02/13/2009: "DOGS"

Hi All,

So, the folks are off on a cruise of the Panama Canal. Dad emailed me the other day: "We went ziplining, Craig! ZIPLINING, I tell you!" I was happy for them and their ziplining adventure, but still, they're 60 years old for goodness' sake; I may be a nervous nelly, but the two of them ziplining all over a jungle canopy or whatever gives me a case of the howling phantods. I don't even know what ziplining is, exactly. Sounds dangerous. Ziplining. What next? Chugging whalebones?

"Ziplining, Craig! Zip-zip-zip-a-zip-ZIPLINING! I tell you!"

Anyway. In the meantime I'm house-sitting. Dog-sitting, more importantly. Every time I dogsit I realize how much I would like a dog. I make a whole heap of excuses regarding why I'd better not buy one, but only one is really worthy: I sometimes have a tough time putting food in my own mouth (I mean, financially speaking, not that I have dexterity issues that make it difficult to ferry food into my face. Heaven forfend!), so the idea of having another creature who's mouth I am tasked with filling is, at this present time, a little daunting.

These dogs of my folk's, though. An old west highland terrier, Keltie, and a puppy, Briar. A study in contrasts. Briar is a creature of pure ID. Rabelasian. She is a glutton. She wants to experience and eat the whole world up in giant chunks. And hypersexed---oh, my! She's been spayed lately but you couldn't tell by the way she goes to town on this stuffed brown dog around the house. She's a slavering hump machine! The other night she chewed the eye off the stuffed dog, swallowed it before I could do anything, then proceeded to hump the poor one-eyed stuffed dog. I mean, what a control freak. And yes, this morning while I was out in the backyard in the freezing cold picking up frozen dog turds I did in fact spy a forlorn plastic eye staring out of one dog-log. So her system's working well. Really processing those nutrients. Briar's also chewn up the hem on one of my folk's rugs, which may or may not be expensive, and has also eaten a few letter envelopes and a wine cork. A cunning omnivore, this one.

The other dog, the elder, Keltie, is the opposite. She has this liver problem, has had it for a long time, and she's the most finicky eater. I razz my folks over it: they get into these big brouhahas over how to feed her, what to feed her, the ways to entice her to eat. Dad is a huge fan of tomato soup---or rather, he believes Keltie is. Mom is big on sweet potato. I watched Dad putting together a dish for Keltie: he daubed tomato soup around the edge of the dish in big, florid, Dali-esque swooshes. I had to laugh and Dad blew up:

"It's what she likes! It's how she eats! You don't know how fickle this one is!"

... and etcetera. I thought they were being overdramatic. Until I tried feeding her. This girl, Keltie, will no longer eat anything you might typically consider 'dog food.' Kibble? Nosirree! Dog treats? No dice. Even this really sophisticated---if that's the right word---canned dog food she turns her nose up at. And because of her liver issues she cannot process proteins, so you can't just dump a bag of hotdogs into her dish. She will eat yams---so long as they are nicely heated and mashed into a fine pulp---and she will eat ... scones. Yes. Those English bread triangles. I got so desperate the other day I even BUTTERED one of them to make it more enticing. Buttering a bloody scone to feed it to a DOG. In what strange bizarro-verse have I been trapped? She will also eat carrot muffins. And she will eat meat, but you can't feed her much. Plus I got to get her to eat a buffet of pills for her liver and other pills for other geriatric canine disorders. Wrapping them in cheese, mainly, though scone bits also work.
Plus eye drops. She is a wonderful but very high-maintenance creature. So now when I fix her dinner I put it down in front of her like a timid chef presenting dinner to a fearsome restaurant critic. I put it down and withdraw to a safe distance with my hands tucked to my chest.

"Do you like it, mistress? Do you like?"

Sometimes she eats it. Other times she sniffs around, gives the bowl a few desultory licks, then looks up at me as if to say: "This? You expect me to eat THIS GRUEL? Begone with you! Away from my sight!"

"So sorry! A thousand pardons---I beg of you!"

Actually, I get rather pissed. I look down at her and say:

"You're a DOG, Keltie! You eat dog food! This is even better than dog food; it is essentially people food served in a dog dish. What do you want---me to sit you at the table and tuck a napkin into you collar? Eat the food, you little turd, you!"

One thing about living alone with dogs: you tend to talk to them a lot. Mainly you're talking to yourself, but somehow directing your speech towards another carbon-based lifeform, albeit one who cannot talk back, validates your craziness.

I take them for walks. Two a day. Spoiled dogs! But I figure if I walked the hell out of Keltie she'll eat more. It works. She eats pretty regular lately. But we go along this path frequented by large winter hares. They congregate under the pines. And defecate there. So we're walking and I notice the dogs are lingering under the trees. They're both---even Keltie---chowing down on frozen rabbit pellets. They just can't get enough! Of frozen turds. Here I am buttering scones for Keltie and she's quite content eating rabbit shits. Briar I can understand; you could fill her food dish with old tooth toothpicks and heels of old bathsoap found in the soap dish and she'd eat them. But Keltie ... eating poops. This is so undignified. And odd. I mean, if they had any nutritional value I'd let them eat to their heart's delight.

The other night they caught sight of one of the rabbits and started barking their fool heads off.

I think this was their version of a 'tip of the hat' to the chefs.

Very best, Craig.