Missing September
I just
looked at my calendar and realized that I have lost an entire month. I don’t
know what happened to September, but here I am now rushing toward the end of
October and there is still no September North Woods Journal until this piece
hits the digital divide, so to speak.
The only
explanation that I have for the lost month is that I have been working on a new
book. That, and the keys on my laptop are beginning to wear such that the
letters on several keys are barely visible, making typing more of a problem. I
have memorized the location of most letters, but on the rare occasion that I
lose track of a letter I have to search the entire keyboard looking for it. The
most egregious of the missing letters are ‘a, s, r, and t’, these have the
white paint completely worn from the surface of the keys. It must be that the
fingers on my left hand are more abrasive than those used by my right hand
where the keys are largely undamaged, except for the ‘I’ that is half worn so
that it appears as an elongated period. Fortunately, I don’t lose ‘I’ very
often.
Perhaps
coincidentally, another thing about September that I learned today was my email
problem, the one that I didn’t know that I had. Beginning sometime in early
September, one of my three e-mail accounts, YAHOO!, began to hide my e-mails by
refusing to send them to my computer. You don’t want to know the details, but
today I apparently solved the problem and YAHOO! finally sent my missing
e-mails to my computer, all 389 of them.
learned that I had missed several appointments and other parts of my
life that depended upon e-mail communications. Darn! If you think I am no
longer friends with YAHOO!, you would be correct.
My new book
is a collection of unrelated, miscellaneous topics that I have managed to
compile and present as if they were a series of letters written to friends and
family members who live some distance from my home in Roscommon and the
surrounding north woods. I have given the work the clever title “More
Letters From Roscommon.” Some of you who have especially gifted
memories may recall that this title is similar to a previous book that I
offered in 2013 with the equally clever title “Letters From Roscommon”. The
new book should be available soon from Amazon, providing that the YAHOO! e-mail
problem doesn’t have far-reaching tentacles that affect my mail to Amazon.
Probably the
best explanation about my new book is to provide a sample. Here it is, the last
chapter of “More Letters From Roscommon”
PS Don’t
tell Amazon that I sent this along to you.
Chapter
26
Dog
Sitting
Dear Family and Friends,
If you are an adult with
grown children, sooner or later you will become a dog sitter. Trust me, it is
inevitable. If you haven’t yet had the pleasure of dog sitting, here is a hint:
Dog sitting is kind of like babysitting except it’s harder, and furthermore,
the man of the family is expected to take a large role in caring for the
visiting pooch.
In the first place, you
are likely dog sitting not for your children, but for your grandchildren. And
their standards of required care for their beloved pooch are much, much higher.
Don’t even think about tying the dog outside to a drafty old doghouse, no siree.
And, just so you don’t forget, the grandkids will be checking up on you, asking
how Fido is enjoying his or her vacation at your house.
Nowadays, dog sitting
also means entertaining the mutt. Surely you didn’t think the dog only needs to
be fed, watered, pooped, and put to bed, did you? High- strung dogs of today’s
ilk need entertainment beyond a few simple dog toys; otherwise you can expect
chewed furniture, broken lamps, upturned wastebaskets and other symptoms of
doggy boredom, according to experts (and grandchildren who are knowledgeable in
such matters).
Generally, you’ll be dog
sitting at home during the winter months while the kids and grandkids are
vacationing somewhere that is warm, probably enjoying time on the beach.
Meanwhile, you will be suiting up in your cold weather parka with you and the
dog taking several trips outdoors so the dog can do his business. This can be
annoying if it has snowed several inches and it is too dark to avoid stepping
in a pile – the dog won’t warn you about
this either.
I admit that my attitude
about dog sitting was decidedly negative. But wait, let me give you my recent
experience and then you can decide for yourself about dog sitting nowadays.
If you are a senior like
me, you can probably recall the days of your youth when most dogs lived
outdoors in a doghouse, often tied to a chain or rope to prevent the animal from
running away or bothering the neighbors. Although I grew up in a cat family
(one cat and no dog), many of my neighborhood buddies had dogs and all were
outside animals. Even my grandfather had an outside dog that was allowed indoors only on rare occasions, but
never allowed to enter a carpeted room.
I succumbed to dog
ownership as a newly married man. Our first dog had a doghouse in the back yard
but no chain, instead, I built a chain-link fence enclosure for him since he
was a runner and he liked to find girl dogs in the neighborhood. Although his
doghouse was insulated, on the coldest winter nights we let him indoors and
provided him with appropriate bedding.
Somehow, my subsequent
two dogs became indoor dogs. However, they were not allowed on the furniture
nor beds, other than their own doggie bed. Both of those dogs were the kind
that had hair, not fur, so they needed regular haircuts. The benefit of having
hair meant that the dogs did not shed, thus reducing the amount of vacuuming
needed. All of the foregoing is provided to explain my mindset when the Missus
and I were asked to dog sit so our son and his family could travel. We readily
agreed since we knew our granddaughters would enjoy the trip and we wanted to
help assure the success of their travel.
The date for their trip
was settled and the travelers brought their dog to our house for our care.
Since it was the middle of winter, I should have known I was in for hard duty.
The family began unloading their car for the dog sitting assignment: first the
dog, and then a half dozen trips to the car and back for all the essentials
they felt were needed for a happy dog visit.
We piled everything on
the floor of the living room so we could sort it out and find a place for
everything. Here is at least a partial list of the things they decided she
needed; her personal bean bag chair, her favorite group of chew toys, her
personal harness and leash, her bowl, the requisite dog food, a cage and
blanket for her cage, her favorite snacks, her sweater, and several other
things I have forgotten. The amount of the luggage she needed to ensure her
happiness was more imposing than mine for a winter vacation of about the same
duration.
I asked about her bed.
The granddaughters looked at me without answering. I turned to their mom with a
quizzical look and asked, “Where does she sleep at home?”
The mom explained that
the dog normally slept in one of the girl’s beds. It would become our first
challenge. Neither the Missus nor I were interested in sharing our bed with a
dog. The agreement that we reached with the family was that we would confine
the dog to her cage for the first night or two while she became used to our
house and our rules.
Despite that first
issue, the Missus and I were able to satisfy the family that we intended to
supply first class care for our new charge, a youngish pup who was equipped
with white fur that insured the ease in finding which areas in the house would
need frequent vacuuming. [It turned out to be everyplace in the house.]
The dog’s name was
Pocket. The family said their goodbyes and left. Pocket followed them to the
front door and sat down, looking at the door after they left as if expecting
them to reopen the door for a surprise greeting.
She sat at the front
door for at least 15 minutes with the occasional whimper before she finally got
up and went to another door and repeated the same performance. No amount of my
urging could entice her to come and sit by me. Finally, I resorted to the
cure-all; I picked up one her cookie treats and broke it in half and gave it to
her. She chomped it down in about 3 seconds. I showed her the other half of the
cookie and made sure that she watched as I carefully placed it on top of her
blanket in the cage. She went right in after the cookie and I quickly latched
the door behind her. That’s where Pocket spent her first night with us,
watching carefully as we prepared for bed.
Because she was still a
pup, the Missus and I agreed that our first duty in the morning would be to
take her outside so she could do her business in emptying a full bladder or
full bowels. For some reason that duty fell to me. As soon as I awoke, I crept
into the living room where we had left the caged dog. There she sat, patiently
waiting for me. I hurried back into the bedroom and threw on some clothes,
expecting that any delay would end with me cleaning a fouled cage.
She was still waiting
when I returned and positioned her leash around her neck for our morning
outing. It was cold outside, and, despite my fervent hope, the snow had not
magically disappeared, and the temperature was still only slightly above zero.
Fortunately, I had shoveled the sidewalk in anticipation of our guests, and it
remained clean.
I expected I could walk
Pocket to some part of the snow-covered lawn that was accessible from the
sidewalk where she could deposit the consequences of last night’s dinner and
assorted cookies. She had other ideas. She walked only a few paces before she
stopped, crouched, and quickly deposited her load. On the sidewalk. This was
quickly followed by the bladder emptying routine. On the sidewalk.
It was a mixed blessing:
I was happy that she was a fast pooper, but unhappy that she had created the
job of poop clean-up on the sidewalk directly in front of our front porch. I
was tempted to pretend that I didn’t know the poop was in the way of the
mailman and anyone else who might come to the door on a winter morning, but I
knew the Missus wouldn’t buy it. I took the dog back in the house and returned
later with a small shovel that I would soon learn to love.
As soon as I opened the
front door from our first trip, Pocket rushed inside. I took off my boots and
my winter coat, hat and gloves, then stood there in the entryway in my socks.
It took only two steps before my feet felt cold and wet -- I found that I was
standing in the small puddle from Pocket’s snow-covered pads. Then I remembered
that dogs, no matter how well trained, don’t wipe their paws upon passing over
a perfectly clean and dry floor. I decided to change my socks then wipe the
floor. While I was in the middle of the sock-changing and floor wiping job,
Pocket decided it was time to play. She dropped one of the throw toys on the
floor beside me.
I couldn’t’ resist. I
played the throw game with her until I realized we had mussed two throw rugs,
tipped over a small table and spilled the contents of a flowerpot including the
flower. I put out her bean bag chair and she lay down while I cleaned the wet
spots on the floor, the spilled flowerpot, and a few other things. Then I sat
down in my favorite easy chair. I had just reached for the newspaper when
Pocket climbed on my lap.
Hmmmmm. Was she
technically lying on our furniture which we agreed not to allow? Or not. I
decided or not and gave her a thorough petting that provoked a small handful of
white fur to flutter to the floor, flutter, flutter, flutter.
After the petting, I put
out some more of her toys and that seemed to satisfy her. For a little while
only. By then, it was time for her morning walk. I re-assembled my winter coat,
hat and gloves and was about to put her leash on until I remembered her
sweater. She didn’t seem to happy about the sweater but I remembered the
admonition from the granddaughters about her wearing it in the cold, so I
wrestled with her a bit longer and finally managed to sweep the thing over her
head until I realized her front legs also needed to pass through the hole for
her head. I took the thing back off and tried feet first through the hole but
that didn’t work either. Finally, the Missus came upon my struggle and put the
sweater on the dog.
I got myself dressed and
out we went for our walk down the road. Pocket seemed to like it. She stopped
to investigate a dozen or more spots and two yellow patches near the neighbor’s
house. Apparently, Pocket was born with the knowledge that the means to
communicate with other dogs is through your urine that she deposited at each
opportunity. It was tempting to see if dogs could recognize the difference
between dog urine and that of humans, but there wasn’t sufficient privacy, so I
resisted taking any action to settle the question.
On our arrival back
home, Pocket needed little urging to return to her bean bag chair for a nap.
Who says dogs don’t’ lead a charmed life?
After the dog rested,
drank water and asked for another cookie, the Missus warned me that it was
probably time to de-water the dog again if I wanted to avoid another clean-up
job. I decided against the sweater but in favor of the leash that I could put
on her with only a little urging. We went outside again along the sidewalk
only. It took several minutes, but Pocket finally seemed to understand what was
expected of her and so she complied with only a very little yellow spot to show
for it.
I made a mental note to
explain to the Missus about her not having to urinate after our morning walk
because she squatted and spotted roughly 15 times along the road and besides,
she doesn’t seem to like wading in the snow.
The scene I described
above was repeated several times over the next few days of Pocket’s vacation.
The playtime schedule varied only a little with addition of a game of 'tug' using
the chewed, dog saliva-coated rope toy while Pocket growled and jumped around the
living room, threatening to break the television.
In addition to the games
I kept my parka handy for regular walks so the dog could sniff out the secret
places where other dogs had done their business. Pocket always seemed to mark
the same spots with her particular odor to advise any other dog who visited
just who was in the neighborhood. It is how they keep track of each other, and
it keeps them entertained just as Facebook does for the older set.
Pocket got in the habit
of sitting at my feet at the dinner table. If I happened to drop a morsel of
food, she gobbled it up, precluding my need to bend over and pick it up myself.
I could tell that Pocket
loved the little game of my dropping
food by the way her tail thumped the floor when I sat down for dinner.
You’ll understand how easy it was to fall into the habit of intentionally
dropping a morsel or two, even though I had been warned against such a practice
by the granddaughters and the Missus didn’t like me doing it either. But Pocket
and I both enjoyed it, so I continued sneaking food to her since she promised
that she wouldn’t tell.
After two nights in the
cage, the Missus and I discussed the notion of letting Pocket lay in her bean
bag chair instead of remaining in the cage. She seemed to like it just fine for
at least one night until she discovered that in the middle of the night, she
could come to our bedroom unobserved and climb onto the foot of our bed, and
nestle against the lump provided by my feet that were under the covers. I knew
she was doing it, but as soon as I moved about, she left for the bean bag.
After the second day of
the surreptitious bed climbing and early morning departure, she became braver.
Finally, the Missus and I told her she could stay in our bed so long as she
remained at the bottom and on top of the covers. By this time, it was near the
end of her vacation and It seemed a small step for us and an important
ascension for Pocket.
By this time Pocket and
I were close buds. I began taking her along to my morning coffee klatch and the
north woods men were impressed by her as she pretended to follow my commands.
Of course, I knew she was only humoring me.
Here is a picture of our
little pup Pocket who has just asked me when we are going outside again. She’s
kinda cute, don’t you think?
I have to finish this account
since she also just told me she is hungry; besides, she and I will be watching
Jeopardy together after our walk.
Grandpa Bill
