Category: Dogs

body, Dogs, neighborhood, Outdoors, prayer, spirit

A Blessing of Waters

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Color photograph of dog on a leash standing on a rocky beach looking with alert ears and eyes at small waves on the shore.
My girl Thaia’s first visit to the Chesapeake Bay at Point Lookout State Park

As soon as we come in out of the heat, she heads for the kitchen. First stop is the food bowl in case something new has materialized. Then it’s to the water. She gives it a few good laps then ambles over to collapse on her bed by the balcony doors. 

I try to keep her water filled. Sometimes I forget and all that greets her is a rank two-day old puddle, if that. She doesn’t know how to signal it’s time for a refill. It’s up to me to remember to keep track but lately my attention is slippery. These are not my proudest moments, when I can’t recall the last time she had something within reach to drink.

Continue reading “A Blessing of Waters” →
body, community, disability, Dogs, health, Living in the Moment, long covid

Know Happy: Notes on Voluntary Confinement

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Color photograph of a fennec fox curled up and sleeping on a brown, sandy surface with its nose tucked into its tail and its ears sticking up.
Photo by Clément ROY on Unsplash

The Visible app gives me a 2. Not the lowest score possible but It is a “Back to bed with you, Dear” kind of score. A score of knitted brows and wringing hands. Your body is out of balance today, the app tells me. You may want to plan a quieter day.

So I do. Even though the sun is up and the crepe myrtle blossoms are unfurling in the July heat, I down my morning meds and crawl back under the sheets. Eye mask, earplugs, more sleep. Fractured sleep disturbed by epic action-thriller fever dreams that shake my hold on reality, but sleep nonetheless. What else is there to do?

Continue reading “Know Happy: Notes on Voluntary Confinement” →
body, disability, Dogs, Fitness, health, long covid

COVID-versary

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Me: I’ve been thinking a lot about where we were this week last year

Co-worker: Were we in WA? Where your whole life changed and you were so sick??

Me: That’s the place! I was about to be escorted off campus. But it was a great first two days!

It’s the one-year anniversary of my first (and so far, only) COVID infection and I’m spending it much the same way as I spent the week in 2022. Dizzy, queasy, exhausted, and trusting that work can get on without me. 

And bored. So very bored.

Continue reading “COVID-versary” →
Creativity, Dogs, Family, Things I Can

15. Things I Can Hazard: Deep Fat Frying

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The dog’s anxiety has escalated to self-harm. She’s not burning herself with cigarettes, although once her toes can work the lighter, all bets are off. For now, her injuries are of the indirect variety. Her daylong bouts of howling shred her throat, leaving her hoarse and coughing through the evening. Between yelps, she thrusts her head repeatedly against her crate, bending the bars and tearing strips of flesh off her snout and cheeks. We come home to bleeding gashes and hysteria.

The vet is tapering her off one prescription and starting her on another. We have the number of an animal behaviorist who specializes in unique temperaments. New approaches could take several weeks to sort out, and new behavior far longer to establish.

At the beginning of the highest pressure work month I’ve faced in five years, I’m now the proud owner of a dog that can’t be left alone. Continue reading “15. Things I Can Hazard: Deep Fat Frying” →

Choices, Dogs

Leashed

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In the fourteen days since she joined us, she’s destroyed:

  • One chest harness
  • Two dog blankets
  • One nylon leash
  • One leather leash
  • The molding around the bathroom door
  • The molding around the front door
  • A good portion of the bedroom carpet
  • The cap of Bug’s new marker
  • One magazine basket handle
  • The zipper of a purple down vest
  • The zipper of raincoat #1
  • The hem of raincoat #2
  • One complete ham bone
  • The pink bathrobe sash
  • The metal bars of her crate
  • An entire issue of the Washington Post Sunday magazine, all the way down to Gene Weingarten

 

Dogs belong to that elite group of con artists at the very pinnacle of their profession, the ones who pick our pockets clean and leave us smiling about it.

– Stephen Budiansky, The Truth About Dogs

It’s pushing 11:00pm. I want nothing more than to stash the last of plates in the dishwasher and collapse into bed. Instead, I will don a scarf and a jacket (one with an intact zipper), and pocket a few plastic sleeves from the Sunday Post. The little monster will quiver in a half-sit until she hears the harness snap, then she’ll lunge for the door. I will stumble out into the dark trying in vain to keep her behind and to the left of me as we circle the block half a dozen times. Only after she’s memorized every drop of canine urine that’s graced the grass in the past 72 hours will she relax enough to do her business. Then we’ll come back in where she will dedicate another 30 minutes to pacing from my room to Bug’s room to her blanket to her crate and back to my room again, collar jingling all the while, until she finds the right place to curl up for the night.

And I’ll be the grinning idiot who coos and strokes her back as she sighs off to sleep.