February 6, 2013
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The Dog Door of Winter
Recently I took Annie to the vet. Why? I can’t remember why–it was a minor consultation about some issue, cost me a visitation fee and while I was there I asked, “Can I ask another question?” And we discussed Annie’s hair (or lack thereof.) I was rambling on about anti-allergy foods, her treats, her baths, and the vet said, “You know, some dogs just have a sort of alopecia.” She has female pattern nakedness. (In addition to the scratching, the rocking the waterbed, the scratches she incurs as a result and the occasional flares of redness. She DOES have allergies: it’s just the hair Nancy and I are so determinedly ‘growing back’ may never have been there.
This is important only because the dog in the photograph has hidden husky blood flowing through his veins. The dog in the photograph is fine in snow, cold and blowing winds. (He does not handle heat particularly well.) He likes to spend time outside. He is a sniffer, a squirrel hunter, a domain keeper. Annie and I step outside barefoot and we have about the same endurance.
We have a summer dog and we have a winter dog.
Also, we pay real money to heat this house. Real enough that it hurts Nancy’s heart to sit at her computer, paying the bills, while a 18″ X 12″ hole looms in the back door with gale-force arctic winds surging through it, across the Conservatory and up her back.
We made alternative plans for the winter. So far they have not developed into an actual better-placed dog door.
So I am pleased to note that Nancy’s mother moved in with us a little over a week ago, and our biggest problem is the unauthorized entry of cold air into the Conservatory. Every now and then I go to Ilah’s room to alert her to supper or to deliver her phone to her, and it’s 112 degrees in there. I scurry back to the Conservatory…
Annie went to her second intermediate class last night. She did well, allowing for the occasional distraction of a chocolate poodle shopping in the store aisles (our class is in a pet store, and we practice in the aisles. And she did not want to eat the poodle, she merely wanted a meet and greet.)
Right now Annie is grazing in the kitchen, Riley has settled in in the back yard where he sits and gazes solemnly around his back yard. His expression seems to say, “This is mine: all mine.”
And a tiny, very cold wind is blowing gently around my feet.
Because–while he is a sweet dog–he is not always the brightest dog and when he decides to come in he is apt to come barrelling through the dog door and give himself a concussion if I close the storm door to stop the wind. Or, he will cuddle up against the side of the house without telling me he is stranded and shiver until I remember him. He barks at squirrels. He barks at his sister. He barks at the dogs conversing down the street. He even barks at me to let him out. He NEVER barks to be let back in.
Ah, yes. I took Annie to the vet because she had hives. Which vanished in the two-mile car ride from the house to the clinic.
“She has these little bumps all over her back,” I reported to the vet, “she’s had them for two days, now…”
And there stood my semi-naked, smooth-coated, hiveless dog.
“Hi,” Annie said to the vet. “Got treats?”
