In The Rubble

Those of you who are regular readers of The News From Jackson Press know that we have two dogs, two lovely Vizsla bitches, that cohabit our home here at Jackson Acre. And you probably also know that I believe dogs should be practical, hard working beasts, since they were bred over the eons to perform certain prized duties for their masters. I don’t cotton to those vanity breeds that you always see celebrities carrying around like baggage, teeny little yappy dogs that serve no other purpose than to act as surrogate babies, complete with little velour track suits and doggie strollers.

Those dogs don’t know they’re dogs.

Me, I personally enjoy hunting dogs, those spectacular canines that were bred to work with their masters to seek out and retrieve game. Such animals are immensely practical, since neither master nor dog gets to eat if either party is crappy at their job. Such breeds are also loving, hard working beasts who are happiest when doing whatever it was they were bred to do, be it hunt, herd, or kill rats.

Our own Jackson dogs are very much working dogs. Well, their job is at least part-time. And really only one of them hunts, since the other one’s still a pup. And Ginger, the oldest, has done moderately well, considering she received no real training other than the “on-the-job” kind, much like one receives when they become new government employees. You know, throw ‘em in the deep end and see if they sink – if they swim, promote ‘em!

You probably also know that our hunting dogs are also “show” dogs, although calling Daisy a show dog is something of a stretch right now. Now I consider the “show” job to be secondary to the hunting job, but my wife considers it the opposite and we all know who the boss is. And since we’ve now got two show dogs to show, guess who got drafted to help show the second dog this past weekend?

Yeah, that would be me.

And, yeah, it was a lot like this scene from the movie “Best In Show“, only the wife didn’t fall down and hurt her knee and we weren’t at Westminster. But I did dress up in a nice sport coat and tie (on the weekend, no less!). And I did prance around the ring like all good dog handlers do, dragging Daisy like a bouncing lead weight.

Maybe prance is a strong word; it was more like lumbering.

But I did manage to avoid stepping on Daisy’s feet and she managed to avoid peeing in the ring in her puppy-ish excitement, so those small victories alone made the event a success. And Ginger earned another point on her way to becoming a “Champion”. That “Champion” designation really only means that we can finally breed Ginger and sell her pups in a desperate effort to recoup the small fortune we spent on dog show entry fees getting her championed.

It’s an expensive and vicious cycle, exactly as portrayed in “Best In Show“.

Who’s a Pretty Bitch?!

Two bitches are better than one!

It’s a Wednesday and I’m home from work on a vacation day. Yeah, I know – why a Wednesday? Well, the kids are up at Put-In-Bay with the folks, so I took the day off to spend with the wife. Yeah, I know – isn’t that sweet.

We took the dogs for a walk first thing in the morning. It’s definitely been a change having two dogs in the house, the double load of daily poo being only one indicator of the difference. There are other more subtle changes, changes that don’t require a scoop and a bag.

For example, having Daisy around has transformed Ginger into the regal old lady of the manor, at the ripe old age of three years (or twenty-one dog years!). Daisy’s presence, the Daisy Effect, seems to have calmed Ginger down a little, the spastic and reckless puppy energy Ginger once possessed has fizzled as she faces a new dog with even more spastic and reckless energy! Now that Daisy’s the puppy, Ginger’s kinda forced to grow up.

Although Ginger could seem to be more regal and mature simply because she’s tired all the time from fending off Daisy’s puppy attacks, the constant nips at the legs, the tugs on Ginger’s ears, the yapping and high pitched barking, the not even intimidating growls. Exhaustion, oddly enough, has a calming effect on the dogs.

So Ginger spends lots of time lying around looking somber and aloof. And she grumbles a lot more than she used to, back when she was an only child. Like late at night, when shifting positions in bed, you’ll hear Ginger grumble. And for a split second you think that maybe there’s a bitter eighty-year-old man with arthritis and a bad back in bed with you, and that he’s bitter and grumbling because he has to work full time ten hours a day in a cramped guard shack at a shabby chemical manufacturing company because he blew his retirement at the dog track.

Yeah, that kind of grumble.

This morning the dogs were fed after their walk, since they’re supposed to work before they can eat breakfast, according to Cesar Millan’s philosophy, which we evidently subscribe to around here. So we walked the dogs and worked them and fed them. And now they are curled on the couch next to me as I watch Jerry Springer, this exposure to daytime television making me feel like I’m watching television in a foreign country. This stuff’s all new to me, foreign and strange and plenty exotic.

And watching this show suddenly makes me depressed over the state of our country; the white trash love triangles, the commercials for professional management of your structured settlements, the credit card offers for low-end consumers who have no capacity to buy even as they chase their low-end consumer dreams.

This country’s in sorry shape if this is the majority norm of our society. And I suspect that many of these people vote!

But back to the dogs –

Daisy wants to play. She barks her ferocious little bark, or perhaps precocious would be a better adjective, and she picks up an old sock, shaking it viciously and growling fiercely. Ginger casts a weary eye to the pup, obviously not in the mood, more relaxed than regal. But Daisy doesn’t have the gift of experience, so she can’t properly interpret Ginger’s body language. There’s a lesson fast approaching.

Daisy bounces around Ginger, shaking her sock and growling, as if to say “You will play with me, doggone it!” Then she shakes the sock again and whacks Ginger in the face with it. The sock lays draped over Ginger’s snout and Daisy growls again, her snout a centimeter from Ginger’s, her way of saying “Pull on this, dammit!”

And eventually Ginger does, grabbing the loose end of the sock and giving the sock and Daisy a firm tug, the puppy in Ginger giving in to the puppy.

Two bitches are better than one!

The Daisy Effect

Haley and I are home with the dogs, both of us bored to differing degrees about different things – me, bored with my general existence; Haley, bored with television in general. Hannah and Mommy are at piano lessons. Ginger is in heat, lounging about the house on the couch like a depressed, middle-aged, sexually frustrated housewife on her period, generally miserable and miserable to be around.

Daisy, our three month old Vizsla pup and Ginger’s new little sister, is the most energetic of us all, running about the house with boundless chaotic infantile energy, casting random growls about, and haphazardly lashing us with her ferocious tongue. And this is Daisy when she’s bored, like she is now because Ginger’s in heat and has no desire to play. Imagine her not bored!

Daisy barks at Haley, who redirects her attention back to a chewie on the floor. Undeterred, Daisy jumps up on the couch, a feat she only perfected last week after two straight weeks of crashing chest-first into the cushions. Daisy pounces on Ginger, who is trying to be comfortable in her bitchy misery, and mouths Ginger’s left ear. This forces a grumble out of Ginger as she rolls over, pinning Daisy against the back of the couch.

The subtle realization of how completely and irrevocably our lives had changed set in about a month after Daisy’s arrival. Ginger’s life has been the most impacted. I almost believe the puppy has actually become a calming influence on Ginger (and those of you who actually know Ginger are right now thinking “Yeah, right”).

The Daisy Effect on Ginger has most noticeably made her less manic, especially whenever visitors come over. There’s less of the wrist-mouthing, leaping kisses, and incessant cold-nosing that Ginger normally performs as she comprehensively greets each and every individual guest by trying to lick every square inch of their exposed flesh. Now she just tries to lick most of the exposed flesh. It’s a subtle change. Before Daisy, Ginger was a kamikaze attack greeter, blitzing guests with slobber and love as she mouthed their wrists and leaped into their faces.

After Daisy, Ginger now acts like a frazzled but polished Martha Stewart who has just opened the front door to her weekend home to find one hundred uninvited and important guests waiting to come in and eat. And even though Martha knows she has nothing to feed these guests and nowhere for them to sleep, thus damning them all to a weekend of misery, she hides all of this horrific news behind an impenetrable veil of elegance and grace as she greets every one of these guests warmly and personably, shaking hands and taking coats. There’s very little licking or mouthing in the Martha example of the refined Ginger.

Daisy is finally beginning to even out in her growth. For a few weeks her front legs seemed shorter than her back legs, resulting in a butt-up stature that would most certainly not lead to AKC victories and eventual champion-hood, with its allotted glories and privileges for champion bitches. This unevenness was most apparent when Daisy ran, her longer hind legs reaching forward like a jack rabbits when she was at full gallop, her little auburn head pumping, tongue flapping, running with all her puppy might! Every time I saw her run I was reminded of the song for the Flying Monkeys from the original Wizard of Oz. It seemed to fit her funny, loping gait and has since become Daisy’s theme song.

I cut the grass the other night, riling up hordes of mosquitoes who were perfectly content to slumber in the tall grass, waiting for the dogs to step outside to pee so they could have a nice little snack of warm canine blood. The mosquitoes swarmed me, bumping into me with enough force that I could feel them. I moved quickly so they didn’t have time to land on me, avoiding them like I was trying to avoid raindrops. Once the old John Deere was fired up, the mosquitoes disappeared. This made me wonder if the bugs are dumb enough to be confused by the differences between the carbon dioxide from me and the carbon monoxide from the old John Deere. Although I suppose if the mosquitoes were truly confused they would have attacked the tractor and not me.

There is a deep-seated weariness in me these days, which bores down through my bones to sit heavily in my soul. I am exhausted and tired of everything, work especially, the house a close second. I am reading Edward Hoagland’s book of essays, “Heart’s Desire,” and I have found the perfect passage to illustrate my current state. It is a statement describing a mass of people who feel so hard pressed “that their main effort was just to disengage themselves.” That is where I am right now, trying to disengage as Hoagland describes in his essay “Of Cows and Cambodia.” Only without the luxurious wealth to be able to run off and buy my very own antique farm somewhere deep in the heart of rural Vermont.

Trying to keep from calling Daisy Ginger and vice-versa!

Dirty Laundry

The Latest News From Jackson Press –

Well, we’re into June already! Where’d May go? Oh, that’s right – I turned 40 in May … the memory’s already starting to go.

Jackson Acre plans for June include completing our drainage project. I’m very excited! This should be the final step to our complete domination of drainage problems in Jackson Acre! And this should fix the bloody persistent sump pump!

I knew it was time to proceed with Phase 2 when I noticed how little water was now draining into the sump pit, maybe a drop every minute or so. This means the water table at Jackson Acre has finally dropped below the level of the sump drain pipes. It was finally time to excavate!

So today we dug! Or I should say, today I dug! This obsession with poor drainage at Jackson Acre is my folly and I will not subject my family members to helping me in this cause.

After an hour of digging I found the other pipe in our yard. And then the hole promptly filled up with water from the pipe. But now we know where the other source of the water saturating Jackson Acre is. All we need to do now is reroute the new pipe to the old pipe and – voila, problem solved.

Or so we’ll hope. We won’t really know until November when the winter rains start back up. But I have hope, that thing which causes we humans to march onward in the face of superior adversarial numbers, boldly making our way to certain doom.

On the puppy news front, I must report that I slipped up in my duties and the house is no longer poo/pee free. I wasn’t watching Daisy the other day when she sniffed her way into the family room and tinkled on the carpet. I managed to catch her before she saturated the carpet, but now she wanders over to that same spot whenever she has to potty and tries to go there first.

Actually, I’ve been thinking about doing the same thing myself.

On a related note, Ginger’s taken to vomiting first thing in the morning, usually around 5:00 AM. You know, a perfect hour when no one in the house is awake or even conscious. And then, out of a dead sleep, you hear the “hornking” noise, that unmistakable sound of a dog (or maybe a cat) trying hard to regurgitate whatever it is they still have in their stomach. Probably to eat again.

The act of Hornking sounds something like this – “hornk, gork, hornk, gork, hornk” and then the beast lets loose with a wet gagging sound as something sloppy hits the floor.

Fortunately, as soon as my subconscious mind hears the first hornk and jolts me awake, I know I have another three or four hornks before the vomit erupts. So far that’s been enough time to grab Ginger and carry her over to the tile floor in the bathroom.

And then she hornks up a vile looking concoction, thinks about licking it up again, then she goes back to bed. Oh the joys of having two dogs!

Hornking my way through life!

Forgotten Skills

The Latest News From Jackson Press –

Well, reality has officially changed at Jackson Acre.

We have now completely given our lives over to the puppy. Daisy’s existence here has restructured our entire schedules around her wakings and sleepings. We live to serve and entertain this amber little beast hiccupping her way around the house.

Daisy’s first night at home was relatively (and thankfully) uneventful, no accidental bowel movements (or BMs) or pee-pee in the bed (yes, both dogs are now sleeping in the bed with us). Daisy and the missus stepped out about 4:30AM for a little tinkle, which is to be expected, since Daisy’s bladder is about the size of a walnut, but no accidents in the house yet. Woo-hoo!!

One important thing I’d forgotten about newly minted puppies is how sharp their little needle teeth can be. Yesterday I noticed several fresh scratches and puncture marks on my left forearm. Looking like a right-handed heroin junkie who shoots up more often than breathes, I spent at least a minute trying to figure out what had happened to me and my arm.

I studied the haphazard array of track marks up and down my arm and considered the possibility that maybe I’d stumbled through some unfriendly shrub while doing yard work at Jackson Acre. Trying to determine which shrub was the likely culprit so I could hack it to the ground this weekend, my train of thought was rudely interrupted when young Daisy bounded up to me and promptly bit my big toe.

Mystery solved!

Having an eight-week-old puppy in one’s house is a perfect reminder (or practice) of what it’s like to take care of a new baby. Forget living your own life in your own house at your own pace; you’re now a slave to when the little one wants to eat, wants to sleep, needs to poo or go potty, wants to play. Human or canine, they’re all the same basic needs. And while neither infant nor puppy can speak, both do lots of whining in between BMs.

In fact, safeguarding the house for a puppy is a lot like safeguarding for a baby. I would challenge anyone to tell the difference. For example, one must make sure the basement door stays shut so the baby doesn’t fall down the steps. One must be careful not to step on the baby. One must keep the baby from chewing on the laptop cord and electrocuting itself. One must keep the baby from pooping on the floor. One must keep the baby from rolling in the poop on the floor. One must keep the baby from eating the poop on the floor. I’m sure you’ll agree the similarities are uncanny!

Right now the amber blur is resting in momma’s lap, on the couch next to big sister Ginger. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Rolling in life’s poo and lovin’ it!

Mayoral Spectacles

The Latest News From Jackson Press -

Very busy weekend here at Jackson Acre!  Four days of extended excitement!!  Where to start?

Well, I took Friday off and that morning the missus and I went to pick out our new puppy.  More on that in a second.  Friday afternoon I helped my fifth-grade daughter’s class dissect squids.  Trust me when I tell you that cephalopods smell pretty bad on the inside.  However, that did not deter the fifth-graders from chopping and slicing away.  A great time was had by most!

Saturday was jammed packed.  First, I picked up a used Bowflex that I bought off a gentlemen on Craig’s List.  After six weeks I have no doubt that I will look like that one guy in the Bowflex commercial who’s 49, in the best shape of his life, and playing in a rock band!  I just need to start looking for my rock band!

Saturday afternoon was the family reunion at the in-laws that was fun and entertaining.  We then dashed from that to go spend a family evening at the movies.  We decided to make it a double-feature and see both “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”.  Four-and-a-half hours of Hollywood entertainment!  Indiana Jones was entertaining.  I’d give it three out of five stars.  I still think the first and third movies were better.  Prince Caspian was the better of two, with a slightly more developed storyline.

Sunday we rested.  At least until our poker game started in the early afternoon.  I tried to cut the grass, but my stupid tractor tire was flat again.  That’s all we did on Sunday.

On Monday we brought puppy home.  Very much like bringing a new baby home!  Make sure she doesn’t chew on the lamp cords, clean up the poo, and feed them every three hours.  The new baby’s name is Daisy (her official name is Jazzan Fandango Daisy) and she appears to be settling in nicely.  Ginger (Jazzan Ginger On My Mind) has been very good with the puppy so far, with no apparent jealousy.  We’ll see what happens tonight when we all go to bed.

I suspect I’ll be sleeping on the floor!

Wondering if it’s quieter in the doghouse?