Wherein I talk mostly about dogs.
Yesterday’s was a Retrobruxist of sorts, but it’s Friday, so here you go.
Three years ago I did a sleep study. I never did write a blog post about it. The abbreviated version: it sucked, and they didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.
Two years ago Redford shat himself in his crate, and I questioned everything, which I do on bad days.
One year ago I didn’t follow instructions. But it all worked out in the end.
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
Day 1
My arms are sore. The day prior, five friends and I flipped a giant tractor tire a mile. (It’s a workout created by my sister-wife. She dubs it “the enTIRE mile”.) Upshot is my forearms are Meredith Baxter Burny, and correcting Tulip on our walk is a chore. I decide that, instead of physical corrections, I’ll use mind control. I say, “Tulip!” real short and concentrate real hard on being the boss of her, and wonder of wonders, she drops back six inches letting the leash go slack.
I have to do a lot of mind control, probably about as often as I’d been doing tugs on her collar, but my forearms are saved.
Day 2
I spend most of the day crying. Emotional upheaval, probably not helped by the fact that I’m not sleeping enough. I’ve been walking the dogs between 9:00 and 10:00pm to beat the heat, but when I get home, I’m wound up and don’t go to bed until midnight. Tonight I skip the dog-walk so that I can get to bed at a reasonable hour. Lights out at 10:37pm.
My brain wakes me up at 4:15am. Stupid brain.
[My friend asks, “Aren’t you scared to walk that late at night?” Um, I’m walking 190 pounds of pit bull. Nope, not scared.]
Day 3
More mind control. I think it’s working. I have to choke up less on the leash when we go by the house with three big Rottweilers in the yard. At home, I look online at Rottweiler rescues. I need to stop; I have a problem.
Tulip has 120 Facebook friends. No adoption prospects.
Day 4
On our late night walk, the pack gets agitated. I look around to find a loose or stray dog (it’s too dark to see if it’s wearing tags) about 20 yards away. Redford lunges, and when he can’t get at the stray, he redirects on Violet and Tulip. Tulip snaps back. I’m able to separate the dogs and hustle away from the strange dog. People pooh-pooh pinch collars—they say they’re cruel or whatever—but those things are the only reason none of us has to go to the ER.
Day 5
I have scheduled a walk with the adoptive “father” (he’s only 22!) of Tucker, the boy dog that was confiscated with Tulip. In the pictures, Tucker and Tulip look alike, though he’s clearly mixed with something other than pit bull. It’s possible Tulip is his mom or sister. I’m hoping she remembers him and they have a grand ol’ time together.
We arrive at Duke’s east campus. Tucker walks up with his person. Tulip is excited. She tenses up. She sniffs at Tucker. He hesitates. She says not-nice things to him.
(sigh)
We walk anyway. It’s fine. But damn.
Day 6
I go on a tubing trip down the Dan River that lasts three hours longer than I expect. Tulip is in the crate for almost eleven hours. When I get home, she has jumped around in there and managed to slide it across the room, but she’s otherwise OK. I’m too tired to take the dogs for a walk.
Day 7
Tulip is CRAZY. Between the long stint in the crate and not being walked since Friday night, she has a lot of stored-up wiggles. She gets them out by running laps through the house and tossing her deer antler to herself and then chasing after it.
We go on an extra-long walk. I use a combination of physical corrections and mind control.
Well, three years ago, I was duct-taping my puppy. Really sad I don’t have photographic evidence of that.
Two years ago, I published my first password-protected post. (See the FAQ page for qualifications for password access.)
I celebrated my first CrossFit-iversary one year ago today! (Shit, I should do a post about how totally beast—ha ha—I’ve gotten in the last year. Maybe tomorrow. Retrobruxist Friday is a lazy day.)
Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.
Don’t know Tulip? Start here.
Day 1
I come out of the shower to find Tulip chewing up a pair of flip flops that I’ve just bought to replace the flip flops Violet chewed up two years ago. (Yes, I have been wearing them since then.) I snatch the shoe out of her mouth and—I’m not proud of this—I throw it at her. It glances off her foot.
It is mangled. I’m so mad I flop down face-down on my bed and just breathe. It’s only a flip-flop, I say. She didn’t know any better, I say.
Eventually, I get up, but I give her the silent treatment. Though she has always followed me from room to room, she stays on my bedroom floor and looks sheepish.
I last about five minutes before I crawl up next to her and rub my forehead against her neck. She forgives me. Dogs.
Day 2
A woman who has previously adopted a CCB dog wants to meet Tulip, though she has a cat, and I think Tulip might eat a cat.
Day 3
My buddy Phil develops a plan to bomb a bunch of neighborhood listservs with an email about Tulip, including links to her Facebook page and tumblr.
I write and forward him the email, and he implements the plan.
Day 4
Due to the listserv bomb, Tulip gets lots of new Likers on Facebook. Everyone thinks she’s so funny.
She shits on the deck again. Very funny, Tulip.
Day 5
Two different prospects contact me about meeting Tulip. I send them my availability for the weekend, and we set up appointments.
Day 6
Both prospects cancel.
Day 7
Day 1
It’s only 89 degrees at 4:00pm. There’s a pretty good cloud cover and a tiny breeze. We do the long loop, and it’s actually not terrible. Halfway through, the sun comes out. And it’s terrible.
Day 2
I’m tired and depressed, and I have been for a while. Maybe I need to adjust my amino acids? Or maybe I should just stop drinking my feelings, which is what I’ve done six times in the last month. (That’s a lot for me. I usually drink two or three times a year.)
Nonetheless, the stress of the crate-and-rotate routine is wearing on me. I email the organization asking for strategies to get Tulip adopted.
Day 3
I wake up bleary-eyed from not going to bed on time again. At the same moment I reach down to grab Tulip’s bowl, she jumps up to say good morning and cracks my chin with her skull. I come very close to hitting my foster dog. But I don’t. Then she pees on the deck. And I still don’t hit her. Good thing she’s fucking adorable.
The org emails me and suggests, amongst other things, I make a Facebook page for her. So I do. (Like it! Share it!)
Late-night 2.5 miles. Gorgeous.
Day 4
Another 2.5 miles after sundown. Less than 90 degrees is so much better than more than 90 degrees.
Day 5
Friends come over! Tulip does The Tulip Dance, and it goes a little something like this:
Love makes Tulip smile.
Day 6
Day 7
Tulip registers her displeasure at the distribution of peanut butter with an impassioned speech.
Day 1
Zero comments on the last Tulip post. I get on Facebook, which I really shouldn’t do when I’m feeling stabby, and post:
Fourteen out of 15 commenters say they do read these posts. I start another edition of the Foster Chronicles. But it’s mostly because I can’t help myself.
Day 2
Day 3
Late night playdate with Mini-Poodle*!
(I only catch the tail end of it.)
Day 4
I let Tulip out in the morning, as usual. When I go outside later, I find a puddle on the deck. Did it rain? I look around. No. No rain. Hm.
Day 5
Another puddle on the deck after letting Tulip out. I think she’s picked up a bad habit from Mini-Poodle.
Day 6
Saturday morning. Tulip wants to go out, so I let her and then flop back onto my bed. When I stumble outside with her breakfast later, I find that the gate to the yard had swung closed during the storm in the night so she’s been trapped on the deck for 45 minutes. Puddle of pee. Aaaaaaaaand pile of crap. On the deck.
Not her fault.
Day 7
I take Tulip into the yard and make sure she pees out there, then I head inside to get her breakfast. When I walk out with the bowl, I find a perfect poop pile right in front of the rocking chairs.
Probably not her fault, but having a hard time feeling like it’s mine.
*I should probably note at this point that Mini-Poodle is not actually a poodle. He’s probably a bichon frisé. But I’ve been calling him Mini-Poodle for so long now, it seems dumb to stop.
Who’s Tulip? Start here.
Day 1
Day 2
Friends Craig and Michelle come over, and they bring
That’s their 5-month-old pit bull foster, Malcolm. Nom nom, want to put him in my mouf.
I put Tulip on the leash and let them interact. He’s a little scared but waggy. Tulip can’t feel her legs she’s so excited. She wants to love him and hug him and wrestle with him and love him. At one point, he tells her he’s a little overwhelmed, but she just doesn’t get it and keeps loving him, and I have to pull her off.
Day 3
After work, I put Tulip outside for a little while and sit on the couch to read my book. Violet comes in
And I tear up because I’m realizing it’s been so long since I’ve hung out with my own dogs. Most of the time, I figure Redford and Violet have each other, so I love on Tulip, but I know my dogs miss me.
This is hard.
Day 4
Hey, guess who comes by and
In fact, Jorge and his sons come looking for him at this point, and they tell me his name’s Jumpy.
I think I have to keep calling him Mini-Poodle though.
Day 5
Lately, we’ve been waiting until 9:30pm to walk. It’s still 94 degrees. I’m drenched, and the dogs are parched. As much as I love Durham, there are three months during which I despise walking my dogs.
Day 6
I stay out too late trying to make good on a new goal. (Chill out, Margo; I don’t succeed.) Tulip’s been in the kennel for hours, so I bring her and the dog bed into my bedroom for the night and say a little prayer that she won’t be up and at ’em early.
Day 7
She lets me sleep until 9:00! Good dog, Tulip.
We go to an adoption event in Chapel Hill in the afternoon. Tulip is really excited to see two other fosters. She wants to love them and hug them and wrestle with them and love them.
But when she’s not distracted, she lunges at the other dogs and makes monkey noises. A couple times we have to take a breather outside.
She does have a couple of brief, positive interactions with one of the other fosters, a notoriously chill dog. So there’s that.
People stop by and scratch her head and say things like, “She’s so cute; I wish my apartment weren’t so small,” and, “If I didn’t already have two…”
No prospects.
Don’t know who Tulip is? Start here.
Day 1
MI
NI-
POO
DLE
for breakfast playdate!!!
(He pisses—no joke—eleven times in my yard. And that’s only the ones I see. I wonder if it drives Redford crazy when he goes out there and finds this fucking Napoleon has planted his tiny flag all over Redford’s territory.)
As I’m walking out for work, dude drives up in a pick-up asking if I’ve seen his little white dog, and I let him know Mini-Poodle just left. We chat for a minute. His name’s Jorge. I tell him how well my dogs get along with his. He says, “I know, I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw it happen, I was like, ‘Oh my gahd, those are big dogs!'” He apologizes for Mini-Poodle’s trespasses. I tell him not to worry about it. Oh, how my attitude has changed about that little muppet.
Day 2
Gark! So many corrections when we walk! In a 25-minute loop, I correct Violet a dozen times, Redford only twice, and Tulip an average of every sixth step. Not joking. So frustrating. She’s learned other things. Why can’t she learn this?
Probably because I stopped walking in circles. I’m too tired. I’m tired, and I’m in that feel-bad-don’t-sleep-feel-bad cycle, and I’ve never been less inspired to start a new school year, and I don’t want to walk in fucking circles.
I go to the gym. None of my friends are there. Everything ass to knee is still burny, or as we say, Meredith Baxter Burny, from too many back squats on Saturday. And for the first time ever, I turn around and walk out.
Day 3
I’m at work for a long time, so when I get home, we do the 2.5-mile loop which we haven’t done in weeks. Twice the walk, twice the corrections. Tulip’s real bad at this.
Day 4
I keep taking Tulip into the yard on-leash to try to get the dogs to interact, but Redford and Violet are always so hot after our walks that they just stand on the deck waiting to go into the air conditioning.
Day 5
I decide to try the reintroduction before our walk. Redford runs laps around the shed. Tulip really wants to join him. At one point, Tulip approaches Violet, and I realize I’m too terrified. This is never going to happen.
Tulip and I walk circles in the driveway. She actually does pretty well and sits when I tell her to.
Day 6
To raise awareness of Breed-specific Legislation and the harm that it can do, CCB posts on Facebook pictures of all the adopt-a-bulls with the caption “I am Lennox. End BSL.”
A couple people comment on the photo of Tulip that they want to adopt her. I don’t get my hopes up because people say stuff like that all the time. Except that I do get my hopes up. Kind of a lot.
Day 7
We go to Auntie Wa’s house for dinner, and Tulip does this for about 45 minutes:
When we get in the car, she does this all the way home:
We need to go to Auntie Wa’s more often.
Neither of the people who commented on her photo follow up about adoption.
If you’re new to the Foster Chronicles, Tulip’s story starts here.
Day 1
I decide I’m going to do it. I’m going to reintroduce the dogs. We all do the short neighborhood loop (it’s 96 degrees outside). Then I put Violet in the house, let Redford off the leash, and walk Tulip, still tethered, around the yard. Redford saunters in a half-assed way to the middle of the yard but quickly returns to the door and is all, “You know, whatever, but inside is air-conditioned.”
So much for reintroduction.
Day 2
Tulip’s out; Violet and Redford in. My sister comes to visit with her munchkins for a minute. When we go outside, hey, look! It’s mini-poodle! I’m supposed to take pictures and call Animal Control because that family has been warned, so next up is a fine for not containing their dog. But Tulip’s cool with him, and I can’t bring myself to do it.
Naturally, mini-poodle bolts the moment he sees me, but Tulip comes in panting, so they must’ve been frolicking. Or maybe he was making her feel like a natural woman. I don’t know.
Day 3
I keep all the dogs inside for most of the day because
(CCB, I’m a great copy editor! Call me!)
But in the evening, we all need to get our wiggles out—the dogs because they’ve been inside and me because I performed several acts of bravery during the day. (One of them involved a machete.)
We’re walking around the block when a dog whose owner had it off-leash sprints toward us. This will not go well. I call, “Could you call off your dog please?” But the dog does not follow the owner’s commands and runs circles around us. I’m terrified Tulip will flip out, but instead it’s Redford, who does not like to be run at when he’s on the leash, who loses his shit. Of course I have a tight grip on him. He can’t get at the instigator. So he redirects on Violet, and she’s all, “WHAT THE EFF YO?”
Meanwhile, this woman and her dog are playing Duck, Duck, Goose around us, and as if I weren’t sweaty enough already, I’m now drenched. Eventually, I walk far enough away, and the other owner chases her dog back to the yard. The dogs recover in about four seconds. Me, takes a little longer.
The woman later apologizes on the neighborhood listserv.
Day 4
We do a short walk with my neighbor/friend. In this heat, 25 minutes lays the dogs out for a good four hours.
Day 5
Little bit longer walk. So many corrections. I haven’t walked in circles with her forever. There’s my trouble, probably.
Day 6
Tulip and I head to Phydeaux Raleigh for another adoption event. I’m crossing my fingers this goes better than last time.
It’s 104 degrees, so I’m glad to see they’ve decided to set up the table in the store, but another rescue organization has already occupied the space just inside the doors, so we’re kinda smooshed off into a corner out of the line of traffic.
Even worse, the first thing people see when they walk in
Wait, does that look like a puppy? No, no, that’s not a puppy. That’s
Sorry, older dogs. No snugs for you.
The other group leaves about 2:15, and we shift over to the prime real estate, but by then the foot traffic has slowed down. A few people saunter by and dole out a head-scratch now and again. Nobody’s interested in adopting Tulip or the other bullies though.
:(
When I get home, I put an ad on Craig’s List, which immediately gets flagged and removed. I don’t know why because I read the guidelines and I hadn’t broken any of them. So I post another one. Hopefully it’ll stay up.
Day 7
I wake up to two responses from my online ad. Both are spam.
I needed to borrow my sister’s truck to help a friend transport a grill, so I headed up to her place on 4th of July morning and found Wa, brow knitted, picking up yard waste. A few minutes prior, she told me, she had startled a copperhead who was resting underneath a bush, and it had slithered its way across the yard. And now she couldn’t find it.
And I don’t exactly want to French kiss snakes, but my sister— You know how we all have a thing? Snakes are her thing. Last year, a black snake got into her house, and we agreed she pretty much had PTSD for months afterward.
Now, another snake. She called my brother-in-law who was an hour away with the kids, and he reminded her of the machete in the shed, which she fetched. Then she tiptoed around the perimeter of the yard until she called to me that she had found the snake again.
“Right there,” she said, pointing.
I looked. “Right where?” I said.
“Right there, under the fence.”
I moved closer. “I can’t see it,” I said.
“Under the slat with the hole in it.” I squinted. I turned my head. I leaned in. Oh, shit! Right there. If it was a snake, it’d woulda bit me.
As it were.
At first, I was all, Hat tip on your camo, little man. And then I stepped back and was like, why are my knees all gushy?
About then, Wa’s neighbor came over, and we pointed out the viper. Honest, I was kinda hoping he’d jump in and say, “You ladies go put your feet up inside; I’ll handle this varmint.” But he just kept looking at it… and looking at it… and frowning, and I thought, I’ma have to kill this reptile mydamnself.
The animal poked his slithery head out from under the fence, and for a minute, I felt bad for him. He looked kinda skeered. But then I imagined my nieces and nephew, skipping barefoot to the trampoline, and I was all, Oh hell no, you’re gonna die today, little friend.
The neighbor-man put the shovel on one side of the fence and nudged the snake my way. I took a deep breath, lifted the machete, and went all Game of Thrones on his ass (neck).
I wish I could say I got him in one whack, but my hands were shaking and it took two for sure. And then I whacked him again for making my hands shake. Asshole.
Neighbor-man pulled him out from under the fence, laid him on a paving stone, and gave him a chop with the shovel for good measure. Thanks for nothing, neighbor-man.
Naturally, I had to let Facebook know. (Click for bigger.)
Twice.
On that one, my old boyfriend from Mexico was all “Huh?” so then I had to brag in Spanish.
So there you go. One of my friends commented that, with this act, I earned a place on her speed-dial. Another told me he was going to call me Machete from now on.
You know, whatever. No big. I kill víboras cobrizas con un machete. It’s what I do.
*Give or take 2.5 feet.
