as always, was simply happy to be out in the woods, and back to his hound roots.

 

So we were out for a few hours, enjoying the walk in the woods.  We disturbed a blacksnake by accident, who chose to depart rather than socialize, and collected more than a few ticks, which definitely igged me out.  Homer turned out to be strangely immune, while Dora and I were magnets.  (Naturally Dora went to lay on my bed before I found all of the ticks on her, now I'm a bit skeeved out and am going to change all the linens...)  I hate ticks with a passion, and wish they made a people version of the tick-repellent I give the pups (which it's obviously time to renew!). 

Ticks, snakes, and trash aside, it was a nice day, which I desperately needed after this week. It's nice to have a break every once in a while, to take a few hours and enjoy the sunshine, smell the flowers, and break in the new shoes in the mud. 

I Definitely Need a New Computer...

... or a less deadly touch with technology. 

However, no matter that I have managed to jinx every piece of mechanical equipment that I own in the past few months, there are things around me that continue to function to the nth degree of perfection.  Case in point?  The hunting capacity of Homer Jess. 

There was some speculation when we first got Homer Jess that he had been a part of a pack of foxhounds, and had been abandoned in the woods as useless.  Gotta tell ya - I think that was a fairy tale.

Observe:

The Scene:  Empty pizza box, post-dinner, waiting to be taken out to trash can. 

The First Player: Large dog, allegedly sensitive nose, presumed primal instinct for hunting and eating.

 

The Result: Dinner FAIL.  Not only did she fail to recognize that the box was empty from it's diminished smell, she actually stuck her whole head in the box and proceeded to root around in the tissue paper looking for Indiana Jones and the Lost Slice.

The Second Player: Sort of Large Dog, although he prefers "big boned".  Extremely refined sense of smell, situationally selective sense of hearing.  Hunter of sunshine, couch cushions, and Cheetos (tm).

 

The Final Result: I have no idea why his previous family lacked confidence in Homer Jess's hunting abilities.  Not only did he not have to open the box to determine that the sweet scent of pizza was a lie, but his incredible sense of perception (for deception) provided him with the opportunity to practice his evil glare from afar.

 

Amazing how I feel guilty for buying a pizza, eating a pizza, and then not sharing it with the pups.  They must be related to my mother.

New Year's Resolutions...

I gave up making New Year's resolutions a long time ago - I didn't like being the jerk in the gym that hogged up the equipment for the whole month of January, then February 1st faded out, never to be seen again (until the following January's resolutions were made).  This year I broke my own rule, though, and made a resolution to get more fit. 

I'd like to be healthier, I'd like to be thinner, and I'd like to be able to walk up three flights of stairs carrying groceries without feeling my muscles start to tremble and sweat form on my back.

I figured I'd get the pups involved - I don't belong to a gym anymore, I can't afford to join one, and the pups both love to go on walks - it should be easy as pie to get a little more exercise in my day with those two pulling me all over creation, right?

Somehow I forgot about winter.  Somehow I forgot that it's 20 degrees outside, with frost on the car, wind that cuts like a knife, and every little particle of moisture in my lungs freezing with every inhaled breath.

Well, that's OK, it's still a good idea - the cold will force us to walk more briskly - more cardio! We'll get fitter, faster! What do you say, pup o' mine?  Wanna go for a walk?

 

*sigh* We're doomed.  I'm going to drive to the store and buy Cheetos.  At least I'll have to walk down the aisle to get them.

Life is Short...Share the Couch.

I like to think that I am a person that values life and works pretty hard at keeping it fun.  I get up every day and try to greet the day with a positive attitude and stay thankful for all of the blessings that I have in my life.  It doesn't always work - sometimes I get up, scare myself in the mirror with my anti-gravity hairdo, and refuse to open my eyes or turn my frown upside down until after I've had at least two cups of coffee.  >-<  But I try. 

Being a volunteer in the fire department, believe it or not, helps to keep me sane and in touch with life.  It keeps me cognizant of how many things I have to be thankful for, when I am called upon to help those who have little, of how valuable my health and my sanity are, when I am called to help those who lack them, and it keeps me grateful for the gift of life, when I am confronted with those who are losing or who have lost the fight. 

There is nothing so terrifying as being one of the few holding the line against the dark - of being the one kneeling on the asphalt, among the glass, and trying to stem the flow of someone's lifeblood seeping through your fingers - pleading, exhorting, encouraging, railing at them to hold on.  You meet this person's eyes - knowing that sometimes they see you, and look to you to make everything OK, clinging with desperate strength - and sometimes, the worst times, they do not, and their glassy stare makes your heart sink in your chest even as your hands are busy putting as much of them back together as fast as you can in a desperate effort to change their fate. 

And sometimes you do - and the reward is unimaginable.  Sometimes, you get the chance to shake a hand that was covered in blood and cold to the touch the last time you held it.  Sometimes you get a hug from someone who couldn't move at your first meeting, because they were trapped or hurt or unconscious. Sometimes, you get to hear a "thank you" from someone, and it sounds all the sweeter because they couldn't speak when last you saw them.  That - that possibility of shaking that hand, or getting that hug from a stranger who after everything is not really a stranger, or hearing that "thank you" and knowing that it's meant from the bottom of their hearts - that is what makes it all worthwhile.  That is what keeps you going, kneeling on the ground at 3 am in the winter, waiting to hear the helicopter.  And it's worth it.

I'm a little introspective today.  Our community lost a young girl yesterday, the victim of a terrible accident that cut her life short much too young.  We won't have the opportunity to try and change her fate, and she has lost the fight to live her life to the fullest extent. I think of all the things she could have done with her life - the strides she might have made, the worlds she might have changed, the future that shined so brightly for her that now shines not at all - and I am angry, and I am saddened, and I am afraid. 

I am angry that this child lost her life - and for nothing.  A senseless, pointless, empty sacrifice - a victim of an accident that might have been avoided or a cruel twist of chance at the whim of Fate.  I am saddened that all of her potential was lost - she could have been a world leader who brokered peace, the scientist who cured cancer, or a mother with little ones that had her eyes and their father's nose.  All of those roads now end in front of a headstone inscribed with dates that are much too close together.  But most of all, I am afraid.  I am afraid that this could be my story, or the story of someone I love.  We could all, any one of us, be struck down at any moment, with no warning, with no recourse, and with no regard or respect for all that we might have been. That scares me. No, that TERRIFIES me.

But I am contrary by nature, and so I become ever more determined to live every day with vigor. To grasp the gift of life that is given to me with both hands, and to drag every second of joy out of it that I possibly can.  I intend to leave nail marks when it is at last taken from me.  I intend to leave heel marks in the street, where I put my whole weight against the pull and refused to follow into the dark.  I will laugh, and I will love, I will give affection freely and I will eat a second donut for breakfast, then curse myself when I am on the treadmill trying to work it off.  I will sometimes wake up early with a smile for the day, and I will sometimes hit the snooze button three or four times and dream of throwing my alarm clock out the window. I will appreciate my family, miss them when I am away, humor them when we disagree, and know that they have my back even when we are brawling in the driveway. I will love on my pups, take care of all their needs, curse the dog hair that shows up on my clothes 3,000 miles from home, and remind them frequently that life is short - share the couch.

Props to Parents of Small Children...

I have to send a shout out to all parents of small children in the world.  Kudos.  Kudos to you, and your ability to deal with the vagaries of small children, the demands of spouses and jobs and bosses and bills, and not stop by at the post office every morning for heavy artillery on your way to get your morning coffee. I only have two personality-rich pups, and sometimes it's almost more than I can handle.

So, I've been at the fire department since Friday night - first for my own 18 hour shift, then to cover a friend's 24 hour shift.  We were fairly busy running calls, and I had a lot of other administrative and training tasks to do, so I didn't get much sleep between Friday and Sunday, but I didn't make any plans on Sunday, figuring I would come home and catch a nap in the afternoon.

Oh, but my baby girl had other plans.  Yes, oh yes, she did.

My brother let the pups out in the yard this morning, since it was GORGEOUS outside, and figured that they could run around in the yard, enjoy the nice weather, maybe catch a nap in the sunshine.  However, my girl Dora the Disaster managed to find the ONLY 2 foot patch of mud in the entire HALF ACRE of my backyard, bless her little investigative heart!

Of course, I didn't notice that she was covered in mud right away, head to toe.  Instead, when I went out on the back porch after coming home, she didn't spot me right away, so I had a minute to watch her frolicking around the yard.  She's the cutest damn thing ever, period.

AS SOON AS she spots me, she immediately runs to find her Wubba, bringing it up on the porch to me so that we can enjoy the sunshine together in the yard. Yeah, dude, I can take a hint.

She comes up to me on the deck, prancing around like a lunatic, and after she paws me a few times, I notice THIS:

Then I notice the muddy paw prints all over my boots, all over the deck, and the streaks of mud on my navy blue pants. Ooookey dokey, smokey artichokey. Well, heck, I'm already dirty, might as well play with the pups.

As I'm coming down the stairs to the yard, she starts bouncing up and down in her infamous bunny hop, play bowing to Homer and nipping his ears to entice him to play, and in general being a spaz with the zoomies, to and fro, to and fro, to and fro.  

Homer, of course, is his typical self, and though he's glad to see me (he DOES miss me - he RAN on his gimpy legs when I got home to come say hi!)...

...and even though he was content to have a little ear rubbing time while I was sitting on the swing (since I was gone so long...don'tcha know)...

...he was absolutely not about playing with Dora or her Wubba.

Dora, naturally, was not deterred in the slightest, and decided that we would play anyway.

   

We played for a bit, and then I decided that since my girl was COVERED in mud, and given that she sleeps on my WHITE COMFORTER... the weather was nice enough for Ms. Dora to have a bath. 

The universe, of course, disagreed with me.

The water valve in the backyard was sealed for winter, the hose on the side of the basement didn't work, and every time I let Dora's collar go, she was off like a shot to get RIGHT BACK IN THE MUD. 

 

*sigh*

The HoJo, of course, not being the slightest bit slow mentally, stayed well out of reach of the hose, and thought VERY hard about not being fragrant.

 

In the end, though, all's well that ends well.  My girl needed a bath, and badly.  We couldn't give it to her outside, so we put her in Todd's shower stall, since it's the biggest one, and Dora got her first ever shower - special Tropical Rain shower head, warm water and all.  She certainly has no fear of small enclosed spaces, since she walked right in as soon as I opened the door, but when the water came on and she realized what was happening...uh-oh....

 

My girl was an angel, though, when all was said and done.  She stayed in the stall with no problem, she gave me her paws to wash off, and she even obliged by having her first shakedown in the stall where I could rinse her hair off the walls, so I can't be too mad at her for having the rest once she left the bathroom and spraying water and hair everywhere.  Where isn't better with a little puppy hair?

At the end of the day, a squeaky clean puppy is worth the extra clean up time - and the laugh I got from Dora in a towel was worth the soaking I got trying to give her a shower.

Cutest. Dog. Ever.

The HoJo is a Go Go.

My sweet love Homer went in for his second hip surgery today, and I have to admit I was a bit nervous.  The last time he went in, he ended up a bit traumatized, thought he was abandoned, and had a lovely case of explosive diarrhea from nervousness. 

This time he did alright when I dropped him off - we went out for a bit of a walk beforehand (yes, I admit it, he's a hound and I was bribing his nose...) and he seems to have remembered the vet staff from last time.  They remarked on how he seemed more social and confident this time - it feels nice to know that others can see the progress my boy is making! I think that he will always be a somewhat timid dog, but with BullDozer Dora constantly yanking his chain, he should toughen up in no time flat.  Either that, or he'll have a nervous breakdown, crawl into a corner, and eat nothing but carrots while whimpering uncontrollably.  With Homer, you really just never know.  (Seriously...he stargazes, for the love of Pete!)

(Yes, I was FREEZING by the time we got to the vet's, but the HoJo has to have his shot of fresh O...)

I called the vet around 4 to see how he was doing, and apparently he came through the surgery beautifully. This hip was just as bad as the other one - but eight more weeks of Gimp and the Homeskillet will only have a little teeny limp!  (All pimp dogs have a hitch to their step, don't you know...he planned it that way.)  He is staying over tonight for observation, and I should be able to go get him and bring him home in the morning. 

Since he went there in a good mood and got cut up for his trouble, as well as a naked ass in the winter, I'm thinking I should hide all my good shoes before he gets here, and buy a bag of Cheetos just in case. O_O

Anyway, on another note, it was a beautifully mild fall day today, and I had to go deep into Nokesville to pick some stuff up.  My first clue that I was deep in country came when I turned on a gravel/mud road, and everyone I passed lifted their hands in greeting.  How awesome is that?  You don't even know me, but you're still saying Hi!  I HEART country folk!

Oh, but it gets better!  I come around the bend, cross a (one lane!) bridge over a crick, and look out my window to see this:

COWS!!!  How FABULOUS is that?  I must have stood there and watched them for about 15 minutes.  I guess you can take the girl out of the country... but gettin' the country out the girl apparently takes more than moving to DC.  Who knows - I think everybody needs a little taste of the bucolic now and again.  It's pretty hard to harbor negativity of any kind when you're watching cows wade chest deep in freezing water.  All you can think is... "Man, I bet that has to SUCK.  Let me turn the heat up in my car!"

Another Sunday Bites the Dust...

Ever since I moved down here to the nation's capital, I have given up on the concept of weekends.  Weekends up home used to be for going out, for piddling around the house, for lazing in bed and all night games of Pinochle and Gin Rummy.  Living in DC is a different animal though, and life here is so frenetic and the commute so horrendous that your weekdays are filled with the grind, and your weekends are filled with bills, laundry, grocery shopping and all of the chores you neglected during the week. 

TODAY I RECLAIMED MY WEEKEND. 

Well, OK, not really, but Dora had a rare lazy day today, and I commiserated.  She was still snoring away when I got up at 8 this morning, and she didn't drag her bones out of bed until after 9.  I honestly think that if she hadn't had to go pee, she might have lazed away the day hogging my covers and stinking up my pillow. 

She did show up for breakfast, though, and I have to hand it to her - that took GUTS.  Last night while we were eating dinner Dora pulled a steak attack and IN FULL VIEW of everyone at the dining room table walked up and grabbed the steak in the middle of the table. It took a second to process, and all I could think was "Has this dog LOST HER MIND?"  The ruckus that ensued let her know once and for all that only those with opposable thumbs are allowed to take food off the table - but she still showed up when she smelled bacon this morning.   O_O

She sulked a bit after being denied bacon and eggs, but then decided that the patch of sun in front of the back door (DIRECTLY in the path of anyone trying to enter or exit the family room) was a good place to camp out with her new squeaky toy. Thanks, Grandma, for the squeaky toy - I have ascertained that, 3,467 squeaks into this morning, this is not a toy I will allow you to buy again.  

  

As you can see, she was not in a sociable mood today, and every time I tried to take a picture, she grabbed her squeaker, got up, and left.  Well, crap.

Anyone who knows me knows that I go nowhere without my camera, and I will take simply ludicrous amounts of snapshots of just about anything.  So it shouldn't surprise anyone that I continued to snap shots of her - she's just TOO DANG CUTE!

Cute or not, like mother like daughter, and she let me know posthaste that she was not pleased with my continued shutterbugging:

"MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMM!!!  STOP IT!"

But, like mothers everywhere, I pay no mind to her discomfort when there are cute pictures to be had, and she eventually resigned herself to suffering through my madness.  I'm sure she'll find a corner to pee in or a shoe to chew when I'm not looking to make up for it.

 

So, Dora and I passed the day away in laziness, scorning productivity and laughing at laundry and chores.  Oh, and I baked a carrot cake.  If you're going to lay around doing nothing useful, why not have a tasty snack to chomp on?

Homer Jess wanted nothing to do with our lazing about...but he's weird.  He has taken up stargazing (I kid you NOT) and will whine to be let out at all hours of the day and night.  As soon as he gets outside, he'll climb up on the bench, sit down, tuck his tail around his paws, and stare at the sky.  Seriously. 

WHAT KIND OF DOG STARGAZES?

Then again, with the ozone layer depleting and pollution clouding up the atmosphere...  smoke 'em while you got 'em!

Gaze on, little man! Twinkle twinkle!

By the way, I totally don't mind if he goes out and counts the constellations all night, but it is getting COLD out, and he wants to be out there for hours!  He's going to catch his death from pneumonia, see if he doesn't!  I coax him in, he draaaaaags himself in ("Ohhhkay Mom, JEEEZ.") but then waits until I am all the way back upstairs before scratching at the back door to go back out.  We'll do this four, five, twenty times a night, easy.  Rinse, Lather, Repeat.  *sigh*

My special, special boy....

The Vagaries of Fate, and the Attitudes of Dogs.

This week has sucked.  Not been ok, not been so-so, but sucked in such a way as to make me think that I am on Candid Camera (tm) for a Hoover commercial, and that any second there is going to be a vortex that comes spinning out of nowhere to suck me into its maw.  I had initially thought that it was some crappy Karma on its return trip, coming back to bite me in the ass for some long ago wrong, but it's just gotten to the level where I would have had to have murdered some poor innocent pre-schooler and a bus full of puppies to warrant this week, and I'm pretty sure I would have remembered something like that.

So, I can safely say, with all of the heartfelt sincerity that lies deep in my (apparently black) heart:

TGIFF.

The extra F in there is my own little personal touch, and for those that don't know me, it rhymes with "ducking". 

But all that's behind me now, and all that's left is to survive the weekend.  Luckily, my weekend is so incredibly full that I may go insane, and then I won't really notice if things go any more wrong, as I'll be much too busy feeding peanuts to all of the pink elephants.  I love elephants.  I hate peanuts, so maybe it's best that the elephants eat them - I'd just throw them away, and that's not environmentally friendly at all.

I would try and feed them to my own resident elephant, but she is neither pink nor particularly fond of peanuts.  I did actually try and feed her nuts, and a teeny bit of shrimp with cocktail sauce, but she, unfortunately enough, was not wearing her gourmand hat, and made her opinion of my offerings quite clear.

 

Then again, I also wanted to chill out on the couch with her the other night and not play with her Wubba, and she had a similar opinion.  I figured we'd get in a little snuggle time, I'd rub her ears and watch a movie, maybe share my cookies and not even worry about crumbs getting on the couch.  She wasn't impressed.

 

Homer, on the other hand, is turning into a total LoveBug.  I found his sweet spot the other day...

Notice the giant pile of hair in front of him - I scratched and scritched and scratched for a good ten minutes, and he made his trademark Barry White Grumble the whole time.  He has now learned (from Dora, natch) how to beg for more, and the second you stop scratching him, he puts up the paw, and starts to plead with his big brown eyes.  He is learning from a master, and may soon surpass her at manipulating his people into giving him belly rubs and tasty treats.

However, his leg is healing well, and while I was scratching his sweet spot, he had that thing going like a (very slow) motor, scrabbling along the hardwood floors with every pass of my fingers on his neck.  Well, at least we know the dog "hind-leg-scratch" muscle survived the surgery intact.

 

He is definitely coming along, and despite the regular thrashings he gets from Dora, he is growing to be more and more of an inside dog, and his "lone wolf outside hound, aloof and stoic in the elements" persona is morphing more and more every day into his new "couch potato cheetoh-lovin' howling at 3 am to go out and pee" persona.  Luckily, he is just so damn cute that urges to throw shoes over the railing to shut him up in the wee hours of the morning are quickly squashed.

 

To top off the week, I've decided to relax tonight, with my cute ass dogs, play a little cards, and drink a little beer.  My nephew is reading the new Toys R' Us catalog with religious attention, though he's been sternly informed that there isn't a thing in it that he's going to get if he keeps acting up in school.

 

So, I guess even though I wouldn't repeat this week if you paid me, I've got my family and pups around me, food in the fridge, a roof over my head, and a damn good heating system to protect me from the cold-ass wind blowing outside my back door (thanks, Homeskillet, for that experience, during the 5 puppy pee outings in the last 45 minutes). 

Now, if only the rest of my life would go like this game of Gin Rummy... 

 

Short and Sweet

I'm abbreviating my posting tonight, not only because it's been a long day and I'm tired, but I still don't feel well and Typepad still isn't cooperating.  No thirty-one tries at twenty minutes apiece for me tonight!

However, most things in life are a little sweeter when you let the anticipation build...

 ...and whether it be a Wubba toss or another post on a random blog... most times it's worth the wait. 

So don't worry!

I'LL BE BACK.

Working On It...

Life has been busy lately - passing by at a dizzying pace, events changing almost faster than I can adapt.  Family, work, life, fire department - you name it, it's in a bit of upheaval.  Luckily, some things don't change very much...

and things at the ranch continue as normal...

 

I took Homer Jess  to the vet today, and everything is great.  His leg is healing nicely, and his range of motion is great.  The only thing he needs is a little work on inclines, since he's not using his bad leg to push off, so we'll have to find some hills for the HoJo to climb.  The vet loved on him for a bit, and then I took him for a few walks around the building so that he could sniff on every blade of grass and pee about a thousand times.  We drove home with the windows open, so his ears could flap in the breeze, and we stopped for french fries so that he had an excuse to drool on my shoulder.