💗 What to Love about a Human’s Best Friend 💗 🦴 🐕

December 10, 2022 | Filed under blogging Guide dogs pets and people

After raising two kids and doing the parent thing with the pediatrician for all those years, I thought my husband might like helping out with our pets once in a while. I am proud to say Jerry has become a wonderful pet parent and takes our pet dog, May to all her appointments. We adopted her in 2020 and love her sweet and sassy personality. She is smart, protective but not territorial, and solves problems quickly and efficiently, just like a good German Shepard should. While she has a bit of Rottweiler , as proven by a DNA test, she’s got a GSD body type and traits and the only part missing is pointy ears. She has derpy ones that flop over and stick out perpendicular to her head. Do not let this fool you.

At first we house trained her, which took a few months. She was already crate trained. It took a while for her bladder to mature. She learned how to unlock the metal safety gate, you know the child-safety ones with the lock cover and the sliding , recessed latch?

My yellow lab guide dog, Bailey and May love one another, play together and love to share space, which is good. She also loves our cats. She does poke and play with them but taps down the chasing and while this took some time, the darned cats like to be chased, so we gave up trying to stop it. A few swats from the kitty pins and she learned to respect them. When we brought in a kitten, May’s mothering instincts blossomed, surprising us. She raised it, groomed it and now they all sleep together. April, my daughter, who convinced us to adopt May and who has been a huge part of caring for May, has been able to help with most of her doggie dislikes, like the ear drops. April is great at relaxing May for a two or three toenail trim. But it does take a few days because May won’t tolerate more than one foot at a time. The groomer must hate it when she comes in for a spa day.

But these aversions are within the normal spectrum for a pet, right? Let me go on to what is challenging . sometimes she reverts into a demon, thus her alternate name, Mazikeen. Anyway, her Shepard came out, she is such a drama queen. First, to tell us her ear hurt she jumped onto the bed, flopped between us and kept us awake by whining and shaking her head all night . Then she hurt her ear more by scratching it and when we tried to look at it she screamed like we were cutting it off. So, off to the Vet to take a look at the ear. Then, Jerry gave her the anti-puke pill because she gets car sick in the truck. Well it didn’t work but we have a blanket for that and an extra seat cover just in case. Then, they can’t take her temp anally because she turns into a whirling dervish in the exam room so they have to do it under her leg. That went okay, so did the ear inspection. But when they wanted to take a blood draw to check basics from taking the allergy pills, they could not do it. She became a manic mess and sprayed blood all over them from jerking away. Three times, even with cheese whiz and three people to help distract her. So next time we have to fast her in the morning, run her until she is exhausted because a tired dog is a good dog in the exam room, give her the anti puke pill two hours prior and maybe Jerry can avoid a mess in the truck and the vet tech can get some blood. Oh, they want a urine sample. Well, that is not going to happen, She won’t let anyone sneak up and put a pan under her ass.

All this is frustrating and I am thankful it is Jerry and April facing the challenges with May. Oh, yes, I almost forgot to mention she punishes herself by running into the dog crate and facing the wall after we discover a chewed slipper or something she’d taken off the kitchen counter, like an oven mitt. How could you not love this dog or be amused when she does this? Talk about operant conditioning, lol.

The best thing about May is the way she lowers her head and leans into you or lap asking for affection, exposing her neck as if to say I trust you so much I want you to scratch me where I can’t reach. What could be more endearing than this?

May on the dog bed with her bones and toys

May the dog on her dog bed with her toysMay the dog on her bed with her bones

A Poem for Country Living

August 1, 2022 | Filed under blogging nonfiction pets and people Poem

Transformation

By Ann Chiappetta

My City Dogs become Porch mongrels

Laying beside the mason jar of sun tea

The basso drone of a honey bee

The snap of a Jay’s call

The aroma of a grill

A whisking breeze bestows relief

It is a call to prayer

Soon we will rise

Shake free of the delightful

porch-dog torpor

trade the carefree for the city

But for now we are country hounds.

2022

Upstate Adventures 🐻🌲

July 31, 2022 | Filed under blindness pets and people Relationships writing

Hello from Windham and Hunter Mountains, Green and Ulster counties, NY, home of the New York Catskills and summer wildlife. Bear and deer and black flies, oh my!

🐻 🦌 🌄

It took us almost as long to pack for the trip Like we were moving out. In a way we were moving out, at least temporarily.

Let me explain. Remember hurricane Ida in the Fall of 2021? We sustained water damage to our entire apartment. In fact, all the apartments on the ground floor and the lobby area took on six inches or more of flood water. Our lobby was completely under over four feet of it. me we all had to first wait for the insurance and FEMA funding to come through, then wait for a move out date. Since we own cats and dogs, this meant finding a location for two weeks that was not going to mean living in one room together like in a hotel. and the most important part of it was also packing up everything to be stored in a pod while the work is being done. Oh, and to add a cherry atop this shit show of bad timing, there is also asbestos abatement along with the replacing the floors from the old glue used on the original flooring being removed. We didn’t know about that one. Now it is a concern and rightly so. It is also bad timing.

A powerful wave of flood water slamming open your front door and engulfing your apartment is traumatic enough but the asbestos thing is just, like, really shitty. It will delay things a bit more for the installation of the new floors and moving back in again when we return.

We are fortunate to be able to make the bad timing and all the packing work to our advantage. we deserve some respite after so much upheaval. The stress exhausted us. If Jerry and April weren’t there helping me, guiding me around all the boxes, extra workers, and taking charge of the packing prior to the work, I’d never manage it alone. This is our family and I am proud of us.

The wildlife is active. The variety of animals eating the apple tree in the adjoining yard included rabbits, a wood chuck, and two black bears, we think a mother and older cub based on size and attitude.