The DAN ZONE

It’s no secret that our pups hate the vacuum cleaner and run out of the room whenever we turn it on. Well, today I was vacuuming the house, and my partner Danny was standing at the dining room table wrapping gifts for his two nephews’ birthdays. I was nonchalantly buzzing through the house with the vacuum and began circling the dining room table. Little did I know that our pup Sheffield was sprawled out on the floor on the other side of the table…

So as I rounded the back corner of the table, Sheffield’s face suddenly darts out from behind a chair and he lets out one of his bellowing barks as he lunges for the vacuum. Well, his sudden bark, which carried over the sound of the masterful Dyson (LOVE my Dyson), totally startled Danny, who all of a sudden let out a terrified “AAH!” Because he’s a traditionally quiet guy, there’s something about him bursting out with a yell that just absolutely sent me into a fit of giggles as I tried to continue vacuuming (with tears running down my cheeks). And boy, does that make him mad…which makes me giggle even more….

So, as you can see in the video above, my dogs love to battle over the same bone. If we give them each a bone, they completely ignore one and fight over the other.

So tonight, Sheffy had control of the bone, and was comfortably gnawing on it on the pillows just like above, and Miss Fine desperately needed a diversion. So, I have Easter baskets around the house filled with my awesome new Easter straw (see post below) and colorful plastic Easter eggs. Tonight, Miss Fine kept sniffing at the basket that’s sitting on the hearth of the fireplace, and I kept warning her not to touch the eggs. So I look away momentarily, and when I look back, I see Sheffield ignoring his bone and trying to grab something else in his mouth that he spots lying on the doggy pillow next to Miss Fine. Quickly, I realize it’s one of my plastic Easter eggs! “Sheffy NO!!!” I cry out. He quickly drops the egg and jumps away from it…at which point Miss Fine swoops in and grabs the bone that he has all but forgotten! That evil little girl dog totally set him up, KNOWING he would go for the plastic egg she placed there, and that I would scold him, making him jump in shock so she could then grab the bone from him with no problem!

I’ve posted this clip of my dogs looking rather tame because I needed it after our peaceful walk in the snowy park today was ruined by two people, walking four Pit Bulls, who quickly warned me to keep my dogs on a short leash because none of their dogs were friendly.  Hm…not even the puppy that was about 4 months old???

You know, I occasionally come across people with ONE dog that isn’t friendly, but if you have FOUR dogs, including a puppy, that you have to aggressively warn people about, then either you don’t know how to raise a dog, you need lessons on socializing your pets, or you’ve chosen to PURPOSELY have violent dogs, either because you think it’s bad ass or because you intend to place them in some vile animal boxing ring.  And considering these types of people are aggressive in their warnings, I can pretty much guess where their dogs get their mean streak from.

Oh, and one more thing. If you’re going to raise violent dogs, then keep them locked up like the wild animals you’ve made them instead of bringing them out into tranquil places where people come to relax.

Like most dogs, mine go berserk for everything food related, and also like most dogs, they INHALE their food! It’s even worse when you have two dogs, because each one eats whatever reaches their mouths extra fast so the other dog won’t snatch it away from them! As a result of all this inhaling, occasionally something gets ‘stuck’ halfway down. And that’s when it has to decide if it wants to keep going down or come back up.

Well, last night, it was Miss Fine’s chance to gag. After feeding my pups their dog food for dinner, I was sitting on my couch in front of my TV like any normal human being, and I was sharing pieces of my chicken dinner with them. Suddenly, Miss Fine, who usually stays right beside me with her chin resting on my leg, often leaving behind a tiny spot of doggy drool in the process, turned away from me and my food…and began making convulsing head and neck upchuck motions! Now here’s the problem. For some reason, my pups never quite got it in their heads that no matter what end it comes out, it should come out in the YARD, not in the house. So when it’s time to puke, no matter HOW much I try to coax them out of the house, they instead stand COMPLETELY still no matter where they are, just waiting to relieve themselves!

Last night was no exception. However, I was ready! I grabbed a handful of napkins from beside my dinner plate on the coffee table, and thrust them under her mouth. Phew! Close one. NOT! As soon as I did this, Miss Fine moved her mouth AWAY! I tried again. And she moved again! Now I’m chasing her around the living room with her walking all jerky-Japanese horror-like, ready to spew all Exorcist-like. I was determined to save myself from a rug scrubbing. And I finally did. The chunks flew…right into my napkin-clad hand. There I was, crouched on my living room rug with a handful of doggy dinner and one piece of chicken, none of which looked any different than it had when it went into her mouth! BLECH. I sure wasn’t in the mood for the rest of my chicken dinner in honey mustard. But Miss Fine was. She was ravenous, her belly (or more like, her throat) now empty. And so, she and Sheffield shared the remainder of my chicken dinner.

Thankfully, it all stayed down.

It’s going to be a glorious Christmas here on Long Island as we today experience a blizzard that almost guarantees there will be snow on the ground on Christmas Day!

To celebrate the first snowfall of the season, Danny and I bundled up in our winter coats, hats, and gloves, got the dogs on their leashes, and headed out into the white. At this point, there was just a dusting on the ground, but the wind was blowing hard and the snow was already blinding.

But not blinding enough to prevent us from being witness to what we were about to experience. We headed to the park at the end of our block—a wonderful little pond in the woods, surrounded by dirt paths and bridges that carry you over babbling brooks and streams. Very quaint, and a fantastic experience in the snow. Usually.

The first sign that this year’s first snowfall nature walk was going to be a disaster came at the end of our block. Danny is walking Sheffield up on the sidewalk instead of in the street as we normally do, and I see Sheffy, without missing a four legged stride, try to grab in his jowls a little mound that is lying on the snow. I squealed in horror as I swiftly detected it was a dead bird! Sheffy just as quickly detected my familiar ‘Sheffy! NO!’ dog whistle octave squeal of horror and loosened his jaws from around the frozen feathery carcass. I made a mental note not to accept any licks from Sheffy for the rest of the day.

We continued on our journey into the park. We entered one of the main paths that winds through the woods, and since there were no other people out and about, we decided to release the dogs from their leashes and let them run amok. They quickly ran way ahead of us to frolic in the snow together as they are prone to do, but as always, they stopped about 20 feet ahead and waited for us to catch up before running off again to repeat the sequence.

Eventually we arrived at a small trail that slices through the woods and is a shortcut to another main path. Danny asked if I wanted to cut through it, and I agreed, so we detoured, watching the dogs disappear into the frosted foliage in front of us. Eventually we caught up with the pups as the trail intersected with the main path. Once on it, Danny called the dogs over to give them treats for being such well behaved dogs and waiting for us. I’m not sure why, but for some reason, he removed one glove to adjust Miss Fine’s collar, which was askew.

As Miss Fine ran off to catch up with Sheffield, Danny says, “Call her back. There’s something on my hand. I think it might be blood.”

I quickly call her back, concerned and wondering how she managed to damage herself so badly during our little trip through the woods. But as she’s returning, Danny walks up to me and says he thinks he was wrong and it might just be mud. He shows me his fingers and, well, I didn’t exactly see the color of mud, nor the color of blood. What I saw was burnt sienna, the classic brownish-orange color from the Crayola 64 count box. I cringed a little and said, “Um…are you sure that’s mud?”

Danny quickly smells his finger, and mirrors my cringe face. By this point, Miss Fine had come back to us. Danny hurriedly rinsed his hand in the freezing cold, thin layer of snow on the path, smells his finger again (I’m making cringe face just recounting this) and now makes ‘smelly’ face. “I don’t think it’s mud,” he confesses in disgust.

He quickly examines Miss Fine, and there is this HUGE streak of burnt sienna all over her collar and the side of her neck. I lean in to smell it, and sure as shit, it’s…burnt sienna. I immediately blurted out, “It smells like horse sienna, not dog sienna.” Now don’t ask me how I am able to distinguish the difference, because I didn’t know I was able to either. It’s like I discovered I had a magical power at that very moment. My guess is that I simply detected the scent of hay somewhere in there…

See, these paths around the pond eventually lead to a horse ranch, so they are used as bridal paths. Thing is, we didn’t see any piles of horse poop in the snow as we were walking (or we surely would have stepped in them). All we could determine as we stood there in a growing blizzard with burnt sienna on Danny’s hand, Miss Fine’s collar, Miss Fine’s neck, and now the snow I was frantically trying to gather up to wash it off her neck, was that at some point in the dogs’ short bursts of distancing themselves from us, Miss Fine had discovered a fresh pile somewhere and simply WRIGGLED in it. I’ve seen her perform this very act on a horseshoe crab washed up on the beach, so I can tell she had a little cuddle session with the horse sienna. She’s out of view for five seconds and gets into a heap of trouble!!! Or should I say, a pile of trouble.

So much for a pleasant walk through the park during the first snowfall. Danny managed to rinse the burnt sienna off the collar in one of the streams, we got it back around Miss Fine’s burnt sienna stinking neck, and then we reattached both dogs’ leashes and got home as fast as we could…which wasn’t all that fast since we were now walking against 50 mile an hour winds!

Needless to say, Miss Fine barely had a chance to wipe her snowy paws on the welcome mat in our house before we threw her in the bathtub and gave her a nice thorough cleansing in hot water and honey oatmeal doggy shampoo. Unfortunately for Sheffy in this instance, we treat our dogs entirely as equals, so he had to suffer through a bath as well. I fleetingly considered washing his mouth out with honey oatmeal doggy shampoo, because despite the post-traumatic sienna I was experiencing, I hadn’t forgotten about the bird appetizer that had foreshadowed the coming storm during the blizzard.

My dogs last night skipped over a couple of courses in the food chain from that children’s song “There was an Old Lady.” After we get home from our nightly walk (admiring all the neighbors’ horror movie Christmas lights—see post from a couple of days ago for more on that) I begin to make dinner for my doggies when I see this HUGE fricking fly buzzing around my house! Just ONE slightly warm December day in a snowdrift of frigid ones and a fricking fly manages to find its way into the house.

Little did I know how my dogs would react to this big ass fly. They went CRAZY!!! The two of them begin barking up a storm, snapping and snarling at each other in an effort to determine which of them is going to be the one to catch the damn thing. They tear off, running around my house, literally leaping up on furniture and nearly knocking over priceless Christmas heirlooms (aka: Home Goods clearance items), in an effort to snag this dang fly. It seriously reminded me of when the pack of hounds living next to Raphie in A Christmas Story broke into the house for the Christmas turkey.

Luckily, we haven’t put up our tree yet, because the dogs managed to lure the fly to the very corner next to the fireplace where we do put the tree. Usually, there’s an easy chair placed caddy corner there, in front of a bookshelf with a lamp on it. So now Sheffield is ON the chair (which they aren’t allowed to go on and don’t go on), and Miss Fine has weaseled her way BEHIND the chair and is climbing the bookshelf as the fly hides inside the lampshade. So I’m running over to save the lamp from a dog attack—thinking I should really be grabbing my Flip video camera to document this—when Sheffield leaps into the air, and comes back down on the easy chair shaking his head furiously. That’s when I see him spit out the giant fly! It lands on my easy chair, and Sheffy jumps off the chair as if finally breaking out of his hypnosis and realizing he’s somewhere he’s not supposed to be.

Meanwhile, I let out a girlish shriek because I am a mess when it comes to ANY kind of bugs. Unfortunately, Danny wasn’t home to snatch up the now wounded fly that is just sitting there in terror, although it’s not as scared as me because I’m horrified at the thought that one of my dogs is now going to gobble the dang thing down. Bad enough I ended up not letting Sheffy lick me for the rest of the night because he merely had the fly in his mouth for a split second. So I shout at the dogs to stay away from the thing and run for a plastic cup…but end up bringing out two to snag the wounded beast…which tried to make a get away UNDER the cushion of my easy chair. Once again letting out a girlish shriek, I grab the cushion and toss it across the room, spot the fly trying to snuggle deep into the warm crevasses of my chair to die. I was NOT going to let that happen. I simply can’t afford to buy a new chair right now. So, moving in slowly and fearfully, afraid I’m going to see that this fly has a human head and is squeaking, “Help me! Help me!”, I get it into the first cup, and then, with not even a hint of a moral conflict in my head, took the other cup and put it in the first one to crush that bugger betwixt the two! Unfortunately, the plastic cups were clear cups, so I let out my third girlish shriek at the visual results of my actions. I fled to the door to throw the cups out into the night, hoping beyond hope that the wind would just carry them away to a gutter somewhere so I’d never have to see them again.

If fate decides to be unkind, I’ll probably come face to face with those cups a few blocks from my house tonight when I walk my dogs….

This is so frustrating. My neighbors lost their dog this past year, and told me they were planning on getting TWO dogs at the end of the year. They are madly in love with my pups, and I’ve always told them what a great feeling it is to be able to offer these dogs a good home–and recently, one of their good friends got a shelter dog he loves.

Well, I saw my neighbors this evening and was informed they got a new pup! So I said, “Just one? I thought you were getting two?” And the response was, “At the price it cost, we could only afford one.”

ARGH!!! They BOUGHT a pure breed. And not only that, they bought the same EXACT breed they lost! WHY WHY WHY would you not want to experience something DIFFERENT. You can’t replace a lost dog, but to me, getting the same exact dog again seems like a desperate attempt. I want every dog I ever have in my life to be unique and different than the ones before.

But back to the real issue. They WANTED two dogs, could have SAVED two dogs from a shelter for a minimal fee, but instead, paid a FORTUNE during a RECESSION for a dog that was purposely brought into this world so someone could profit off it.  Sad.

When the recession hit, it had a profound effect on my dogs! I get these packages of 6 rawhide donuts from Stop & Shop. When I first used to buy them after getting my pups, each donut was about as big and thick as a Dunkin Donut. Well, as we moved closer and closer to a depression, so did my dogs, because the ‘donuts’ ended up being barely any larger and thicker than an average onion ring!!! It’s disgusting how these companies have taken advantage of us by charging the same prices for much smaller quantities of food products, but to go after innocent dogs is just animal cruelty. Well, this past weekend, I got a bag of doggy donuts, and they are looking substantial again!!! Maybe not as big as they used to be, but no longer the size of something you could get in a cardboard container at Burger King.

I come home from work today, and as every other day, I run to the back door to let my pups out to relieve themselves, and as usual, they barge into the yard in excitement…and immediately see an unsuspecting squirrel that is sitting in the middle of our yard. The squirrel takes off, leaps onto our 6-foot wooden stockade fence, and as always, runs along the TOP of the fence instead of just going over the other side to safety! Well, my dogs take off after it, running alongside the fence, when all of a sudden, Miss Fine LEAPS into the air and is literally, I kid you not, RUNNING on the fence, her body completely parallel to the ground about four feet up! After four steps, she lunges off the fence and lands gracefully on the ground as the squirrel bounds up into a tree. I suddenly realize how easy it would be for my dogs to get over a 6-foot stockade fence if they really put their minds to it.

OMG, I feel like a parent whose kid just walked or talked for the first time. For the first time, at a little over two years old, Miss Fine SWAM!!! She really did it! And she’s the one who always hesitated about going into the water! We went into the park for a walk in today’s heat, and there were ducks scurrying into the pond and swimming away and I figured, what the heck, maybe my pups will be compelled to go further into the water if they think they can catch up with a duck. They ignored the ducks, but then I threw a stick out a little further than they were walking, and Miss Fine just totally went for it, doing the doggy paddle and all! She was totally psyched! She would swim out, then come back, at which point Sheffield would try and nibble on her face because he was mad that she was going out further than him, and then she’d run back in and do it all again! And once we got home, she was totally giddy about her new ability, running around the house and barking up a storm, diving into pillows and rolling around like crazy on the carpet. It was so awesome. I’m hoping she’ll motivate Sheffy to just go for it already.