STUFF

For several years  I followed the Iditarod very closely. I am not one of those people who believe that dogs doing what they love to do are being abused. I find PETA's efforts to tell me what is right and wrong about my having purebred dogs and doing things with them to be frankly offensive. Not to mention their long-term goals of ending my relationship with domestic animals altogether. Nevermind. I don't want to start a rant.

(photo from Google)

These do not look like unhappy dogs to me.

Anyway, I kind of gave up this year. It was fun for awhile, when Susan Butcher and Libby Riddles were running, but Butcher is dead and Riddles probably my age or a little less, she may still be running. It is Susan Butcher I miss the most.
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On the homefront Nigel is still improving in his functional skills. The tail wag is definitely back. The rear assemblage now is almost back to his pre-illness stage so that when we take him out without the cart he can help us a bit if we position his feet, to stand and pee. He still needs a lot of support, but he tries. We have not been out in the cart for awhile. Conley and Llewis are fat as ticks. It is disgusting. I need to get Conley out and moving too. Llewis....I am not sure what to do with him.
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I opened an Etsy store and anyone who is interested the address is:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/bszaton

John brought me a Smith & Wesson T-shirt. I can't wait until it is warm enough to be comfortable in a T-shirt again.Heh Heh

BODYGUARD

We have four dogs. Three are Bassets. One is a Belgian Sheepdog, Cooper.
Of the Bassets, two are brothers. That is, actual littermates: Nigel and Llewis.
Conley, as usual, is the odd-man out, from another line altogether.

Llewis was born with major orthopedic and neurological deficits. I'm not going into detail but he has one leg that doesn't work (a rear tire) and is frozen in an awkward position, and he has slow conscious propreoception in the other back tire as well. So, one rear tire is flat and the other has lost some air.Consequently, he cannot climb, jump up, run correctly or even walk right. He moves like Chester, from the old Gunsmoke if any of you remember. Nevertheless, he runs (as best he can) and plays hard, and of all the dogs is the most willing to play long and hard. He has no idea he is disabled.

Nigel and he were buds for many years. Well ok, they're only six now. Not tight, but they kind of hung together. But despite what people seem to think, Nigel is not the sweetie pie they would believe. He has a temper. He has aspirations to top dog. He has testicles. He likes to cuddle now and then but he does not give kisses and his is not a warm and cuddly personality. He growls a lot.

Occasionally, but not often, all three share limited space.

Somewhere along the line, way back, Cooper must have noticed that Llewis was different, if dogs are capable of that, and I think they must be. He became a little intense about Llewis. If Llewis went out, Cooper went out. If Llewis came in, Cooper came in. God help the snarly bastard that went for Llewis, because that dog was going to have Cooper to contend with. Aspirations notwithstanding (both Nigel and Conley want to be topdog but as long as Cooper is alive, they are not.)

A bit ago, maybe a year ago, I noticed that if Cooper and the others came in, and Llewis took too long to respond, Cooper wanted out again. So I let him out and he went to the corner of the sidewalk and looked, quite pointedly, both ways and not seeing what he wanted, went on out into the yard, found Llewis, and came back with him, a little behind, making sure his whole flock, flat tires and all, were in. Particularly THIS one.

Even now, with a missing wheel, Cooper continues to play Bodyguard to Llewis.
The favor is not reciprocated. I do not even know if Llewis realises that he has a
powerful agent watching him. I don't think he does. I think he just believes this is the way things are.

But three-legged and sick, Cooper is right there with Llewis. A little advice:
Don't smack Llewis in front of his Bodyguard. I think it might be risky.

(Llewis never gets smacked: none of them do.)

BEEN AWHILE

It has been awhile since I have written. There is not much going on to write about, in truth. Nigel is Nigel and continues to make little puppy steps towards getting back some of the function he lost when ill: his tail does wag now with much more frequency than last week.  Sometimes outside he can help brace himself to take a pee, but he still needs a lot of physical support.

Cooper is doing all right on our regimen of liquid meds and processed food. He eats a lot of ground chicken and a lot of Morningstar Farms Soy Sausage patties.
He is not so nuts about mashed sweet potatoes anymore and so I am going to try punkin.  He's a carnivore. He likes his meat. The Bassets are Omnivores. They like their meat but will happily eat fruits and veggies, sticks, rocks (Oh Conley says that is fiber.)

I am making jewelry and have opened an Etsy store. I made one of the most hideous necklaces ever, and last night I tore it apart. I don't want my name on it. Agh. This is maybe the 8th time I have tried to pair this pendant with something and failed. The pendant is all white and has a skull on it, not my usual type of focal point. Eventually I will come up with SOMETHING.

The yard is a mess, what with the rain and the ground still frozen. The wind has been howling for two days.

50% of my time is spent taking care of dogs and 45% making jewelry and 5% taking care of the house. I barely leave the house. I have made plans to go to a horse show in Omaha in April, and of course my son is bringing his glass up for an exhibition at the Gallery.

I did the paper PR for the exhibit--posters, postcards and a banner for the Gallery window. The first time I got the date wrong so had to correct it, which took forever but when I got the order I realised THAT date was wrong!! And I had paid for the stuff and now didn't have enough money to do it all again.  I had the money but it would mean emptying the account too early in the month and finally I decided I had to do it anyway.

So I called VISTAPRINT, which is who I use, and explained I had the dates wrong and needed to re-order with the correct dates, and all they charged me for was postage!!! Wow!! Whadda break! I made it clear the fault was mine. I have used them several times before but this time I had a tough go of it, trouble uploading the artwork and trouble understanding "Peggy" who answered my pleas for tech help. The first guy was not only incoherent but incoherent. That is, not only could I not literally understand him, but his directions were so confused that I could not follow them.
(This was when I was setting up the original art on their site.) The second guy made the fatal mistake, when we could not seem to connect on what I was trying to explain, and asked "Is there someone else at home who could help you?" and I exploded. I asked if there was someone else there who could help HIM and then said I was going to another company.

I didn't, of course.

Hours later I called back and got a wonderful woman who understood me and who I could easily understand, and who knew exactly what needed to be done, and we did it.

When I called back after I received the order and had put on the wrong dates, I called and got a guy who apparently knew more than anyone else I had spoken with, who instantly changed the dates from his end for me and then only charged me postage and whoever he is, wherever he is, I love him.

Maybe someday I will get out with my camera again. I missed the IKC this year because Cooper had his endoscopy that day.
Ah well.

CHARLIE DIPODOMYS

Once upon a time there was a young woman (note: I did not use the term "lady" due to the suspicion that I never was a Lady.) who attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa.
She met and fell in love with a young man who was a psychology major. (Actually he was a chemistry major when she met him, but he was doing so poorly in p-chem that he changed his major.)(Or maybe it was Inorganic Chem.)(That was the year they met, and the year the young woman took 14 hours of classes and failed 7 hours and was asked to leave Modern Dance before she failed that as well.) (Well there were a lot of parties and a lot of time spent in the Student Union instead of class.)

Anyway one day in the Pysch building a student rushed past them carrying a flower pot with his hand over the top. The woman asked what it was and was told it was a Kangaroo Rat they had tried to use in an experiment gone bad and now they didn't want the rat and he was nasty and unfriendly and so they were going to flush him (or her-- who could get close enough to tell) down the Loo.

AAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

So the young woman said oh no no I'll take him! And so we (me and the young man who is now my spouse) became the proud owners of one Kangaroo Rat, one HUGE cage with about 6" of sand in the bottom, a flowerpot, and a bag of sunflower seeds.

Meet Charlie Dipodomys.

Unfortunately the young woman lived in the dorm where Kangaroo Rats were not allowed. So John took all the stuff and moved Charlie into his kitchen in his off-campus rooms.

And here he became a problem child. Charlie, we learned, was nocturnal. And angry. He was a very, very angry Dipodomys.

At night he clung to wire on the cage and gnawed, and gnawed and gnawed and scrambled around to find another spot to attack. He dug in the sand for we did not know he was burrowing creature. He buried the sunflower seeds and he HATED us. He was so cute but touching him was simply out of the question.

Thus, at the end of the semester with summer looming, came the problem as to what to do with Charlie Dipodomys. Hardly a pet, he could not go home with John and so I said I would take him. I called home to arrange transport and mentioned to my Father about Charlie. His response was extremely negative. I asked what I should do and he said "Flush him."

AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Charlie Dipodomys, aside from his undying nastiness, was notable for one more thing. He was responsible for the only time in my life that I hung up on my Father.

Click.

Dad called back. He was laughing. (Thank God.) He said

"Ok, Marlin Perkins, bring him along, but we are donating him to the children's zoo."

For those of you who are too young, Marlin Perkins was the host of Mutual of Omaha's very popular television show "Wild Kingdom" and someone I desperately admired.

Thus it was that Charlie Dipodomys moved from a looming death by toilet to the spacious cage at the Blank Children's Zoo in Des Moines, Iowa, where he had a place to burrow and no longer had to live in a flower pot, and where he probably ate something better than just sunflower seeds. I went to visit him once but he was just as unyieldingly ungracious as he had always been.

He was such a cute little bastard.

LONG TIME NO BLOG

And no pics because they are alllll gone.
The computer, my NEW computer, bought at Best Buy in November of last year, had a major hissy fit the other day and went from "having issues" to "Your Computer Cannot Open". Aaaaiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

I took it back to BB. They said their turnaround time for fixes was FOURTEEN DAYS!! (No I did not have the store warranty, only the factory warranty) They said further that if it was the hardware (and it didn't sound like that to them) the fix would be free but the time might be longer because they'd have to send it back to Toshiba.
However if it was software, there would a $200 charge. And if I wanted I could take it to the next town where their turnaround time was only 6 days.

I tried to calculate whether I could make it 6 days without the computer and without killing someone-- anyone.

Nope. Not a chance.

But I felt I had no choice. Technology--like electricity, indoor plumbing and dogs, are great until you don't have them.

SO I decided to go to Tinley (the next town) and bite the bullet. Then when I got to the car I thought no, I am going home. There HAS to be a better deal than this.

And there was. Across the street from BB lives a little Office Max and recently they put in a fix-the-computer thing. So I went over there and presented them with my no-start computer. The kid who was there was wearing a name pin that had "Darwin" written on it. How can you not like someone named Darwin?
Darwin listened to the whole story, including my annoyance with BB. He thought it sounded like something in the hardware, and suggested calling Toshiba. This meant he didn't know what to do and was willing (like my Vet) to find someone who knew more about it than he did, and was not going to pretend he had more expertise than he did. I liked that, too.
He spent about an hour on the phone with Toshiba, who suggested something he might try just to get a screen up. This was going to take several hours to run. It was about 3 in the afternoon.

So I left.

I called a couple of times and it was still running. I thought well this is not good.
Then just before closing at 9 they called and said it had started. WOOOHOOOO.
I went in in the morning to pay and learned they needed to do some stuff to the software-- by now Darwin was off and the manager was working on the computer. It cost $140. Everyone was helpful, eager to co-operate, and by noon I had my computer back. Minus all the data which, believe it or not I had mostly saved on a flashdrive. I have not put the photos back.

I told OMax they have a new, lifelong customer. My NEXT computer will not be purchased at BB no matter how much less it costs.

Love technology except when I don't.

DOG HABITS

Before his rear end left, Nigel would get up about 4:30 and want out. So the fact that he is doing this now is not surprising. This morning he got up at 4:30 and wanted out. I rolled slowly out of my nice bed and my bleary eyeball happened to fall upon the thermometer:

1

Ahhhh. Sorry old man, but outside is out of the question.
He labored to the back door and sat, looking over his shoulder at me.
I said no. It is one degree. I am in my jammies and you want to go wander about the ranch. Not a chance.

We did not go out.

However, Cooper and Conley went out, albeit not for long. They may just be dogs and covered with fur or hair but stupid they are not.
How do I know they want in?
Cooper stands back a bit from the door and gives a sharp bark. Then he waits. After about 30 seconds, he will repeat the bark. But if there is no response, the wait-time becomes shorter, say 15 seconds. Then ten. Then a note of real impatience creeps in.
"Woman! Open the door!"
He learned this from Zelda. Mitchell would never have commanded me in this tone. And sure enough, I hustle over and open the door.

Conley is less circumspect in letting me know that he wants back into the house. Cooper and Conley are the two who will come in regardless of what the others are doing, in other words, independently. Nigel and Llewis used to wait for each other, now Llewis waits for everyone. Sometimes Llewis is so slow that Cooper asks to go back out and look for him. Seriously. He will go back out and stand at the turn in the sidewalk and look first one way and then the other, and if he doesn't see him gimping towards the house he will go out into the yard and bark at him. "Get in here! God you're slow!"

Conley leaves no room for indecision. He attacks the door. The door used to have a lovely screen on the bottom, but no more. It now hangs in dismal tatters. There are paw prints and mud all over the door for Conley rears up and SLAMS his front feet against the door, barking, over and over and when I appear to open the door he backs up, still standing on two legs, and then falls to all fours and rushes in the door, stopping immediately to see if I have treats (O when do I not?)

Llewis is the original Pokey Little Puppy. Possibly because of his leg he just almost never rushes. Once in awhile he will run. If I step out holding the dog bowls, he will run. If DadPerson goes out and has not been home, Llewis runs. When he does the Basset 475 (he cannot quite manage the Basset 500) he runs, and when he is trying to catch and kill Conley, he runs.
Otherwise he cannot be bothered. I hear him coming from around the corner: pad pad swish drag. Pad pad swish drag. It's like the sound track from The Night of the Living Dead. And here he comes, tail wagging slowly, eyes quizzical: "Yes? You called?" (ten minutes ago.) "There was a scent over by the shed, so sorry." But he isn't sorry, not at all. He stops half in and half out so even when it is 1 and there is a blizzard I cannot close the door, and he looks at me kind of sadly: "Is there a treat for this, or shall I stay here?"

All but Nigel, who used to jostle with Conley to be the first inside. Now he is the first for everything. Treats, belly rubs, tickles, walks and unsolicited hugs. He looks at Conley triumphantly from his place high on my bed. I see it all in his eyes:
"Ha you little Thug. Nyah Nyah."
And Conley does the only thing he can to drive Nigel mad: he walks over and goes in Nigel's pen, rearranges all the blankets it took Nigel ten minutes to get Just Right, and goes to sleep.

THIS BE COOPER

This be Cooper. Since MP has a cold she said I cood write if I didint do dogspeek. I do not spell so good. And she say thats ok.
I dont like it when she not feeling good because she grumpy but mossly because she parta the flock. See I a herding dog. I herd things. I keep order. It is a touff job what with Basset hounds. They dont herd so good and they dont keep order. You should see! Allygator mouff with horrible sounds. Wrassling in the living room. Why they call it a living room if you canit live in it withouht a bunch of Bassets grrring and sliding aroun on the rugs?

I have three legs. Or maybe I should say I have one less than I did.
I had something in my leg that hurt and made me limp. There is a name for it but we are not allowt to say it out loud. They (the dog doctors) say the leg has to go. I did not reely unnderstand what they meant. Of course it goes, it's a leg and legs go. What they ment was they gone make it go away forever. I went to sleep and they magikcally disapeered it. IT kinda scary they do this so eesy they disapperd my ...my....an I still miss them.

See? Count them. One too three. No fore.

I usta be a show dog. I went to dog shows. I got all spiffied up. First Aunt Annette the groomer would groom me to peeces. She very good and no exzactly what to not touch wif sissors. (Anything.) She get me all clean and pretty. Den MP trim my back legs from da hock down an my feets. At the sshows she put me on a teble and spritz me with stunky stuff, brush and brush and brush and fluff and rearrange my fur an trim my feets and put on a speshal leesh an we go trot aroun a place an some stranger touch my.... to be sure there are two and then there were but thats before they made them disappeer. Sometimes I win and sometimes not and then won day in Wisconsin I gots to be whut they calls a champion, maeke no differments, I still da same dog.

Whut I like best of all is when da whole flock here togedder and I nose where dey all is. What I don't like is when one is missing, even Mp or DP or even Bassets. MP used to say da best part ob the day when everyone else in bed and she nose rite where they is. Yeah. I get that.

Well Ise just babblin here. I not feelin reel good these days sometimes. Nobody seem to know exactly why. I tell em, I'm eleben, I had dat word nobody say, prolly got it agin someplace secret inside. Sum days I no eet. Some days I frows up. Sometimes I gets the odder end going. I no gots the zippy in my step like I used to but it's ok because MP still haul me onna bed and cover me wif kisses an hugs and rub me all ober and sing our special song:
you is my sunshine
my only sunshine
you makes me heppy
when skies is grey
you never nose dear
how much I love you
please dont take
my
sunshine
away