wideeyedfunk

Tag: walking dogs

  • A good mattress.

    I love a good mattress. You just don’t see too many of them at this time of year. Maybe it’s so cold that people aren’t moving here and there as often in the winter. Maybe there’re good ones under all the snow banks – I don’t know but I miss seeing them.

    We were out on patrol two days ago when it got a little warmer. I didn’t even have to wear that horrible coat. I HATE that coat. A lot.

    …

    Oh, right, we were out checking our blocks a couple of days ago and there it was. A big, floppy mattress slung across a snowbank. I ran right to it and shoved my face into a really nice looking dark spot dribbled down the side. I breathed in hard and snorted back out. I rolled my eyes back in my head so I could really concentrate.

    I snuffled my chin hairs along the edge, to catch interesting spots along the whole length. I sneezed and looked around. No one seemed to be in a hurry so I hopped up on top. I pressed my nose here, and there, and over there. I can’t even tell you what feast of scents I had – I’ve been stuck in that house and yard for days because it hurts outside and this mattress was a real treat.

    Hamish popped up onto the side of the mattress. No! Mine! I lunged at him and he left. Probably peed on something, that’s all he does on patrol. I could tell we were moving on soon so I took a bunch of fast, small sniffs all over the middle and edges, storing them up to think about later. I really do like a good mattress.

    Guest writer: Miss Tibbit-the-Useless-Little-Black-Dog

    Tibbit on the Sofa

  • We sure class up the Park.

    That’s right. When the WideEyedHousehold hits Buffalo’s historic Delaware Park for walkies on a Sunday afternoon, the classiness level escalates. As it should. Olmsted designed this park for promenading. For nodding at neighbors. This past Sunday was cold and rainy. The wind slashed and our rain gear rustled. I made my standard comment, “This is just like weather the Aleutians!” Usually we have the park to ourselves in foul conditions, but after the Big Storm people were out running, skating, strolling like it was a sunny summer day.

    Miss Tibbit displayed her manners and deportment for everyone by hooting and baying at a big, white pony-sized dog, an ancient Golden Retriever, a large piece of blowing trash (no one has ever claimed she is smart), a brownish dog, and a yellow lab who ran past with a ball in his mouth. Each time she heaved her 35 pounds against her little pink harness and jumped around on her hind legs while caroling out her high pitched psychopathic singing yelps. “Cookie?” I asked each time. Her butt plonked to the ground. See, classy.

    I smiled at passersby, all of whom seemed particularly eager to meet my eyes. I wondered if my new mascara sample along with my bright green coat made my eyes stand out. Maybe it was my relentless good cheer despite the nasty weather. It didn’t matter, I was happy with the world and smiling like a maniac all over the park. Then, “why is your zipper down?” the WideEyedSpouse asked me as we stood in the kitchen after walkies. I snapped my eyes down to look and hands down to feel. Sure enough, below my tidily belted waistline, my jeans weren’t zipped. All those maniac smiles to all those strangers meeting my eyes…you can’t buy that kind of class.

    Hamish the Dignified and Well-Mannered Corgi found himself a French fry wrapper along the walkies. I only noticed when I heard strange snuffling noises. He had forced his nose deep into the empty packet to lick any remaining molecules away. The little french fries printed on the packet wiggled and squirmed with his efforts. Miss Tibbit crept over to get some tastes. Hamish snarled out of the wrapper and bit her. Noisily. She cried.

    Yipping, snarling, trash-eating, and ineptly clothed. That’s just how we roll here.

  • Three’s Company, Two’s Just Awkward

    As it turns out, Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog and I don’t have all that much to say to each other. Hamish the Corgi was in the dog hospital yesterday. This left Miss Tibbit and I alone in the house.

    Hamish left early in the morning, and Miss Tibbit sat on the bed and stared out the window at the Pathfinder as it left the driveway. When the truck was out of sight, she turned to look at me over her shoulder. I shrugged at her. What could I say? Hamish went somewhere and she didn’t.

    Morning walkies were weird. Miss Tibbit didn’t pull at the leash. She didn’t bark at other dogs. She sniffed everything twice as hard as normal, lingering over the little hedge branch that sticks out too far and rubs against EVERY dog who walks past. I think she sniffed the bark right off of it. She kept aiming quick little glances back at me.

    Tibbit (2)The office situation was even odd. I sat at the desk, clacketing away as normal. Miss Tibbit sauntered in and sat, sort of sideways, and looked at me from the corners of her eyes. She seemed to have something to say but wasn’t comfortable enough to break the silence. We made accidental eye contact over and over again. It was awkward.

    Evidently Miss Tibbit and I just aren’t all that close. Hamish the Corgi is my best friend. He is Miss Tibbit’s best friend. But Tibbit and I seem to inhabit an acquaintance kind of friendscape. We realized yesterday that while we do spend a lot of time together, we are spending that time with Hamish not with each other.

    I tried to make it better, like you do when you are in an uncomfortable social setting, “uh, good girl,” I told her and patted her on the head. She went along with my attempt to form a connection, but she yawned with a squeak at the end. Grasping at any distraction, I suggested we go downstairs for lunch.  I figured if we were doing something it would be less noticeable that we didn’t have anything to talk about. Well, that lasted about 30 seconds. Once her lunch was gone, we were at the same impasse. A lot of time and no real interest in each other. We stood in the kitchen, whistling to ourselves and faking absorption with the fridge magnets and the nutrition information on food wrapper labels.

    “Well,” I said, fed up with the whole thing, “now we know.” Miss Tibbit tried to look agreeably insightful. It wasn’t easy, she was stretched up on her hind legs trying to lick the butter dish on the counter at the time. We went back up to the office. I typed and clicked the mouse. Miss Tibbit napped in the chair. We ignored the space on the floor between us where Hamish usually lays and waited for our uncomfortable day to end.

  • 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.

  • 18 years together | 4,100 miles apart

    “It’s disgustingly hot and humid,” the WideEyedSpouse tells me. I can hear the barest hint of dogs panting in the background of the call. “Huh,” I tuck my cold feet under me and look out the wide window into a chill, gloomy, rainy fall afternoon. “I’m putting the a/c unit back in the window,” he says and I shiver.

    Yesterday was our 18th wedding anniversary and we were almost as far away from each other as we can be while remaining in the U.S. We weren’t the farthest apart we’ve ever been on an anniversary. That was in 1998 when I was living in a Eureka BombShelter tent on the north shore of Attu Island and he was in Madison, Wisconsin.

    The WideEyedSpouse celebrated our anniversary by walking the dogs in the park. As their gift to him, Hamish and Miss Tibbit produced a record setting 11 dookies in one day between the two of them. “Congratulations Boss!” they might have been thinking, “Many happy years to come!”

    ForksI celebrated by huddling at my makeshift desk, crafting careful language into formal documents. In a morning break from the labors, WideEyedFriend D. and I poked at the ever-entertaining frozen pig heads, examined the nori packages, and flirted with new teapots at New Sagaya grocery. WideEyedFriend D. selected a package of the smallest item at the store for closer examination and the bottom fell out. Ten thousand tiny forks scattered at our feet. We stood quietly watching them for a bit. I thought they would go away on their own. They did not.

    My anniversary lunch was miso soup, house salad, and bacon wrapped enoki on a skewer at Yakitori. Crunchy salty fat around fibrous chew. Interesting, and besides, after 18 years I figured I should shake things up a bit.

    5guysFor anniversary dinner, WideEyedSpouse had a Five Guys burger. He sent me a picture. I went to Aladdin’s with Friend D. to feast on perfectly prepared halibut followed by baklava.

    It was a relaxed and happy 18th anniversary. 4100 miles apart.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • Snow trash is the best.

    Gloriously foul and endlessly fascinating, snow trash happens when the deep snow melts and reveals the urban detritus of weeks. It is a special seasonal process to be enjoyed only a few times a year. Because I happen to be a professional studier of the material remnants of human activity, I can’t look away from a nice nasty city snow bank. I like them to be really full of good stuff and I stop for particularly rich ones to be sure I’m seeing everything. This isn’t the WideEyedSpouse’s favorite activity, but the dogs sure don’t mind.

    Dog dookies are ubiquitous in the melting snow banks. Big, small, dark, light. You can really see the variety of diets fed to the neighborhood canines. Here in Buffalo chicken bones also are typical in the melting snow mounds. Perplexing. Yes, Buffalo Chicken wings, but does everyone eat them all the time? They must fly from car windows like confetti.

    I see newspapers, catalogs, dryer sheets, and Kleenex that appear used but may just be wet from the melt. I haven’t developed a way to determine used versus wet yet but I do tend to think crumpled means used. They come in all colors: white, pink, green, yellow. I have suspicions that the yellows started as white and they are in fact used.

    A shoe appears every now and again and it baffles me every time. Where does that single shoe come from? Who walked home with one shoe? If you noted that your shoe had come loose from your foot, in the winter, would you not backtrack? Go on a little hunt for your missing shoe? What I should do is determine if the single shoe is statistically significantly correlated with the presence of a spray of brightly colored vomit. Which, by the way, can be observed on the white snow with alarming frequency. Here my broader hypothesis is that inebriated people throw up hard enough to toss a shoe, and then they don’t notice their shoe is gone. Although, there are no bars in the immediate vicinity, so they must be home drinkers. Alternatively, the vomit could innocently result from too many chicken wings or a terrible Kleenex supported flu that hits while walking the family dog (which parsimoniously explains the vomit, the Kleenex litter, the uncleaned up dookies, AND maybe even the shoe. Now that’s hypothetical model building friends.). I might be looking for too many causal links. I can’t help myself, that’s what I do.

    Yesterday the dogs and I saw something entirely new. A unique specimen. A kidzbop 3 CD had sliced into a snow bank and it gleamed in the morning sun. A prize. Hamish sniffed it pretty good and Tibbit wee’d near it. From its position in the snow bank, about 1.4 meters in from the street, I could posit that kidzbop 3 had been flung from a moving car. The presence of the kidzbop cd in the snowbank distracted me all day and I developed a series of hypotheses explaining why the cd had been flung:

    H1: “What? No baby I don’t have any kids.” Fling.

    H2. I went home and found kidzbop 3 online. Gave it a listen. Who wouldn’t?. And so, Hypothesis 2: Track 1: remake of Soak up the Sun. Track 2: remake of Hey Baby Hey Baby Hey sung by tunelessly chanting children. Track 3: (does it even matter?)…Fling.

    H3: “Oh look, a cd came in my used car…” Fling.

    H4: “Oh God, the baby just puked in the car! All over everything!” Fling.

    H5: “Mamamamamama play kidzbop. Play kidzbop. Play it. Play it. Plaaaaaayyyyy iiitttt.” Fling.

    I went back later to get kidzbop 3. It was gone. Gone.

  • Hamish the Corgi is Embarrassing.

    Have you ever heard of display urination? No? Neither had I until Hamish the Corgi came into my life.

    Evidently dogs, male dogs most of the time, like to lift their legs nice and high to wee when other dogs are around. Hamish is keenly aware when an unfortunate is locked inside, watching from a parlor window as Hamish prances across this other dog’s front yard. Hamish will take a moment to be sure he is in the ideally, most obnoxiously centered viewing position, then he will lift his tiny, 5 inch leg as high as dogly possible to wee on that other dog’s property. Usually you can hear the barking change from alert to berserker during the display.

    If that were all, I’d probably get over it. However.

    And mind you, I’m going to have to be indelicate here.

    Hamish, my furry pal, my buddy who is napping next to me now, well, he’s a display dooker too. Don’t be coy, you know what dog dookies are. The problem, if we can stretch our minds past the initial, unavoidable catastrophe of me having to carry tiny plastic bags to clean up warm dookies, the problem is that Hamish unequivocally prefers to dookie in front of homeowners, on freshly sodded, well-watered, carefully groomed lawns. Sure, who wouldn’t – the grass is soft and cool and deep. Probably it is very nice.

    But.

    There are many lawns in this condition. Many without an owner in sight. Hamish likes the ones where the owner is sitting on the porch with an evening glass of wine, enjoying the end of the day. Or even better, the ones where the owner is actually STILL out there working on the lawn. It is embarrassing. Heh, heh, Hi, I say, making it Very Clear that I have a dookie bag at the ready. Awful.

    The absolute topper, the dead most humiliating display dooking didn’t involve a primped lawn though. Instead, it included an entire multigenerational family reunion. Oh god. Folks were clustered on their front porch, iced teas, family albums, smiles in much evidence. Ahh, they said almost in unison when Hamish hove into view, what a cutie! People pointed him out to others. Someone ran inside to get Auntie Clara to see the cute Corgi.

    Hamish looked at them with his goofy smile and paused. He does like to be admired. Then, in a careful, smiling pirouette he turned his hind quarters to the 30 or so happy people. And he dookied.

    I think I heard Auntie Clara – whoever she was – gasp. One older grampie was wheezing with laughter. Otherwise. Silence. Long seconds of silence. Hamish didn’t mind. He took his time. I cleaned up and we walked on.

    That dog is completely embarrassing. And there’s nothing I can do to change him.