Tag: dogs

Retrobruxist Friday 11/16/12

Redford was just a baby three years ago, and a lil’ goof-bucket. He’s still a goof-bucket, but giant, and an affection bully, busting into your embrace of another dog or another person ’cause what if your love runs out before you get to him? Man, I love that boy.

Some of you have become Dan NJ fans recently. I’ve been president of his fan club for a long time. Two years ago, I wrote about some advice he had given me back when we were roomies in Astoria, Queens. Excellent as the advice was, I extrapolated poorly from it and decided I needed to maintain a dog-shaped space in my house. 

Meh.

I mean, if you set them end to end, you can fit so many dogs into 747 square feet, right? (Yes, this means I’ll probably foster again soon. It’s seemed like there’s one too few pit bulls in my house lately.)

NOTE: There remains a man(or woman!)-shaped space in my bed, for which I’m still recruiting. However, I don’t want to date to do it. I don’t want to email or evaluate prospects. I don’t want to set up dates, go on dates, or follow up after dates. I don’t want any of that. Somebody just come over and get in my bed, for Christ’s sake.

Sometimes I like to think I’m old. About five years ago when I got my first gray pube, I figured life was pretty much in the wrapping-up stage. And a year ago, meeting a cute boy ten years my junior made me start counting my liver spots. 

But the fact is, saying it’s too late, I’m too old, is a racket I’ve been running since I was, like, 12. I think that’s when I decided I was too old to learn to ski.

It’s not too late, really for anything. My grandma started windsurfing when she was 58.

And I’m not actually old. If I start running that line of bullshit again, you have permission to tell me to STFU.

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

Retrobruxist Friday 8/30/12

Three years ago this week, I wrote the first of several letters to my baby boy, Redford. You’re still my baby boy, buddy, even if you weigh 80 pounds!

I put up a new profile on OKCupid two years ago. So glad that worked out for me (mwop mwop). By the by, I closed up shop on OKCupid a few weeks ago. I just can’t, y’all. It was not fun. It was the opposite of fun. If-and-when I managed to sort through the mostly terrible prospects, I dreaded every date. I’ll either find that the love of my life is the friend of a friend of a friend or I’ll be a spinster. That’s how it has to go.

One year ago—yes, this, look at this and then reread the paragraph above. I’m going to start looking in the mirror every morning and saying, “You look beautiful and you sound perfect. I’ll tell you this every day.”

(…Booooooooooo hoooooooo hoo hoo hoo.)

Happy Retrobruxist Friday, y’all.

 

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 22

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.

Tulip’s always real interested in whether I’m going to eat that.

The Foster Chronicles: Tulip, Week 23