Beautiful, Brutal Nature

There’s a pond in front of the house I live in. Surrounding the pond are bushes, scrub, spindly trees, and grasses. When the bushes and trees bloom, there is privacy for geese to lay eggs and rabbits to lay bunnies. You can’t see the nests; they’re well-hidden.

My dog, Duke, knows they’re there, though. Several weeks ago, he pulled hard on his leash and dashed into the brush and ran down to the pond. I pulled him out, but it was too late. He immediately sat down on the grass. He then opened his mouth and slowly, slowly, a giant goose egg emerged. He dropped it on the grass and batted it around with his paws.

When Duke is eating or playing with something, it is unwise to try to take it from him. Instinctively, he will bite you. Hard. I know I should have had this trait trained out of him. I bought a shock collar to discourage his bad behavior. It’s still in the box. I can’t bring myself to inflict pain on him (I’m aware of the irony), so I just don’t take anything away from him. And I tell others not to, either.

But, back to the goose egg: Somehow, I was able to distract him and while he was looking away from the egg, I grabbed it and headed into the thicket. I located the nest, which appeared to have been constructed primarily out of dryer lint, quite easily since the two geese in the pond were nearby, screeching their heads off. I quickly placed the egg back into the nest and got out of there.

After that, the mother never left her nest. She sat there all day, every day, protecting her young. She must have left the nest at some point, but only when she was certain that Duke was not around. The eggs hatched last night or this morning, because I saw the eggs yesterday afternoon in the nest, and today I saw the mother and father geese swimming with their little goslings in the pond. I was happy they survived.

The same couldn’t be said for a nest of newly born baby bunnies, however.

Yesterday, on our walk around the pond, Duke pulled especially hard on his leash and dragged me back into the brush, a little further down from the goose nest. I pulled and pulled and finally got him out of the brush. As he emerged, I saw numerous tiny little newborn rabbits scramble away from him, racing in all directions across the lawn. He raced after them, pulling me with him. He scooped up two or three in his mouth and would not release them. I screamed and yelled and demanded that he drop them, to no avail. His jaw was clenched tightly. Little limbs hung from his mouth. Horrified doesn’t even come close to describing how I felt. There was nothing I could do as he swallowed them whole.

I was afraid of him for a while. This is the same dog I hug and snuggle with. He’s a 140-pound gentle giant … when he isn’t biting off your hand or eating live animals. It’s hard to reconcile his two natures.

My niece, who was visiting, asked how he could behave in such a vicious way. She noticed that he looked quite happy and normal right after eating the rabbits. I told her that it’s instinctive to him to capture prey.

“But, he’s a house dog!” she responded. Yes, he’s a house dog. But he’s also descended from wolves.

I’ll have to keep that in mind on our next walk around the pond.

Christmas Bath

I took my dog, Duke, to the self-serve dog wash, located in my neighborhood pet store, a week before Christmas. I wanted him to smell good, or at least better than he currently smelled, for the holidays.

Duke entered the store giddily. He loves pet stores because he can sniff every product, and attempt to free the caged animals.

However, as soon as I led him through the door to the dog-washing area, his attitude changed radically. He sprawled out on the floor in front of the tubs and refused to get up. After cajoling and begging him to stand up, he finally did. I walked him over to a walk-in tub and tried to get him to step up and into the tub. He pulled hard on his leash, resisting the tub with all of his strength. I then tried the other tub, which was higher up but had steps to get into it. He took one look at those narrow steps and dropped like a dead weight to the floor.

There was no way I could lift him. He’s 140 pounds and very long. He knew he had the advantage. He spread out on the floor and refused to budge. Finally, I opened the door that leads out of the dog-washing area and he jumped up and bolted out.

I had no option but to make an appointment with the groomer who was stationed to the right of the self-serve dog wash.

On the way out of the store, Duke grabbed a stuffed squeaky toy from a bin near the floor. He decided it was the best toy he had ever seen in his life, and he would not part with it. He sat on the floor by the register and proceeded to slobber all over the toy. Every time I reached down to take it from him — it was firmly lodged between his teeth — he uttered a gutteral growl. That growl is a warning that if I go near his possession, he will take my hand off.

For a sweet, gentle, loveable dog, he is fiercely protective of his food, tissues, napkins, and toys. If it’s in his mouth, or even in the vicinity of his mouth, anyone who knows him knows not to go near him. I think he learned this behavior in the shelter I adopted him from. Or, maybe he was in the shelter because of this behavior.

The cashier witnessed the growling when I tried to get the toy from Duke so it could be scanned. There was no way either of us was going to take it from him. The cashier wound up going to the toy section and finding the same stuffed animal so he could ring it up.

After I paid, Duke refused to get up off the floor. I had to drag him by the neck out of the store. As soon as we got to the exit, he stood up and ran outside … without his toy.

“Oh no you don’t,” I told him. “You are going to play with this toy now that you’ve humiliated me.” I put him and his toy into the backseat and returned to the store to buy a new leash, since his current leash was held together by knots.

Of course, Duke and I were the topic of conversation between the cashiers. “That dog needs to be trained,” my cashier said to a coworker. “She spoils him. That’s why he’s that way.” I interrupted their conversation, with an innocent smile, and asked where the leashes were.

“Oh, hello again!” my cashier said to me with a fake bright smile. He pointed to the aisle with the leashes.

I’m looking forward to our next adventure there next week, when I take him to the groomer. I’ll be stopping off in the muzzle aisle first, though. I need to get one for Duke … and one for the cashier.

A Mouse in the House … Again

It’s been a while since I’ve had any rodents in my house, or at least any that brought themselves to my attention. If there’s a mouse in the house and you don’t see it, is it really there?

Well, it was really there tonight as I lay sprawled on my sofa watching the Downton Abbey movie. My dog, Duke, was lying next to me when, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement on the rug. The movement turned out to be a tiny little mouse running across the room. Duke didn’t even stir. I, on the other hand, jumped up and chased the mouse until he escaped under the radiator.

I had some mousetraps in the house, so I lathered them with peanut butter and set them under the radiators. My dog and I settled back down to continue watching the movie, when movement again caught my eye. The mouse was a daredevil, for sure. It ran right past Duke, who didn’t even look up. I grabbed a Solo cup and chased the mouse into a corner. Then I scooped him up (after several tries and a lot of mouse squealing) and took him to the backyard.

My mother always said, “If there’s one mouse, there are always more.” It didn’t take long to prove her right. After I congratulated myself on my heroic capture of an animal the size of my thumb, my dog started sniffing around the stove. The last time one of my dogs did that, we wound up moving into a hotel. So, of course, I expected the worst. I was not disappointed.

I pulled out the bottom drawer of the stove to see if anything was underneath it, and at first, it was all clear. And then I saw what looked like a shadow dash by the baseboard. Years ago, there was a hole in the wall behind the stove from which a rat entered and set up housekeeping. We had long ago sealed that hole, but that was the direction the shadow ran towards.

Of course it was after midnight. It’s always the middle of the night when I discover unpleasant things. I think I’ll start going to bed earlier.

Since I didn’t feel like fighting rodents in the wee hours, I put a mouse trap under the stove and went upstairs. Tomorrow seems soon enough to deal with whatever is back there. All I hope is that the mouse, or mice, stays behind the stove and doesn’t venture upstairs to my bedroom. My mother also always said, “Mice are tricky. They can flatten themselves and slide through the tiniest cracks,” so I stuffed towels under the door.

I also barricaded the door with heavy furniture, which might have been taking things a bit far. My mother never said mice could move furniture, so as long as the cracks under the door are stuffed, I should be fine (knock wood).

Except for my dreams. I’m not looking forward to them. Maybe I’ll just stay up.

Addendum (added 4/29/2022)

My parents had a pantry in the basement when I lived in Ohio as a teen. The pantry consisted of long shelves that ran the length of one wall. One half of the shelving was for food and the other was for toys. One day, my mother noticed a Cheerio next to a dollhouse. She investigated further and discovered that every room in the dollhouse was filled to its ceiling with Cheerios. “We have mice in the basement,” my mother announced at dinner. She described what she had found. I commented that it must’ve taken the mice forever to carry the Cheerios, one by one, across the shelving to the dollhouse and then to fill the rooms. Her response was, “They had the time.”

Dog Hair Fashion

Recently, I was shopping online for leggings to wear to my office, which is ten steps from my bedroom. I told myself that I would also wear them to the gym, or at least to my basement where I would exercise in them. I tell myself lots of amusing stories.

What I noticed when I started putting leggings into my virtual shopping cart was that I was ordering a size larger than I used to wear when I commuted to an office in Manhattan … and that I was choosing colors that wouldn’t show dog hair.

This says a lot about how I’ve deteriorated during the pandemic. My body looks like the dough that pops out of those cylindrical containers that you slam on the counter. I’ve learned to work with this by stuffing it into body-contouring foundation garments that move things around and mostly keep them in position. Occasionally, I think that it was easier when I exercised and didn’t have to wear rubber suits under my clothes. Then I go online and look for fun colors in rubber suits.

I’m not the only person who gained weight during the pandemic. However, I’m the only person I have to dress, and it’s disconcerting that most of my pants are tight or don’t button at all. It’s the fashion now to wear the tightest clothing possible despite any lumps, bumps, or downright lava spills your body has. I am from a generation, however, that was taught to dress the body you have, which meant wear clothes that flatter your good points and camouflage your weak ones. I can’t possibly get on the flaunt-your-faulty-body train. I wouldn’t be sold a ticket, anyway, being a body shamer and all.

As for the dog hair, I’ve learned to breathe through my anxiety over it. I vacuum the rugs and crawl around on my hands and knees while scooping up tumbleweeds of hair that congregate in the corners of my house. I even vacuum my couches and chairs and run lint brushes over them. But, as anyone who has a shedding pet knows, it’s an ongoing and futile battle. You have to learn to tolerate some pet hair. There have been times when I’ve vacuumed a room only to have my dog stroll through and leave chunks of hair behind.

During a brief self-improvement phase this summer, I started driving my dog, Duke, to the dog park so we could both get some exercise while walking the trails. That phase ended abruptly when I saw the amount of hair in the backseat of my car. Duke has magnetic hair. As soon as he climbs into the back seat, his hair flies off his body and adheres to the seat he’s in, the back of the seat, the headrests, the back of the front seats, the interior car doors, and the floor mats. It happens so fast that you can’t see it occurring. My tan cloth seats turn into thickly covered hair mats in seconds. It took me hours to get his hair out of my car, and let’s be honest, you never get it all. There are always errant hairs that poke out of the seat covers. Those hairs are perfectly happy in the car’s fabric until a person wearing dark clothing sits down. Then the hairs decide to relocate immediately onto the hem of your black pants or onto the seat of your pants.

So, now I buy bigger clothes that match the color of my dog’s hair, which is blonde. This also explains why I wear white after Labor Day. It’s not a choice. It’s a necessity.

The Scalping of Duke

Last weekend, I tricked our dog, Duke, into letting me shave him. It had been really hot for weeks and Duke had been very uncomfortable walking around in his fur coat. I couldn’t find a dog groomer who had an opening before mid-August, due to COVID-19 restrictions, so I ordered a trimmer to shave him myself.

The trimmer arrived on Friday from Amazon. I had no plans for Saturday, so it seemed the perfect time to shave him. The only thing that worried me was that I had never used a hair trimmer on anyone or anything in my life. But I thought, “How hard could it be? I’ll just take it slow and easy.”

First, I started off by brushing him, which he loves. It’s like a luxurious body scratch to him. Then, when he wasn’t looking, I switched his brush for the electric trimmer.

It was nice and quiet, like the ad claimed it would be, so he didn’t even react to the switch. Things started out smoothly enough. The razor didn’t cut off too much too quickly. Actually, very little hair came off. I began to worry that it was going to take a week to shave him. And then I discovered that I was holding the razor upside down. After that, things speeded up considerably.

Once I held it right-side-up, the trimmer took off. I lost all control of the thing. It cut so deep that Duke had big holes in the top of his back. It didn’t break his skin, thank God, but it got right down to skin level. I found the power button and turned it off. Then I assessed the damage. It was pretty bad. Duke had a body full of long, thick, orange hair –– and gouges on his back that revealed the color of his skin (grayish). Now I had to match the length of the rest of the hair on his long, 135-pound body to those naked patches on his back.

It was just like when I cut my bangs. I cut them and they’re uneven, so I cut more, and they’re still uneven, so I cut more until I look like a serial killer.

But, back to Duke. He was so good. He only ran away once, and not far –– only into the house. He eventually came back and allowed me to shave him. I shaved for hours. We took breaks. We took naps. We had snacks. But we always returned to the task at hand: trying to match the length of the rest of his body hair to the length of his back hair. That did not prove, possible, however. I soon realized that I would have to shave him hairless to make his hair even, and I didn’t think that look would work for him.

So, we spent most of the day on the deck. Piles of hair accumulated around us. Whenever Duke decided to eat a hunk of hair, I would distract him with a treat and sweep up the debris. As I shaved, I discovered the different settings on the razor.

I used to hear my husband and son tell the barber that they wanted a #4 on top and #2 on the sides and back, but I never really thought about what that meant. Until Saturday. On Saturday, I discovered that there were cutting settings right on the razor –– but not until I had been shaving for at least two hours. There were also “limit combs,” that had inches marked on them. I supposed they were to limit how short the razor could cut, but I didn’t use them because Duke’s hair was so long and so thick that the razor cut nothing when the limit combs were attached.

Duke, as I said, was very cooperative. But he didn’t like standing for his shave so he reclined on the deck most of the time. This limited me to doing one side at a time. After I finished one side, I would have to physically roll him over so I could do the other side, and then roll him on his back to do his stomach. (The stomach shaving didn’t go very well at all. I didn’t change the razor setting and he had much less hair on his stomach than on the rest of his body to start with, so now he has no hair on his stomach at all, except patches that refused to come off.) When I finished his stomach and both sides, I had to lure him, with a dog biscuit, into standing up so I could compare his sides.

Of course they didn’t match. The hair lengths weren’t even close. It was at this point that I noticed that his face and rear had been completely ignored. So, I started on his face while he was standing. All of a sudden, Duke threw himself back down on the deck, causing me to gouge out more hair, but this time right above his eyes. “Great, just great,” I thought. “Now I have to match the rest of his head to the gouged-out areas. While he was standing, I also noticed that when I thought I was shaving his stomach, I had, in reality, shaved not only his belly but halfway up both sides of him, unevenly. I now had a dog who looked like he had lain in acid.

So, I put in a few more hours trying to even things out and trim his bottom. The bottom went well. That’s the only area that looks halfway normal, though. The rest of him is either bald or has visible trimmer tracks in the remaining hair. I don’t even want to talk about his back anymore. I just hope people don’t think he has mange.

At some point in the late afternoon, we both got bored, so we went inside to eat. Duke currently looks like a patchwork quilt, but he’ll never know, as long as I keep him away from the judgy dogs in our neighborhood.

At least he’s cooler, now –– in temperature, if not appearance.

Good/Bad 2018

All over social media there are people saying that they can’t wait to see 2018 end. They say it was a horrible year and good riddance to it.

Let’s all take a breath and assess 2018. Something good had to have happened this year to each of us. In fact, I think that almost every event can be perceived in both a negative and a positive light (if you look really hard), so I’m going to attempt to find some sun amidst the darkness.

While 2018 presented challenges for me and my family this year, it also brought us our fabulous dog, Duke, whom we adopted from a local shelter. If we hadn’t gotten Duke, I wouldn’t be sitting at my laptop right now, listening to him emit sounds similar to a balloon slowly losing air. I also wouldn’t be enveloped in a cloud of gas so noxious and thick that I will have to fight my way out of it. But that’s the price we pay for having a hilarious, fun-loving, affectionate, and loyal dog. We love him to pieces and he loves us right back. We just don’t take him out in public.

Also in 2018, my commute to work got longer by 2 subway rides. This added about 20 minutes to my trip and will probably subtract years from my life. I used to take one train ride into Manhattan, but then my company moved and I could no longer walk to my office from Grand Central, at least not in a timely manner. Now, when I arrive at Grand Central, I have to elbow my way through dense crowds of people taking pictures of the astrological drawings on the ceiling, race down tunnels and stairs to the Times Square shuttle track, and push my way into a jammed subway car. When we get to the Times Square stop, I catch a train downtown to my job. The Times Square stop is like an underground carnival, where you can watch amateur musical and acrobatic performers, buy newspapers, vinyl records, and rolling papers, or join a cult. On every shuttle to or from Times Square, you will be unwillingly or unwittingly entertained. There is sometimes a man who takes up four seats with a portable keyboard and who plays songs and sings during the short ride. Other times, you get on the train and don’t see anything out of the ordinary and then the doors close and someone sitting all alone will start belting out songs at top volume when nobody expects it. This can be very jarring to your nerves, especially if you haven’t had enough coffee yet. Sometimes a dodgy group of men will appear from another car and start clicking their fingers and tapping their toes and proceed to rap a song they’re composing on the spot. The performers always request donations as the doors of the train open, but if you plant yourself by the door when you get on, you can escape before they get to you. But, despite being part of a captive audience and having to endure a longer commute, I eventually arrive at a job that I love and work with people who are really nice. And there’s free coffee. Of course, after my enjoyable day in the office, I have to repeat the above-described commute in reverse, during the afternoon rush. But—and here’s another upside—I only do this once a week because I am allowed to work from home the other four days. I left that information out until now so you could feel sorry for me, at least for a minute or two.

While the next thing happened in 2017, it affected 2018, so I’m including it: In the summer of 2017, during a party we hosted in our yard, one of our picnic tables fell through the deck. The adult table wasn’t affected, but the kids’ table hit the deck, or actually crashed through the deck onto the ground a few feet below. Only one child was sitting at the table at that time and fortunately he wasn’t hurt. He kept eating his hotdog as we hauled him up through the splintered wood. Then we moved the childrens’ table next to the adults’ table, which was on more stable decking, and continued on with the party. A year later, we finally replaced the deck. So, 2018 brought us a new deck … and no lawsuit from the child’s parents.

There were other events in 2018 that I’m still examining to find a positive side, so I understand that some things that happen can be fairly awful. But when you find yourself dwelling on the bad things that happened this year, be grateful that a flatulent dog isn’t sitting next to you making outrageously rude noises. I’ve never heard of a dog who makes noises when he passes gas. He could well be an old man in a fur coat.

My wish for 2019 is that the year brings upsides that outweigh the downsides. That’s all I want … and Beano for our dog.

 

You Have to Crawl Before You Iron

Many years ago, my sister said that she is afraid of ironing because she always winds up with her head under the ironing board, afraid that the iron will fall off the board and onto her face, thus scarring her for life.

When she told me about her unusual fear, I laughed. And from that moment on, every time I ironed, I found myself crawling around on the floor under the ironing board, also afraid that the iron, which was always precariously balanced on the edge of the board, would fall on my face, thus scarring me for life.

I don’t know why she and I always end up on the floor under the ironing board, but we do. Sometimes I’m under there picking up something silky that slipped off the board. Sometimes I’m wiping up water that leaked out of the iron onto the floor. Other times, I’m shoving the dog out from under the ironing board before he jostles the iron off the board and onto his face … thus, scarring him for life.

This doesn’t keep me from ironing, though. I love to iron. Give me a pile of wrinkled clothes, a can of spray starch, and a movie on TV, and I’m happy. I get great satisfaction from the piles of starched and folded clothes that I transformed from unwearable to glorious. Ironing also calms me.

I have a friend who gets the same therapeutic benefits from prepping food. “I just love chopping, grating, mincing, slicing, dicing, and muddling,” she told me. She likes having little bowls and ramekins filled with all of her prepared ingredients before she begins cooking. I guess I can see how the monotony of chopping, grating, mincing, slicing, dicing, and muddling could be a soothing activity but it doesn’t appeal to me. That’s probably because after doing all of that mindless work, I’d have to actually cook.

I can cook, and I do cook, but I don’t enjoy it. It’s probably because my mother spent an enormous amount of time preparing meals that were complicated, beautiful, and delicious. I either don’t think I can live up to her abilities, or I’m lazy. It’s probably the latter. I could live on meat and vegetable pizza for the rest of my life. It’s the perfect food, containing all of the food groups. No additional salad required.

My chopping, grating, mincing, slicing, dicing, and muddling friend doesn’t understand this at all. But she’s Italian. ‘Nuff said.

I’m part Irish and was probably a washer woman in a past life, so that might explain my love of ironing. But I could also have been a dog, considering how much time I spend crawling around on the floor. I was probably in the same pack as my sister.

Yes, the word “the” is missing from before “cover” in this meme, but I hope you can overlook that and enjoy the message.

 

My Dog is Playing Me

I spent the day trying to determine whether our dog, Duke, is deaf. It never occurred to me that he might be until today. I had opened the back door to let him in. He was stretched out by the door and facing away from me. I called his name over and over with no reaction from him. Then I nudged him with my foot and he jumped up and came right in.

“I think Duke is deaf,” I told my husband.

“Wow,” my husband said.

I told him what had just happened and he said, “Huh.”

To prove that I was right, I followed Duke around and called his name when he was looking away from me. No response.

After dinner, I saw him stretched out under the dining table, facing away from me. I called his name and he didn’t move. Then I said, “Cookie!”

He immediately stood up, turned around, walked into the kitchen, and sat in front of the jar where I keep his dog cookies.

“He’s not deaf,” I said to my husband who was also in the kitchen.

“What?” he asked.

“I said that Duke’s not deaf,” I said.

“Who said he was dead?”

“Never mind,” I said.

It turns out I was following the wrong family member around.

Walking Duke

Yesterday, at dusk, I decided to take advantage of the beautiful summer evening and go for a stroll. However, while I like to walk, I need a reason to do so. I am not the type of person who walks aimlessly or without a purpose. So, I decided to take my dog, Duke, out for some exercise. As I gathered up some plastic grocery bags, Duke deduced that it was walk time and jumped up and down in ecstasy. Once he settled down, I attached the leash to his collar and allowed myself to be pulled down the front steps by my jubilant dog.

It was a beautiful summer night, around 7 p.m. It’s August and, each day, the sun sets earlier than it did the day before, so I knew we didn’t have much daylight left to walk in. We kept up a brisk pace up and down the streets near my house. Duke willingly matched my stride, except for when he absolutely had to stop to mark a tree or sniff an already marked bush.

As we approached a corner where we were about to turn, the door to a house across the street from us opened and out walked a man with with two medium-sized, muscular dogs, both on leashes. Duke, who is large-sized and round, skidded to a stop when he saw the dogs. At the same instant, the two dogs saw Duke and started barking. All three dogs strained at their leashes, trying to move toward each other. The man looked at me in that way that people do when they’re wondering if your dog is going to kill their dog. I quickly piped up, “He’s very friendly.” The guy looked relieved and said, “So are mine.”

So, I walked Duke over to meet his dogs. One of the dogs sniffed Duke and sat down. The other one went for Duke’s throat. Duke, in response, went for the dog’s throat. We owners had to drag them apart by their leashes. Once we had done that, I said, “So much for friendly dogs, huh?” and laughed. The man did not laugh. He looked at me, then at Duke, and said, “I’ll say.”

Hmmm. I had meant to make light of the encounter and he meant to blame Duke. I chose not to go for his throat, though. I just turned and dragged Duke down the street away from that house.

For awhile, the walk was very pleasant. I met a nice woman with an enormous sunflower garden. She explained how she prevented birds from eating the seeds out of them (she put clear plastic bags around the heads of her spent sunflowers but left them on their stems until fall, when she gathered the seeds for next year’s garden), and even offered me a bouquet of them. I politely declined her offer, and regretted it immediately, because I buy sunflowers all the time from our local store for $3 a stem. After I left her house, I wondered how long I had until her offer expired. Could I come by later, in the dark, with scissors and take as many sunflowers as I wanted? I actually spent time debating this question with myself. I finally realized that if I had to come under the cover of night, I would probably be stealing them. Instead, I decided to walk Duke by her house on another night, and bring a vase.

When we were a few blocks from home, darkness fell suddenly. One minute it was dusk, and then it was night. As we were passing a hedge in front of a ranch-style house, Duke pulled on his leash and stuck his head under the bushes. I pulled him back out. He pulled even harder, yanked the leash out of my hand, and dove under the bushes. I heard skirmishing and yelled at him to come out of there immediately. The sounds under the hedge got louder. I squatted down and looked under it, but didn’t see Duke. I went around the bushes and saw Duke in the house’s front yard with his nose down in the dirt under the hedge. I tried to grab his collar to pull him away, but he shook me off.

Right then, the outside lights of the next-door neighbor’s house came on and a woman appeared at the front door. “Boxy!” she called. “Boxy, get in the house!”

I looked under the hedge and could see a little, fluffy, black and white kitten. “I’ll try to get Boxy and bring her to you,” I said. I reached down to grab the kitten who was partially under the hedge and partially on the lawn. I had to keep knocking Duke aside so I could get to Boxy first.

I had one hand under the kitten’s stomach when the woman called over to me, “Is my dog over there?”

“No,” I said, “Is Boxy a dog? All that’s here is my dog and a kitten.”

Then it hit me. “Or maybe it’s a skunk!”

The woman turned off her lights and closed her front door.

Just then, the motion lights of the house we were in front of came on. But nobody came outside to investigate. Maybe they weren’t home. Or maybe they were smart.

In any case, I immediately dropped the furry ball and backed off, which gave Duke the opportunity he was waiting for. He grabbed the baby skunk in his mouth and started violently shaking it back and forth.

“Stop it, Duke! Stop it!” I yelled. He ignored me.

“You’re going to get sprayed,” I screamed. “Drop it!”  Instead of dropping the skunk, he hurled it across the lawn. Then he retrieved it and flung it back at me. I looked down and the poor thing looked half-dead, but it was still moving. At this point, I wished it was dead, mostly to end its torture by Duke, but also because I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave a half-dead skunk on the lawn and go home, could I?

The question was moot because Duke picked the skunk back up and resumed his furious shaking of it. I grabbed Duke’s collar and he slipped out of it. I started chasing him. He raced across the lawn, stopping only to shake the skunk or throw it across the grass. After the fourth or fifth toss, the skunk was motionless.

Duke went over to the skunk and looked down at it. He looked confused, like he was wondering why the skunk wasn’t playing anymore. While Duke stared at his lifeless toy, I pounced. I sat on him while I put his collar back on. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t tighten the collar. He knew this, and kept trying to slip out of it.

Now I had a dead skunk and a dog who was determined to escape from me. I knew I should do something about the skunk, but what? I decided to believe that the skunk was faking death and would move on once we left. I’ll check on him tomorrow, I told myself.

In the meantime, I had to get Duke home. That proved a challenge. Every three steps, he’d lie down in the grass and rub his face in it and roll around. He was obviously in pain from being sprayed in the face by the skunk. After about 20 rolls in wet grass, I was able to walk him home.

When I got him inside, I didn’t smell skunk. My husband didn’t smell skunk. I supposed that Duke had only gotten sprayed in the face and had rubbed it off. I did wash out his eyes, as much as he’d let me, but that was all I did.

This morning, the house reeked of skunk. I must have been inured to the smell of skunk the night before since I had been in the thick of it. I don’t know why my husband didn’t smell it when we got home. However, everybody smelled it today.

Needless to say, today involved de-skunking Duke. My son and I used a natural remedy from the pet store and then bathed him. He still reeks, but not quite as much as he did. However, the house does. Tomorrow, we’ll try again –– this time using a peroxide, baking soda, and Dawn dishwashing detergent mixture recommended by friends –– and also figure out how to get the odor out of the house.

I read online that the smell can linger for a year if it’s not addressed. I have guests coming over next weekend, so waiting a year for the air to clear isn’t an option for me.

In the meantime, I really should go check on that skunk.

 

Guessing Games

Today, my son and I decided to find out if our dog, Duke, can swim.

We’ve been deducing things about him since we adopted him in January from the Humane Society in Connecticut. When we got him, aside from his name, we were told only four things about him: that he came from “down South somewhere, probably,” since Duke was sent to them from a shelter in North Carolina; that he had a family for his first four years but they had to give him up for a reason the shelter volunteers either didn’t know, or did know and weren’t sharing with us; that he was extremely overweight, which we’d have to rectify; and that we had won the jackpot because of his sweet, playful nature. That was all of the information we got on him.

So, we’ve had our detective glasses on for five months. Through trial and error, we’ve discovered that: when he is in our fenced yard, if he can’t tunnel out or slam his body against the gate until it opens so he can escape, he will curl up patiently by the back door until we let him in; he will run out the front door if we accidentally leave it open and will probably get attacked by another dog, which will land him at the vet’s and us in the poorhouse; he will eat anything and everything including socks, which must be high in calories because he’s gaining weight instead of losing it; he hates cats and squirrels; he’s fascinated by bats; he thinks he’s a 110-pound lapdog; and his breakfast kibble gives him pause.

Every morning, he hesitates in front of his bowl, but not in the evening. We don’t know what he’s waiting for. I’ve given him permission to eat, I’ve said grace for him, and I’ve walked away. Walking away works the best. When I return, the food is always gone. Maybe he likes to eat his breakfast in peace.

We also had to narrow down his breeds by asking others what they thought he was. My friend, Christine, who has worked in shelters and has seen a lot of dogs, said she thought Duke was probably part malamute, lab, and German shepherd. Once I googled malamute, I could see why she decided on that breed. I think I see some shepherd in him, too, and labs look kind of generic, so I can’t come up with any evidence that he’s not one. Therefore, I’m inclined to agree with her.

However, I saw a commercial the other day that featured wolves, and I could’ve sworn he was in it. Maybe he was a TV wolf before we got him. The former owner is probably getting monthly residual checks while we’re getting shredded, slobbery socks tossed about our house, tumbleweeds of dog hair blowing around the legs of our furniture, and enormous veterinarian bills.

But, back to today. We noticed that Duke has webbed toes, so we assumed he could swim. So, we took him to the nearest public dock. When we got there, it was low tide. Duke was very interested in the thousands of suicidal oysters that had died on the rocks, but he shied away from the water. I eventually lured him in, but he wouldn’t go in further than his ankles. Then he took off running under piers and across jagged rocks, leading me and my son on a slippery chase across mossy stones and through sucking mud and stagnant green water.

When we finally caught him, we rinsed him off and took him home. We still don’t know if he can swim. He might never have seen large bodies of water before. This weekend, we’re going to take him to a lake where dogs are allowed to swim. Hopefully, he’ll see how easy it is and he’ll join the hordes of dogs chasing balls in the lake. Or, he won’t.

Either way, he’s going to wear water shoes. I don’t want him bleeding all over the kitchen floor again, like he did tonight. He must have cut his foot while running across the razor-edged rocks. I had to drug him with Benadryl so that I could clean his foot and wrap it in gauze. Of course, he tore off the gauze and dragged the blood-soaked wrappings across the rugs. So I was forced to make him a boot out of socks and a ribbon of medical tape. It took several tries to tie it on tight enough to keep him from pulling it off, but loose enough not to cut off his circulation.

It was good practice, though, because I’m going to have to make his water shoes out of socks and old tires, since I don’t know where to buy them. Hopefully his dog friends will be so busy making fun of his swimming that they won’t notice his shoes.