Tag Archives: dog

Work is work…

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I’m still settling in to the whole idea of working from home. Not schlepping through the pre-dawn darkness to sit in a badly lit room with thirty other people doesn’t really suck. I like the view and my coworkers are appreciative of ear rubs and the occasional milkbone. Honestly it’s a whole lot of up side and not much down, at least so far.

It’s a learning process for sure and what I’ve learned this week is:

1. Dogs make the best coworkers. They’re content to find a convenient spot on the floor, preferably in the sun, and stay put until you want them for something.

2. Cats are attention-seeking little hoodlums who want to interrupt you 47 times a day. So basically, working while a cat is in residence is a lot like having actual human coworkers.

3. Happy hour begins promptly at 4:00. Getting that tasty beverage to start the evening an hour earlier is an awfully effective way to put a fork in Monday.

4. There’s something to be said for a lunch that doesn’t come out of a cooler bag / paper bag or from the hands of a sandwich artist.

5. The availability and freshness of the coffee / tea selection is way, way better. It’s hard to underestimate just how much better life is when you can fresh brew all day long.

I wish I could offer up something a little more insightful, but work is work no matter where it’s getting done. The best we can seem to hope for is improving the venue where we spend our eight hours.

Baby steps…

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Until two and a half weeks ago, I’d lived for a little over eight years in a canine only household. I’m not counting the tortoise because mostly he’s just a sunlamp loving rock that
needs daily greens and fresh water. Being cat free wasn’t because I harbor instinctive ill will towards. There was always a cat around growing up and I had one myself in the past. Adding another mouth to the herd was just never all that FullSizeRender (27).jpgmuch a priority.

Since I haven’t given our new addition a proper introduction on the blog, it felt like something I needed to do. The nice folks at my vet’s office had been fostering Hershel since he was dropped off on their doorstep at about two weeks old. He ended up being the sole survivor of his litter-mates. They were looking for a permanent position for him so they could take on the next troubled animal… which of course paved the way for me to bring him home to Fortress Jeff.

I’ve never been particularly sympathetic to people, but animals, man, they seem to manage to find all my feels. I’m happy to report that he’s integrating even better than I had expected. I think what we’re all getting use to is having a youngling around the house again. With both the dogs well into advanced middle age and me being the youngest old man on the planet, the level of energy a kitten has is something to behold… even if it is occasionally troublesome for the rest of us.

Really, though, we’re all still getting to know one another and figure out where we all fit in. The dogs have been remarkably tolerant of this small creature that seems determined to pounce on them from every direction simultaneously. I’ve also learned just how many electrical cords I have strung around this house. Tonight’s project is coating as many of them as possible in soap, which he doesn’t seem to enjoy chewing on at all.

My initial assessment is that we’re going to enjoy having this little fuzzball around… especially once he decides there are better things to gnaw on than my fingers in the middle of the night. For now it’s all baby steps.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The hidden meeting. My days are full of meetings. In fact that might be the only thing that’s consistent from day-to-day. With that being said, if you don’t tell me a meeting is happening I can’t even make the effort to show up and offer you whatever drippings of wisdom I can squeeze out of my overtaxed mind. I probably should have been there. I can even pretend to be sorry I missed it, but really any reason to be stuck in one less meeting is just fine by me.

2. That dinner doesn’t cook itself. Now that the days are getting shorter I find myself really wishing to come home to a nice meal instead of arriving to find a bunch of separate ingredients that I then need to turn into a nice meal. Last week there were far more cereal-for-dinner nights than I’m comfortable admitting.

3. Acorns. In and of themselves, I have nothing against the seed that grows the mighty oak. My only objection to them is this time of year the dogs seem to think they are magical treats dispensed from on high. My trees are majestic, but because of them I’m going to spend the next to days following the Maggie and Winston around shooing them away from the buffet.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Coat blowing. I dearly love my ever-loyal, if somewhat ditzy, chocolate labrador. She is the operative definition of a kind and loving soul. But honest to whatever God there is in heaven if she doesn’t stop blowing her winter coat soon I’m going to lose what small slivers of sanity I have managed to hang on to lo these many years. It’s like the whole bleeding house is covered in a fine, slightly fluffy film of dog.

2. The other email. Without delving into any specific details, I have an alternate email address that occasionally gets used for work. In part it’s annoying because I can’t access this account from my desk. Fortunately, almost no one ever uses that address so it’s not completely inconvenient. That being said, if you don’t log into the damned thing about once a week, you start getting nasty messages from the Great Email Monitor threatening to cut off your access. Once they do that you’ve got to start from scratch setting up a new account, which could take as long as 247 work days to complete. Since I really do need this account for about one message ever 8-10 weeks it effectively just creates a barely essential pain in the ass that requires me to set up a calendar reminder to schlep next door once a week to log in, look at an empty inbox, and ensure that the account stays active for another week. You’ll forgive me, I hope, for being only slightly vexed (but not at all surprised) by such a patently inefficient process.

3. Acting surprised. A major musician has died under unclear or suspicious circumstances. I’m not sure why anyone would be surprised that a music superstar might have succumbed to the effects of legal and/or illegal medications. It’s not like this is the first time music and drugs march down the same road. It’s the fact that anyone from fans to media pontificators can pretend such events are anything other than “as expected” that’s farcical. A man is dead and that’s sad enough in its own right, but when it’s self-inflicted I have a hard time finding it an outright tragedy.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. CVS Caremark. I ordered a refill on a prescription the day before Christmas. As it turns out it was a few days past its expiration, but no worries, the fine people at CVS will contact the doctor’s office for a renewal. A few days later at 7:39 PM they sent me a email that they couldn’t reach the doctor and that I needed to contact the office myself ASAP so they could process the order. No problem, except that 85 minutes later CVS sent me another email cancelling the order “since they hadn’t heard from my doctor yet.” I don’t know what kind of doctor the dipshits at CVS Caremark go to, but mine doesn’t keep office hours at 8:00 on a Tuesday night. Seems a better business practice might be to give a guy until normal business hours to respond.

2. “Single stream” recycling. If you’re going to call it that, maybe it shouldn’t be followed by a lot of exceptions – especially things that you were accepting last month like – shredded paper and plastic bags. How do you think I’m getting stuff to the dump anyway if not in plastic bags? I try to do my bit and separate as much as I can, chuck the food products out into the mulch pile, and generally cut down on what’s going directly our of my house and into the ground. In part I do it because it’s generally the right thing to do. But I also do it because up until now it was pretty easy. In the future it seems paying the extra $7 a month to dump it all as “trash” is probably easier.

3. Dog shit. Look lady, I don’t care if you are blonde and built like a swimsuit model, you’re going to pick up what your dog leaves in my front yard. Yours might not stink, but your dog’s does.

A tale of two dogs…

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Winston, as many of you will know, is prone to all manner of medical problems. Such is life in a bulldog household. My advice to anyone before they go to pick out such a project dog is to first deposit $10,000 into a savings account. Do’t be tempted to touch it for such “emergencies” as a new furnace or fixing your car’s transmission. You’re going to need it as a downpayment on the future medical bills you are going to ring up.

As we progress through the process of treating Winston’s second blown cruciate, I’ll be filling everyone in on the details of everything from diagnostics to treatment to recovery. It’s a record I played before – almost exactly three years ago to be exact. It’s less intimidating because I know more or less what to expect, but that only makes it slightly less of an ordeal. What can I say, I take a hurting critter very personally.

On the other hand, there’s Maggie, the unsinkable chocolate lab. I was just commenting a few hours ago how thankful I was that at least one of the beasts is healthy. The gods being the fickle asshats that they are, of course, that was a few hours before she started drooling all over herself and exhibiting what looks to me like the textbook definition of “lethargy.” I’m going out on a metaphoric limb and assuming she scrounged a stomach full of acorns while I was busy working on the yard and is now paying the price for it.

Just as I ended that last paragraph, my suspicion was at least partially confirmed as I had to pause and clean up the remnants of dinner mixed with an obviously stupid amount of acorns. Sigh. So there you have it. Two dogs both sick in their own special way. I am in no way prepared to deal with Monday after a weekend that was defined almost exclusively by dealing with sick critters.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. National Whatever Day. Yesterday was allegedly “National Dog Day.” Are you serious? There are somewhere between 70-80 million dogs in America. In 2015 the American pet industry as a whole is estimated to take in about $60 billion. Do you think we’ve somehow collectively forgotten about dogs? As if the 1/3 of American households who have them came home suddenly and wondered what this 4-legged furry thing was that greeted them at the door? Look, I’m fine seeing everyone’s dog plastered all over Facebook. If I can be frank, it’s a nice change of pace from the usually endless parade of baby pictures, first day of school snaps, and instas of what’s for dinner. Still, I think we can give National “Whatever” Day a rest.

2. The Wackadoodle Right. I read an article a few days ago wagging the specter of another government shutdown. Except this one isn’t because we’ve actually run out of (pretend) money or haven’t been able to pass a budget (or at least a continuing resolution). This impending shutdown will come because a couple of right wing wackjobs have decided that no government at all is better than a government that might accidentally fund an abortion. If I’m going to be thrown out of work, I’d appreciate it be for a reason other than a handful of politicians who think they have a “special relationship” with the Almighty. I’m not going to get sucked into a discussion on the virtues of Planned Parenthood versus the right wing of my own party, but there are enough actual real world dangers we can worry about to knock this one way down the priority list.

3. “Ten Years Later” Coverage of Katrina. Without grinding through the details, let’s just accept that Hurricane Katrina is a topic I know a little something about. I lived 1000+ miles from landfall and the bitch still consumed just about every part of my life for months. She’s also the reason I know the media are well and truly idiots when it comes to reporting the facts of a complicated story. Unless it boils down to a three second sound bite (like “Being stuck on stupid”) or lets them take a few jabs at a favored punching bag, they just miss the big picture. The moment that small portion of the story goes over the air it’s accepted as received truth, but it’s only ever just a very small slice of the real story.

Working dog…

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I’ve read countless times that dogs behave better when they have a job. Some are trained to sniff out bombs or drugs, others pull carts, a few, the happiest probably, carry drums of liquor to skiers stranded somewhere on an Alp.

My Maggie never trained to do any of those things. She’s the definitive house pet… mostly well behaved, but possessed of a few bad habits that I’ve simply allowed to develop over time because they didn’t bother me enough to correct.

This chocolate lab of mine has always taken her patrol duties in the yard seriously – birds, squirrels, and cats have all felt her wrath at one time or another. Interlopers are less welcome by her than they are by me. That’s saying something. Since we moved, though, she’s taken on a whole new role.

The front windows aren’t quite floor to ceiling but they’re big enough to give her an unobstructed view of the front yard and the street beyond. Her domain is all she surveys. My working dog has appointed herself protector of the cul-de-sac. Every living thing that moves upon it is fair game for her hell-hound-like bark and ferocious snarl. Children on small motorized scooters are particularly hated enemies. The barking for them is the loudest and most long lived.

Technically I should probably be correcting her at every opportunity… but if I’m really dead honest about it, I’m not sure I hate the idea of everyone who drives, walks, or otherwise wanders past having a thought that herein lives one of the most vicious dogs on the face of the earth. It’s not a job for your typical working dog, but it fits in just fine around here.

Masters of adaptation…

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I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating – the dogs are even more creatures of habit than I am myself. That’s no small accomplishment. Watching them wander from room to room trying to sort out what to make of the stacks of boxes was fun for the first 30 minutes. Now it’s just sort of sad.

These two southern dogs have been here now longer than they were in Memphis so it’s as much or more home to them as anywhere else. Conveniently, dogs are masters of adaptation and will settle in to the new and different far more quickly than I will. Well, they’ll adjust quickly enough to everything except not having a fence. I know I’m going to miss that far more than they will, but it’s a mercifully easy fix – in theory.

I love these little hoodlums, but having one under each foot every time I move is wearing a little thin. I’ll be glad of getting them introduced to the house a bit this weekend so we can start getting back to our own warped version of normal. If we keep up the current routine much longer there’s a fair chance I’ll accidentally kill myself while tripping over one of them, falling into a sea of cardboard, and never being heard from again.

A better place…

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I don’t think I’ve ever really understood people who don’t like dogs. I understand people are allergic and that makes dogs somewhat problematic for them, but the ones who just downright don’t enjoy the company of a dog are an utter mystery to me. The one thing I don’t think these non-dog people fully understand is just how much individual personality these creatures have. I’m always a little surprised when I hear comments that “dogs do this” or “This breed behaves like that.” While of course there are certain shared characteristic of all dogs and other characteristics shared by a specific breed, like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

What I’ve most recently been struck with is just how different my two are from one another. They’re the same basic age, have had the same basic life experiences, but there are decided differences that I’m not sure can be attributed to their type. Winston is my cat. He wants attention purely on his terms and otherwise is happy to find a comfy spot, preferably somewhere in the sun, and keep an eye on everything from a distance. Maggie, by contrast is my needful thing. While I’m getting ready for the day she is never more than three steps from me. Every morning – and I mean every single morning – when I sit down to pull on my shoes, she bounds back onto the bed and tucks herself under my left arm insisting on a few minutes of chin rubs and belly scratches before heading outside. It’s my absolute favorite part of the day and as much a part of my morning routine as the first cup of coffee. Winston on the other hand doesn’t seem to be interested in much else in the morning than getting outside, having breakfast, and then putting himself back to bed. Like I said, basically a cat.

For their differences I wouldn’t want either of them to be any different – and I certainly wouldn’t want them to be the same. If anything, I’d like to see the folks who don’t like dogs act a little more like the critters they try to avoid. I’m not going to offer them belly rubs, but I still think it would make the world a better place.