wideeyedfunk

Tag: Pembroke Welsh Corgi

  • Hamish the Corgi, Almost a Person

    Hamish the Corgi is almost a person. He has plans. He has dignity. He is hampered in life only by his tiny, T. Rex front legs and his lack of thumbs. Sometimes while he watches me analyze data and write I just know he gets it. And if he could speak in my language he would engage in discourse.

    But then. A bug wanders past. It is happening right now. I can see him trying to ignore it but first his eyes, then his ears flickered in the direction of the bug. It’s one of those triangular bodied bugs, the Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, that show up in the winter sometimes.  Hamish can’t resist a good stink bug.

    He is sprawled on the floor, holding the stink bug cupped in his meaty little paws. Oops, it just “escaped” and he had to pounce a little to get it back in the dog paw corral. I guess that got boring and he just rolled onto his side and rubbed his face all over the bug. He is laying there, all corgi limp, and I figure that he likes the feeling of the stink bug wiggling between his cheek and the wood floor.

    As we sit here in the office, me with my article draft and data tables, Hamish with his Marmorated Stink Bug, I begin to wonder about Hamish’s plans, dignity, and potential. It just is not easy to look intellectually engaged when you are laying on your side, pressing a stink bug into the floor with your cheek and a crazy look in your eyes. Try it, you’ll see.

    The stink bug made it from the wood floor to the carpet (probably an epic-heroic journey through corgi whiskers and fur) and I thought I might intervene and toss the little bug out the window before its stink got rubbed into the rug. Hamish sat up and glared at me when I leaned forward from my chair. Okaaaay. I sat back.

    So here we are. Détente.

    I will give Hamish a moment to resolve the situation on his own.

    He is holding Stink Bug in his paw corral again. Thinking.

    He just leaned in to nose around in the paw corral. His mouth opened a little and, oh man, he did it, that bug is Gone. Down the gullet after some dramatic lip curled chewing.

    And there we have it. Hamish is not, in fact, a person.

  • My work colleagues are dogs. And no, I’m not a sheepherder.

    Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog and Hamish the Corgi work with me all the day long. And they work hard on their dog chores. Miss Tibbit holds the cushion down on the chair. Hamish holds the chair in position. They sigh and stretch and mumble over their tasks. Every now and again, Hamish has to squirm into a better holding position, Miss Tibbit must squeeze herself tighter into her little dog-round position.

    Today Miss Tibbit worked in the window seat in the front parlor. Hamish occupied himself with holding down the old red settee.

    Dogs

    I was so lonely. The keys wouldn’t type right on the keyboard. The words wouldn’t come in my careful writing. The day was bleak.

    DogcolleaguesNow we’re back up here for the evening round of work. Sweet Tibbit is snoring and twitching with her full post-dinner belly and Hamish looks like he may have actually passed out. And, sure, the WideEyedSpouse is across the room, sighing and creaking around in his chair doing mysterious Spouse office things.  But he’s with me in here only a couple of hours a day. My real work colleagues are over there on the floor and in the corner chair.

    Sometimes I think it might be smart to haul myself up to the University to work. There are people there. It is just barely possible that I would benefit from some human interaction in my puzzling life.

  • Sweet Tibbit gets her money’s worth out of a jelly bean.

    Hamish the Corgi and Miss Tibbit can’t stop thinking about jelly beans.

    DogsI’m looking at Sweet Tibbit now and she’s laying on the window seat gazing into the middle distance. She seems vacuous, blank-eyed, awaiting stimulus. I assure you she is thinking about jelly beans.  Hamish is lounged on the sofa, chin propped and contemplative. He is also thinking about jelly beans.

    Because they are dogs, they both like, or rather, don’t dislike, every color jelly bean. I believe that there is a slight preference for pink, red and purple jelly beans over black, orange, and green. It is hard to tell with Hamish because he crunch-gulps so swiftly that the experience is over by the time his Corgi brain has the opportunity to form an opinion.

    Tibbit (2)Sweet Tibbit, she savors a jelly bean. She snuffles the bean with her strangely mobile little black nose.  If it proves acceptable (and it always does but certain colors are approved more quickly), if acceptable Sweet Tibbit takes the bean with her tiny front nibble teeth and pursed lips. It disappears into her maw. Her catfish-like whiskers twitch as she repositions her prize to her molars. This is a mistake Sweet Tibbit makes every time. Really, every time.

    The bean embeds into Miss Tibbit’s molars.

    We all watch Miss Tibbit make rictus faces and chew with great exaggerated jaw movement. Her awkwardly too-big-for-her-mouth tongue flaps around. She pauses and looks at us. Makes a little test chew. Nope, not done. The rictus, chewing, flapping tongue scene starts again.

    Hamish feels an injustice has been perpetrated. He glances from Sweet Tibbit eating her jelly bean to me to the jelly bean bag. His meaning is quite clear. Miss Tibbit’s jelly bean was obviously better than the cheezy little one he got.

    As I reach into the jelly bean bag for another one, Miss Tibbit abruptly stops chewing and looks pointedly at my hand. She is trying to demonstrate that she is ready for another bean.  I hold my hand in the bag for a moment. Tibbit stares. I wait. I can see her lips trying to pull back into a rictus for more chewing. She is forcibly restraining them. I wait. Ricuts, flap, flap flap of the tongue.

    Miss Tibbit gets more out of a single jelly bean than anyone I have ever seen. Sweet Tibbit, so simple, so sweet.

  • The eerily prescient fortune cookie.

    I love fortune cookies. The way they snap and crumble into shards of fresh tasting, sugary crispness. That crunch. Learning to say a word in Chinese.

    shí liú. grape.

    I hold fortune cookies in my hand and think about the fortune before I crack them open. Will I meet new people? Should I trust the man with green eyes? Will monetary advantage be mine? Does adventure keep the heart young? Should I learn to dance?

    What are my lucky numbers?

    15. 22. 37. 8.

    I never pick the fortune cookie, I let it pick me.

    Yesterday a long delayed, blizzard-stuck package arrived at my snowy door. The boys (dogs) and I dumped it in the front parlor, which is our official package opening location. Rejected items never make it out of that room. Dirty antiques found in other people’s estates begin new lives in the WideEyedHousehold there. It is the ante-chamber to my life. It’s the room where I let guests linger until I decide if they are permitted to participate in my greater homestead. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. It’s chilly enough in the front parlor that the uninvited aren’t inclined to de-coat. Perfect, really, for moving folks right along: “Yes, yes, nice to see you too, stop by again sometime…”

    I digress.

    The package. It had a fortune cookie in it, taped to the packing list, right at the top of the box. Since there was only the one cookie, the choice had already been made, this cookie came to Me. I cracked it open.

    “There will be snorkeling in your future.”Fortune

    The boys and I crunched through the cookie and I sat back in Hamish the Corgi’s rockstar chair.

    IMG_1687I was stunned. How did this cookie know I was heading out to snorkel in the coming days? How could this cookie know? I chewed the last of the cookie, because of course that’s part of the deal with a fortune cookie. Ok. Better accept it, I thought to myself. I leaned over to unpack the rest of the box.

    FeetandDogsTen minutes later I flopped my flippered feet over to the mirror above the hearth to see what I looked like in a low volume, water-injected silicone skirted mask and red ultra-dry snorkel. Heh. I looked funny. But geez, that fortune cookie really had it right. Weird.

  • Lemme me see the other side.

    I’ll tell you what. I have lived in Minnesota. I know what cold feels like. I spent a couple of winters in Anchorage. I know what big snow looks like. I grew up at the South Jersey shore.  I am familiar with bone cutting, sand carrying, January winds that administer the midseason microdermabrasion treatments. Stings a bit when the feeling comes back into your cheeks.

    Now I’m in Buffalo. And I am becoming expert in the wintry mix. Sloppy.  Gusty. Raw. The Christmas pine garlands are flopping all over the place. And dog walks are wretched.

    “Yeah.”

    Sorry, that was Miss Tibbit interrupting us. This afternoon she pranced onto the back porch, got blasted in the face with a sleety snow, and turned around to come back inside. Wasn’t worth it. No thank you ma’am.

    Buffalo winter means that Hamish the Corgi and Sweet Tibbit come home from walkies with salty wet feet. Hamish’s undercarriage is a cindery mucky mess. Every time. (The cat just sneezed in my wine by the way. Just saying. Nice moment.) If I leave the dogs alone I have mud on the sofa, salt foot prints all over the house, maybe a sick dog because I guess they aren’t supposed to lick that rock salt.

    So. Every day, several times a day, we do the lemme see the other side routine.  The dogs know and when it is gross outside they climb the first set of steps and wait for me in the hall landing. I unglove, unshoe, unhat, uncoat, unscarf, grab the dog towel, and crouch down. Hamish stands stiffly in front of me and presents his near foot – usually port side, held high in the air. I wipe it, rub his chest under there. Let go. He steps forward and balances his weight on the starboard side. I wipe the back foot, wipe the belly, let go. Miss Tibbit, who is anxious that this isn’t going fast enough, pushes past. “Lemme see the other side,” I tell Hamish.

    He steps forward a bit, performs a Corgi K-turn, hoves into reach and presents his starboard foot. Wipe. Forward. Wipe. “Next,” I say. Miss Tibbit appears in my face, one front foot in the air. Wipe. She steps forward. Back foot wipe. “Other side,” I say, like a train conductor announcing the stop. Tibbit steps away and carefully negotiates a turn, presenting the other front foot. Wipe. Forward. Wipe.

    The dogs assemble conveniently near the dog treat storage area while I drape the dog towel on the heater. It’s irritating, the dogs get rubbed with a warm towel after the Buffalo winter walks. What am I running here, a dog spa?

    Anyway, I rattle the lid of the treat jar and toss snacks into waiting maws. “Alright,” I tell them, “I’ve got work to do,” and we head back up to the desk. Oh boy, only a couple of hours until the next Buffalo winter dog walk.

  • Walking dogs in the fall has a certain frisson.

    The leaves changed in here Buffalo in that last week or two. An orangey road glow replaces the striking sun to shadow dichotomy of summer. Bowers formed by century-grown wrinkled and twisted tree branches, trimmed into arches over the sidewalks, allow a little more of the post autumnal equinox sun through so that there is a gloaming rather than pools of shade. Miss Tibbit and Hamish kick up leaves as they trot along, noses in the air to catch the damp scents.

    Fall dog walks joyously beautiful. They are peaceful. The fair-weather dog walkers have abandoned the parks and streets and Miss Tibbit has fewer dog friends to yowl toward. Hamish has fewer challengers to his tiny and vulnerable Corgi dignity. Yet, fall dog walks are fraught with danger.

    It is a social danger, sure, but no less frightening for that. It is all Hamish’s fault.

    As you may know from past chronicles, Hamish is a Master of the Craft of Display Defecation.  His joy in his craft is unsubtle. A car full of family returning home from a long day at work? What an excellent opportunity for a drive-side event. I stand and wait, blue bag on my hand, in a public demonstration of my intention to clean up. As Hamish finishes, he eyes me and smiles, steps forward and kicks with his ears up and his mouth wide in a doggie grin. His tiny back legs do a little stiff legged dance – left, right, left, right – pause – and one more time. I’m sure I’ve described it before.

    The practical effect of his charming act during these serene fall walks? He covers his deposit in layers of leaves, which are shaded just the same as his…well I don’t want to be overly vulgar. I think you know what I am implying. I am left with a car full of homeowners observing us and a yard full of brown, gold, orange leaves with something unpleasant to extract.

    I sigh, wrap the leashes tight around my free hand, and start pawing through the leaves. “Miss Tibbit,” I call, “Come help me find this.” She ignores me. Hamish is 15 feet down the sidewalk, already planning his next event. Hamish deposits , kicks, and moves on – job done. He sees no need to linger in the area. The longer I crouch in someone’s front yard, pushing leaves around, the less likely I am to find the prize. I can feel the family of observers losing confidence that I will provide a satisfactory conclusion to our so far benign neighborly transaction.

    I won’t tell you how adept I have become at “finding” what Hamish has left behind. I’m not proud of it. But sometimes a person has to make morally ambiguous compromises. The fall dog walkies are beautiful, but they are filled with peril.

  • Miss Tibbit Takes Herself to Brunch.

    “I’m feeling peckish,” Miss Tibbit, the Useless-Little-Black-Dog, thought to herself this sunny Saturday morning. She was curled tight on the Big Bed next to the Person.

    She laid there for a few moments more, thinking through her options. The Person had coffee and a book, nothing worth asking for there. Wiggins the Ancient Cat now lives in a sequestered room and his food bowl was not accessible. Miss Tibbit had cruised the kitchen counters during breakfast two hours ago. Empty. Also empty was the Sesame Melba Toast carton abandoned by Hamish the Corgi on the living room floor.
    Miss Tibbit sighed and resigned herself to hungry napping.

    One ear perked. Miss Tibbit had an idea. An elusive memory tracked across her tiny mind. She felt that something wonderful sat on the kitchen floor, unguarded, far away from the Person, and certain to satisfy even the biggest snacky appetite.

    The Person mistrusts Miss Tibbit’s intentions as a matter of habit, so this had to be a cunning operation. Miss Tibbit made a plan.

    “Yaaawwnnn,” she said, with a cute squeak at the end. She stretched against the person and made her brown eyes limpid and relaxed as she assessed how deeply the Person was immersed in the book. Pretty deeply, Miss Tibbit judged. She stood, slowly, and jumped from the Big Bed. “Where are you going?” the Person asked immediately and suspiciously. Miss Tibbit dipped her tongue into the water bowl, thinking “see, just a little thirsty.”

    She stood staring at the water until she sensed the Person’s eyes were off of her. She casually tiptoed out of the room and stealth stepped down the stairs, pausing at the landing to listen, and into the kitchen.

    Miss Tibbit’s eyes grew wide and round. “Yes,” she thought, “I knew there was something wonderful here.” She approached the nearly full 25 pound bag of IAMS Naturals dog kibble that had been sitting next to the trash can for nearly a week. The Person and Hamish the Corgi brought it back from their trip to the shore. Miss Tibbit noted its arrival, but sort of overlooked it in the excitement of having them back. “Overlooked no more,” she said to herself, “time for some brunch.”

    IamsBagUsing the little nibble teeth at the front of her mouth, Miss Tibbit removed a tiny, barely noticeable she thought, section of the bag. She pushed her nose into the opening and sampled. “Oh yes,” she sighed. She dipped her head into the bag again. And again, faster and faster because after all, it isn’t everyday that a useless little black dog gets an All-U-Can-Eat brunch.

    Many minutes later Miss Tibbit stood swaying and belching as the Person harnessed her for morning walkies. Hamish sniffed Miss Tibbit’s breath. “Miss Tibbit,” the Person said, “why is your stomach distended?” Miss Tibbit belched again, wafting kibble aroma directly into the Person’s nose. “Brunch,” she smiled.

    FullTibbit

  • Woodstock ends his days.

    Woodstock moved in with us Friday.

    This evening he was sleeping on the rug in the front parlor.

    Woodstock

    Tibbit pretended not to notice.

    Tibbit2

    When she believed no one was watching, she sampled a small taste of Woodstock.

    Tibbit1

    Delicious.

    Hamish interrupted the tasting, as he is of the opinion that that Woodstock flavors belong only to the elder dog.

    Both1

    Hamish spent a little time with Woodstock, lulling the little bird into a calm. Hamish says that Woodstock’s succulence is improved when the fear adrenaline no longer courses through Woodstock.

    Hamish4

    Don’t be fooled little Woodstock. Your time is nigh.

    Hamish1

  • No Dogs Allowed? Hamish the Corgi Finds a Way.

    “Where are we going?” Hamish the Corgi asked as he watched me dig the hiking pack out of the coat closet. It wasn’t easy. Five months of hats, scarves, gloves, reusable bags, dog towels, and YakTrax had crammed themselves on top of it.

    HamishSteps5I looked over my shoulder and up the steps to look at Hamish. He stood in the hall, big ears perked wide and high. He was smiling. “Tifft Nature Preserve over by the lakeshore,” I told him. “Awesome,” he said, “that’s not mine yet.” He disappeared into the kitchen and I heard rummaging in the dog cupboard.

    I yanked the day pack strap and slammed the closet door before all the other stuff escaped. I went up to the kitchen to fill my water bladder. Hamish was waiting by the sink with the dog hiking water bowl and dog water bottle. He looked from me to the treat bin on the counter, me to treat bin, me to treat bin. “Don’t forget to pack the go-go crunchies,” he reminded me, nudging my ankle with his nose.

    “Oh no Hamish,” I looked down at him, “Tifft doesn’t allow dogs.”

    “What?” he was outraged. “No dogs?” he couldn’t believe it.

    “Nope. Sorry Little Man,” I screwed the lid on my water bladder and eased it into my pack. Hamish stared at me for a while longer, tilting his head left and right. His ears shot straight up and he trotted out of the room on his stubby Corgi legs. Clearly he had an Idea.

    I was in the dining room fussing with the camera when Hamish bustled back 10 minutes later. He was carrying something Very Carefully in his mouth. He set it down next to my foot. “Whatcha got there Hamish?” I asked him absently, there was a smear on the lens that just wouldn’t give up.

    “Will you please take this with you and squeeze out a few drops every couple of feet?” He asked. “Trees are best, but a good clump of grass is ok too.”

    “What?” I peered down at the vessel bumping my foot. It was a translucent squeezey ketchup bottle, the kind you see in diners, and it was half full of a pale yellow fluid. I blinked at it. I wrinkled my brow. “Hamish, is that? Wait, what it that?” I asked as I leaned down to feel the temperature, yep, warm.

    Hamish gave me his soft warm Corgi look. “Tifft can still be mine, even if I can’t go,” he explained. I shook my head. “Ok,” I said, sort of doubtful. “But I don’t know if it’ll work.” Hamish bounced out of the room to tell Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog.

    It wasn’t until a few hours later that I wondered, as I dutifully dribbled the base of a nice big tree, how did Hamish with his stubby little legs fill that tall bottle? I shrugged to myself. Better to not think about it.

  • Love is…a gentle evisceration.

    The lovey hippo receives affection.
    The lovey Hippo receives affection.
    Miss Tibbit savours the delicious lovey Hippo belly contents.
    Miss Tibbit savours lovey Hippo belly contents.
    Hamish administers love to the thinner lovey Hippo.
    Hamish administers love to the thinner lovey HIppo.

    We all celebrate Valentine’s love in our way.

    I prefer mine with less evisceration.