Thought Wheel

Ann Chiappetta

Celebrating National Dog Day 🦮

| Filed under blindness blogging Guide dogs pets and people

For National Dog Day 2023

 

Dog Two

By Ann Chiappetta

 

He is  a sweet yellow fellow

Toasted darker

On ears and tail tip

Gives a nibble and a lick

Golden eyes Better than cash

He comes with a snow nose And personality to match

He’s tall and silly

Works, wags, and licks

So far no one’s gotten ticked

When he sneaks a kiss.

 

Guiding me around

Alert and looking  for sights and scents

On the bus and on the street

Freedom with four feet.

 

Dedicated to  Guiding Eyes Bailey

Yellow lab Bailey lick's Annie's face. She is laughing.Annie and yellow lab Bailey licking her face

 

 

 

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

| 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

 

Stepping In It 💩

| Filed under Guide dogs Poem

I thought I’d share a slice of life with our best friends.

Poo on a shoe

By Ann Chiappetta

 

 

The day began in good faith and plan

Rising at six a.m.

Busy with brewing dark roast

coffee aroma disguising the odiferous

Tang of poo

Deposited   along my route to the office

Unknowingly I cam across it

And tracked the goop hither and yon

And blithely carried on

 

It was the second time that did it

My sneaker stepped in the middle

Of the big pile with a   squelch

And  , slip and slide

Then the smell arrived.

 

Dog shit on my best Merrills

And stuck in this muck

What was I going to do?

I, of course yelled down the hall for my husband

And as we coordinated the clean-up

With gagging and nose plugs

He said,

“Honey, why did it have to be you?”

Dedicated to the family dogs, Bailey and May

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ann M. Chiappetta, M.S.

Making Meaningful ConnectionsThrough Media

914.393.6605 USA

Anniecms64@gmail.com

All things Annie: www.annchiappetta.com

 

 

Sunday’s Kitten a Poem

| Filed under Poem

Sunday’s Kitten

By Ann Chiappetta

 

Not yet

A prim princess

rescued from  Kittenish

misadventures, undaunted

black fur

 

feather

duster tail, lithe

ferrets  in and out of

indoor playground until she finds

the sun.

2021

This image requires alt text, but the alt text is currently blank. Either add alt text or mark the image as decorative. black kitten Luna with new pink and white collar sitting on her cat tree. The charm hangs from the collar and is a crescent moon with a cat on it.

 

 

 

A Warm Spot

| Filed under nonfiction Poem

 

Blogging about our animals is a bright  glow in our lives.  Just when I think it can’t get any zanier around here, cohabitating with two large dogs, three cats and two guinea pigs, something  happens. Thank goodness it’s usually adorable or funny.

 

Meet Luna, a petite long-haired mix. April rescued her when she was 6 weeks old and she didn’t weigh more than a bottle of water. She is about five pounds now and won’t be a large cat. She is gentle and happy and like Bagheera/Noodle kitty, travels well in her carrier and  has made her place in the pack. In this photo she found a warm spot to take a nap, I suppose a laptop is kind of like a human lap just a bit flat.

 

Below is my tribute to Luna.

 

Kitten haiku

Sprawling Feline warm

 

from hardware and data  chips

 

cat divinity

Photo: Black kitten laying  on it’s side over open laptop computer, head and paws facing camera.

Black kitten laying  on it’s side over open laptop computer, head and paws facing camera.

 

Cat trap

| Filed under nonfiction

 

The sleek and silent Bagheera slipped into the enclosure, intent on   his destination. The human, distracted by the guinea pigs, didn’t notice until it was too late.

“Darn cat, did you go in there?” The human extended her arm and Bagheera slid into the protected hut at the far corner of the cage, avoiding her searching fingers.

The human’s voice rose and she lowered the door, then talked into the thing called a cell phone.

“Is the cat in there?” she asked the phone, holding it at the cage. The tiny voice in it said,

“Yup, he’s in there, all the way in the back on the shelf,”

The human spoke and she sounded angry but he didn’t care, he was in the most rare and coveted place and he basked in his prize.

 

“I can’t reach you, you little turd,” she said, withdrawing her hand. He watched the human enter the storage room, then she went into the bright room with all the cold and wet places. She tapped the top of his ambrosia. Oh, he thought, why did the human have to entice him so? Why, oh why, did she offer him something he craved even more and more often than the coveted rodent shelf?

And this is how to lure a cat from hiding in the guinea pig cage. Appeal to his stomach.

He's all grown up now

He’s all grown up and now he tries to get into more places than the shopping cart

 

 

 

 

by Ann Chiappetta | tags : | 1

The Bone Hoarder

| Filed under nonfiction

 

May the Dog Chronicles – Christmas 2020 unveiled canine gifts judiciously chosen with two objectives in mind: price and product longevity. We were not going to spend more than ten bucks a bone and the product would need to be tough enough to deter a beaver, er, a young dog with terminator teeth. Before I get further along with this post, let me also mention    we wanted to avoid a product with toe breaker status, as in the real beef bones that, when dropped or kicked, will feel like it just crushed   multiple digit flanges.  We have grown to hate these bones and yet we cannot part with them, like a broken toilet seat.

 

It’s funny how the mind forgets going through this with other dogs. Nikka, for instance, possessed razor-edged chompers that shaved off skin with a mere touch. May’s gleaming fangs, while not like  razors,  honor the years of knuckle bandages and Nyla bones of her predecessor, Nikka, with honing the ends  of nyla like bones   which lay in wait to impale a foot with prison shank precision.

 

Back to the purchases.  We finally added two large breed Nyla brand wish bone flavored bones and a Nyla like chew that looked like a hammer or T.     On Christmas day May and Bailey both put some dents in all of them and we shivered with dread when the T shaped bone was determined to also be a toe breaker. At least it wasn’t my foot put to the test. Don’t worry, Jerry’s foot didn’t bruise. may and her bonesThis image requires alt text, but the alt text is currently blank. Either add alt text or mark the image as decorative.

 

 

May the Dog Update

| Filed under Relationships

This image requires alt text, but the alt text is currently blank. Either add alt text or mark the image as decorative.Hello all, this is an update about May the rescue dog. She’s matured into a beautiful brindle brown 55 lb. shepard mix, sleek, strong and smart; she knows all her commands, tries not to counter surf and loves to ride with April in her car. May and kitten Noodle are best friends. Jerry can walk the two dogs in tandem for the most part, though I can’t mostly because I can’t see trouble coming and it is safer for me to control only one dog at a time.

She does these adorable doggie things like placing a paw gently on your chest to ask you to play with her. How could a human resist? Anyway, I’ve been a double-dog advocate since picking out Rocki and Gunny with Jerry all those years ago and believe she helped Bailey (and us) stop moping around after Verona died. As long as you can afford the time and dollars, go tandem!

May blessings be upon you and your loved ones now and always. Happy HOwlidays!
Photo is May on a recliner, the sun lighting up her sweet face and those derpy ears are so cute.

by Ann Chiappetta | tags : | 0

Under the Bed

| Filed under Relationships

close up of May dog

May dog face close-up

From May the dog diaries. Subject: stashing stolen goods. Yup, folks,

she’s a sneaky one, this dog with derpy ears. While playing in the living room with the other chia pets, she drops the tug rings and goes for a flip flop, then when Jerry tells her to drop it, she runs past him and dives under the bed. We know better than to attempt to lure her out, after all, it’s a game and she loves it. Sigh.

Jerry calls her bluff and drags the entire bed from the wall and she leaves, choosing a bone and finds a place to chew it. Sometime later Jerry reports that a half dozen empty soda bottles, a chewed up pen, and the stolen shoe have all been found and removed. Until next time.

by Ann Chiappetta | tags : | 1

Kitten Training 101

| Filed under Relationships

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Noodle the kitten is developing into a well socialized domesticated feline. April, our daughter, took the time finding just the right kitten. He is mellow, confident, and is advancing in his training. The photos show Noodle in a harness and leash and sitting in a grocery cart. Before anyone cries out that this is not a service animal, allow me to say it was a quick and necessary exposure for him and he passed with flying colors, taking it all in and staying in place.

Noodle rides in the car in his harness, walks willingly into a cat carrier, (most of the time, lol) and has no fear of our dogs. Why is Noodle being trained like this? Our goal is to provide him with experiences so if one day he accompanies April on a plane or train, or when she moves or Noodle has to stay with us for some reason, Noodle will be calm and unstressed. He even is being trained to play fetch and is walking on his leash. Let’s say he is the kind of cat who might believe he belongs with dogs.

May dog is his cuddle buddy and Bailey has learned to tolerate Noodle and not play bow and bark at him. As for Papa, he is still giving the kitten the feline stink eye but lets the kitten eat from his bowl and get close without becoming evil kitty. The difference between Noodle and Papa is that Papa was traumatized as a kitten and Noodle wasn’t. This allows him to be more open to new and unusual experiences.
What’s the saying? Cats rule and dogs drool?
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