I don’t like giving my dogs human food because they have sensitive stomachs, but every once in a while I am curious to see if they would actually eat what they’re begging for.
So I was eating an apple last week and tested Mireille. She turned her nose up at it.
Then Scrappy came around. She took a couple of licks and then went crazy on it, eating everything but the stem. It’s the funniest thing because I had no idea a dog would eat that.
And enjoy the hell out of it.
We all think it’s funny.
I completely forgot to tell you about my terrier, Scrappy and her relentless work for the Obama campaign.
First, when the primaries were going on and we were all for Hillary (even Mireille my other terrier was for Hillary), Scrappy broke for Obama. I know this because every time he came on tv Scrap would stop what she was doing, climb on the highest spot on the sofa and watch him speak.
When you say “Obama” she tilts her head. Without fail.
So when I went out to do block walking for Change…
Guess who had to come with me?
That’s right. Scrap did. She even let all the little children we saw pet her. She learned the routine quick. Walk up the sidewalk, turn when we get to a house, and as soon as she heard the doorhanger snap onto a doorknob, she was turned around and ready to “hit” the next house.
What a dog!
Look who’s back…
It looks as if he’s been fighting, there’s a bald spot on the back of his head. I’ve seen him in the pool for a couple of days and Blane saw him once. Every day for a week now we’ve found feathers in the pool.
I wonder if there is a nest somewhere in the yard? The dogs have been sniffing out the bushes more than usual. I’ll let you know if I find any eggs. I thought breeding season was over. Hmmm.
I took the dogs down to the creek over the weekend and let them run full blast and swim.
They were so excited they kept running back and forth along the sides, running so fast, leaping into the air, flying.
I told you my dog could fly.
I got Blane to swing on a Tarzan vine after promising not to put it on my blog.
But that’s too cool to keep from the internet.
Oh, the swimming dogs. Check it out.
And what happens to these dogs after a full day of fun down by the creek? A good bath. They know it’s coming. They go straight for the hose when we get home and wait for it.
One of my favorite things is something my father made by hand when he was twelve years old. I didn’t know this thing even existed during the time he was alive. Maybe it was at my grandmother’s house or it was put away so us kids couldn’t ruin it.
It’s some sort of animal he carved of mesquite, a gnarly wood that is plentiful in Texas, where he grew up.
It’s in great shape for being sixty years old.
3 inches tall by 5 1/2 inches long
What amazes me is how little carving he had to do. It is all one piece, nothing glued or pieced together. As if he found this animal already made in the tree, he just had to cut it away.
It has two eyes, a pot belly, a tail, front legs split from one branch…
Two butt cheeks, back legs, and a tail.
I don’t know what type of animal he meant it to be… a dog? horse? pig?
It never fails to fascinate me. This simple piece of mesquite that shows enormous imagination.
I looked high. I looked low. Those ducks are nowhere to be found.
Talk about an empty nest.
They took off a couple of days ago, snuck out while I wasn’t home. We walked the neighborhood looking for them, but no ducks. They are a noisy crowd, so if they were in any of the yards near here I would have heard them.
Maybe they went to the pond by the library where the mother probably came from. There they can dive for minnows.
I kept hearing my dogs bark like crazy after letting them out into the back yard Saturday. Not the regular barking they do, but fierce protests, as if an intruder was back there. I went out to check on it and saw this duck swimming in the pool. She wasn’t quacking or anything, but she seemed to know the dogs weren’t going to jump in after her.
I got the dogs back into the house, grabbed the camera and didn’t really think she’d still be there by the time I got back out, but she was.
I wondered if she was injured because she wouldn’t fly away.
Since I’d never seen a duck in the pool before I rounded up everyone to come see but she was gone by the time they came. Spanky said she had seen one a few days before, a male one swimming in the pool, but she was in a rush to get to school and forgot to tell us.
Sunday, I go out to see what the dogs are barking at again. This time they are barking at a shrub. I pull the foilage back and guess what? That same duck, sitting on three eggs.
Awwwwww.
There’s no way I can fence off this area as it is behind the pool and the dogs would just be able to walk around the coping. So I just keep telling the dogs,”That’s our friend.”
That’s what I tell them when our human friends come over to get them to be nice. They know that word, somehow, and are leaving the duck and her nest alone.
Of course, you know, I keep thinking… of all the places that duck could’ve made a nest and she chooses a Cajun’s yard. That is one lucky duck, I tell ya.
What Blane did to my dog was wrong, wrong, wrong. Mireille was shedding and he’d had enough. Got out the shears and mowed her down. This was his first time, it’s obvious by the results, notice the unnatural looking square bald spots.
Poor Mireille.
I took her out for a walk with her new “do” and I could swear she was embarrassed when she saw other dogs at the park.
I had to fix this. Put some flair in it, make it look like it was done on purpose.
Leopard spots.
Now I think my dog looks cool. Bohemian.
Why is it that the kids won’t stop laughing? Why?
We’ll have to go out for another walk to the park this afternoon, wait a week, then see if anyone tries to copy Mireille’s style.
Part I: The Other Spanky
There’s another Spanky in the family, Blane and Angela’s dog. She’s a mutt Angela got about five years ago. Someone brought her in to the vet’s where she works. The pup was just 1 day old and the owner wanted to put it to sleep because it was born with a cleft palate.
Now Blane used to make jokes about the vet’s. About how they put more animals to sleep there than they saved. And Angela had just been saying how some new girl at the office wouldn’t cut it in this business because she cried every time they had to put down an animal.
I don’t know how it all went down that day, why Angela didn’t put that dog down. Maybe she didn’t want to do it while the new (sensitive) girl was around. She kept the pup in her pocket at work all day and by the time 5 O’clock rolled around, Angela couldn’t manage to put down the doggie.
I mean, could you?
She got some feeding tubes, puppy formula, and made a commitment to save her. A month or two later a vet friend of hers sewed up Spanky’s palate and she became sort of a normal dog.
Spanky the dog had cowlicks all over her body, eyes that went in two different directions, perpetually bloodshot. She also walked as if she was drunk. We called her “troll dog” because she had this wicked growl with that screwed up palate. She was possesive, too, a bit jealous of Blane, especially when he and Angela moved in together. When it was time for Spanky to go in her crate at night, she’d try to hide. She often stuck just her head under the bed, the rest of her body in full view, but to Spanky, she was deep cover.
She had OCD too, had to make a figure eight in the yard before she did her business.
A couple of days ago she came down with something, got really sick and passed on. Nobody knows what it was.
Part II: Coburn
Liv’s dog Coburn was the biggest German Shepherd I’d ever met. The thing about this dog was he seemed to read minds. You could just look at him a certain way and he’d sit. We’ve been knowing him for a good ten years, visiting just a few days at a time through the years. He never forgot us, even though every year my girls had grown and changed a lot, he never did bark at them as if they were strangers.
On one trip we’d told Liv and Coburn bye for the year, we were going to another place 3 hours away and would continue on with our travels. All evening he was restless. He panted and waited by the door for us to return. It worried Liv. Turns out, we couldn’t find a hotel where we went and had to return to her place. We got back at about 3 AM. Somehow that dog knew we were in a bit of trouble.
In the summer of 2006, when we were telling Coburn goodbye, he whimpered. He’d never done that before. I remember going back one more time and giving him another bear hug. About a month later, he was diagnosed with cancer and given about a month to live. Maybe he knew that would be the last time we’d see him?
Liv had her son dig a deep hole in her backyard in advance. She has a bad back and wanted to make sure he had a proper resting place in case Klaus wasn’t around when the Time came.
Next summer rolls around, we go back and see Coburn again. He doesn’t even look sick.
See? So I’m thinking that dog was misdiagnosed. He looked healthy, a little slow, but hell, he was 12 years old.
The next day, however that dog barely moved. I don’t know where he got all that energy to pretend he wasn’t sick that first day we got there, but it was all gone. A couple of months later, Coburn, too was gone.
Part III: Why I Am Writing About This Depressing Stuff
Well, obviously because these two pets passes away recently. It’s really sad that there are no memorial events for pets. People hurt deeply when they go. I haven’t seen any cards in the sympathy section of the greeting card aisle that are specifically for those kinds of best friends. Maybe they do have them somewhere. But I haven’t seen them.
What about dog angel stories? Ghost dog stories? You ever heard one?
Not until now. Call me crazy if you want (I will revel in it anyway), but I got one for ya.
This last trip to Liv’s? Coburn had been gone for a couple of weeks. I went out and paid my respects to his spot in the backyard. I can’t tell you how empty it felt in that house without him. I think it was the second day at Liv’s, while at her computer, I felt something nudge me in the lower back. I thought for a second, Coburn. Looked around. No one there. And then I thought…
So if you have any kind words to help heal the hearts of Blane and Angela and Liv, feel free to say them here. If you have any pet stories to share, go on ahead. I’m listening.
Spanky saw this post about her sister Sweetpea and said, “You don’t write anything about me.” Maybe she meant I don’t write enough about her.
Today I’d like to focus on some special skills of my little Spanky.
She’s got some lucky friends. Spanky does not buy gifts for their birthdays. She makes them by hand. They are not gifts that take a few minutes to create, they are these fabtabulous plush toys that she designs the patterns for and sews entirely by hand (looking at her stitches I told her she would make a great plastic surgeon).
It takes her about a day from start to finish for one of her plushies.
Some of them are based on anime characters.
And others are just a total fabrication. Here she just made a cow because her friend is obsessed with them.
This one is based on some anime character that a friend of hers loves.
She has a other special skills and talents. She plays the piano and the cello, she can write, she can draw, and she can read a 600 page novel in just one day.
She is full of surprises. Here she is at Warped Tour kicking the shit out of a nineteen-year-old guy on Guitar Hero.
That guy’s face was pretty red when the beating was done (she had triple his score, and that was the highest girl score of the day). Poor thing, all his friends were watching.
The best thing about her? Almost everything that comes out of her mouth is funny. Sometimes her jokes are over my head. She’s smarter than me. I call her my portable brain. She’s my righthand man, my sidekick, my dawg.
So don’t change the channel. Spanky will be doing a guest post here next week, a review of an upcoming concert.
First, a couple of photos of recent animals Blane and Angela adopted. Pipsqueak is a miniature chihuaha. Tiny!
Check out the Doggles.
And here is the horse, I forget his name, but he is a retired racehorse. Gigantic!
Check out that ponytail. Not on the horse, on Angela. She’s cutting it next week. I told her (and Blane) she could sell it. Here’s the convo:
Me: Oh, yeah, a friend of mine got $2500 for her hair.
Blane Jr: (ears perk up) Oh yeah?
Angela: I’m going to donate it to…
Blane Jr. (laughing): No you not, I’m starting a hair farm.
Angela: You gonna be my hair pimp.
Blane Jr. (playfully grabs Angela by the hair, talks in a gruff voice): Where you been ho? You… You trim some of dat hair off?
All joking aside, she is planning on donating the hair to that group that makes wigs for people with cancer. I have a cousin, Tracy who donated hers last year to a group called Locks of Love. Anyway, I think that’s a pretty cool thing to do, especially when she could sell it for some major lettuce.
A doctor slapped a behind and said, “It’s a girl.”
The dad said, “She is so cute, it makes you want to spank her with your lips.”
So she got the name, “Spanky.”
The mom said, “She puts an exclamation mark at the end of this family.”
A clown was born.
Happy Birthday Spanky!
Over at Max’s blog, there is an update on the pet food recall.
My vet is telling all pet owners not to feed their dogs or cats any packaged wet foods, even if the food is not on the list. He’s saying to feed the animals steamed rice and chicken broth if you feed your pet wet foods. Bringing your pet in for a blood test would be a good idea
Dry foods were not affected by the recall.
EDITED NOTE: Make damn sure you check out Pooks’ post about the shocking cause of all this, Go there right now.
There has been a big pet food recall. Go check out Max’s blog entry about that. It’s pretty bad. Animals are dying.
EDITED NOTE: I’m hearing they are adding foods to the list. Keep checking those links at Max’s blog.
I am on a neighborhood email list and got this today from a frustrated neighbor:
I have seen a small dog with a tag wandering about in the neighborhood but don’t know who owns that.
I would like to bring this into everyone’s notice that there are some dog owners who walk their dogs in the neighborhood and don’t cleanup after their dogs in other peoples yards, This is very bad and I believe its against the law as well. I have noticed this on many occasions when I don’t see an owner without anything(plastic bags etc) to cleanup after their dogs. This problem has become worse in the last few weeks with dog poops lying everywhere in the front yards.
Lately I have noticed a small white dog with black ears and a black spot on the back wandering around un-accompanied pooping in front yards. He had a tag, but I could not get the name.
I am requesting everyone to pass this on to the dog owners to be a little considerate and cleanup after their dogs.
I’m not sure exactly where in the neighborhood this guy lives, but I have to find out. I had no idea us dog owners were being staked out for possession of plastic bags. I keep them in my pocket. And what if my dog already shat and I’ve thrown it away in someone’s (maybe his) trash can?
It’s time for that shit-in-the-bag-on-fire and ring-the-doorbell prank. We’ll find him. I printed out the email and had my dogs sniff out his scent. We’ll find him alright.
Here’s my posse:
The two black ones are Blane and Angela’s, the light ones are mine, and the one with the fangs is Pablo, Shane’s dog.
Hell, I’m sure I can get all of the dogs at DogsAgainstBush to help us out.
I refuse to blink an eye lest I miss something. Happy Birthday, Sweetpea. 
You have to go over to AJ’s blog and check out her zoo photos. AJ’s a professional photographer from Austrailia and she has many talents which I can’t tell you about because she’s so modest. But go look and tell me if that’s not the prettiest tiger photo you have ever seen. Check it out,
AJ’s “Bus it or Die”.
The Show Must Go On 