December 13, 2012
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Notes on Nothing
A small miracle has occurred. Nancy brought me my morning granola and yogurt and a small tooth-lined hole appeared under my desk to demand chunks of my apple. Riley will accept apple chunks, if he happens to be in the neighborhood and if he’s hungry and if you were in a mood to pass them down: Annie will eat–demand her fair share of–anything I eat.
To get Riley to eat his breakfast, I often hand-feed him exactly three pellets at a time until he’s managed to pick up his momentum enough to self-feed. To feed Annie I trip over her three times on the way to the laundry room, fill her bowl and set it on the floor. She can gobble a cup of dog food in 30 seconds flat. In fact, part of the hand-feeding process for Riley is that he is never ‘emotionally ready’ to eat until Annie has finished her food and is scouring the room for his.
He can’t eat her food because it’s too rich and he’s on a low-fat diet. She can’t eat his food because she’s allergic to grain and sheds all of the hair on her chest, belly and behind her ears, and then she starts digging. She can’t dig because she sleeps with us and we can’t sleep through her digging.
And, of course, she tears herself up and looks awful.
Yesterday Annie had a playdate with Folsom (and Valentine. Valentine is a very nice dog, he just is more reserved.) You would think I would have pictures, wouldn’t you? I took the big camera, the little camera, the movie camera and my cell phone. I was too busy watching the dogs play to take any photographs. We had three ‘discussions’ in an hour and Annie started all three of them. She got nipped in the nose for her efforts and she still started another fight. One of the things we will be working on in our next class is confidence, and I think confidence is a big issue for Annie: as I watched her, she would play with Folsom, have a lovely time, and then he would do some dog thing, invisible to my untrained eye, and she would get scared and attack and once she attacked Folsom, Folsom came back.
(Screw this, said Valentine, I’m outta here.)
Folsom is a few months older than Annie and he has limited play experience with other dogs, so he pretty much did whatever Annie did. Annie’s idea of a good time is to run along beside her brother (Riley) and hang from his ears. When he’s done with that he tells her, and she’s learned to back off. However, it looks like she’s going to have to learn how to play with other dogs dog-by-dog.
Anyway, Folsom’s (human) mom, Tiffany, passed her finals with excellent grades and so we celebrated and watched our dogs play and pulled them apart when misunderstandings developed.
I didn’t take Riley to the play date. I didn’t take Annie to Riley’s play date at the park.
My dogs have separate social lives.
Today Riley went to work with Nancy and Annie is home with me. Well, actually she’s out in the back yard barking at something. There are just so many things I need to be alerted to out there, she can barely get in her morning nap. Here she comes again, tags a jangling.
I need a beer box. I remember them: nice boxes. Sturdy. I would like to convert one into a light box. Hopefully without having to first drink a case of beer. (My existing light box is probably too small for the projects I had in mind. Necklaces, for instance. Its about 14′X14′. Maybe not that.)
I should measure it, since neither my eye nor my memory is all that accurate.
Oh, yes: and I need to read a book by the end of the day for book group tomorrow.
