Tag: dog

foster

I watched the foster lists for months for a small dog that could stay with us for a while.  I wanted a small dog to keep our senior citizen chihuahua Pedro company during my long work days, and by fostering, I’d spare a dog from a kill shelter…and if the new dog wasn’t a fit for our household, he could be placed on the adoption list, life spared.  Win win.

Finally, I saw the one.  Another chihuahua, one of his eyes stitched shut after being attacked by larger dogs.  He was in a kill shelter, having been given up after the dog attack.  Poor little guy, he looked so small and helpless with the stitches.  I said I’d take him if no one else would, and no one else did…so Cheeto was carted from the kill shelter to the local rescue, stitches removed and I took him home, all within the same 24 hours.

Cheeto’s left eye is permanently damaged, pointing in the wrong direction, just a little sight left in it, but not much.  Someone dear to my heart once told me that if you added all my broken pets together, you could almost make one whole pet.  Sad, but true, since I am such a soft touch for the weak and the injured.

It only took a few days before Pedro and Cheeto were snuggled up on the blanket at the top of the couch, both poised to wake up and bark at danger and the garbage truck.  Cheeto is much younger than Pedro, so Pedro gets worn out playing long before Cheeto, but it’s good to see Pedro play again, even in short bursts.  Despite his visual impairment, Cheeto is a little fireball of energy; he figured out how to use the cat door immediately, which is great because I wouldn’t have the patience to let him out and in for his usual 800 trips.  Cheeto is a little bit of a thug, barking and growling at my guests, sometimes just a little too relentlessly, but then he soon forgets he was supposed to dislike them and climbs up for belly rubs.

The  foster coordinator checked on him by email…”we don’t have photos of him for the adoption site, so let’s schedule something soon, unless of course you’re going to adopt him.”

Looking over at the two sleeping chihuahuas wearing matching winter sweaters, I replied back, “Yes, I think he can stay.”  After I hit “send,” I wondered if it was the right choice.  Pedro stirred in his sleep, mumbled a little doggy bark bark bark…then Cheeto stirred, snuggled up closer to Pedro and made a little bark bark bark in his sleep too.  Yeah.  Right choice.

snow

Our beagle-T-Rex pup was amazed by the snow this morning, and he seemed to want to protect me from it.  He was barking at it and eating it.  And eating it.  And barking and eating…he seemed pretty perplexed that the snow didn’t just run away in fear from his super fierce barking, that it instead kept cascading down on his head.  I watched him bark at the snow and eat big mouthfuls for nearly thirty minutes!  For his sake, I’m glad a lot of it has melted away…and we’ll let him believe that he barked it away.

Leaves suck

Today, I spent a few hours raking leaves and dragging them to the curb so the city can ignore them and the leaves can blow down the street into someone else’s yard.  Even with several hours spent on raking leaves, there are so many on the ground and still so many more to yet to fall, you can’t even really tell I did anything at all out there.

The big project was to get the leaves off the back porch.  Every time I opened the back door this week to let the dogs in and out, giant piles of leaves would blow into the house.  I took that as a sign that I needed to do something and hauled 5 trash cans full of leaves off the back porch today.

I worked some on the mountain of leaves in the back yard with the help of our youngest dog, who is also our largest dog.  He is a beagle-dinosaur mix, huge and still growing.  He helped me out a lot by carrying the rake away every time I would put it down to carry leaves to the curb.  While I was raking, he would throw himself on top of the rake and chew at the handle.  He also assisted by gnawing a couple tines off the rake while I was bagging up random bits of trash from around the back yard, and when I was done bagging trash, he helped me out by tearing the bag of trash to shreds and scattering it everywhere.  He wanted to make the work more exciting, I guess; no sense in being bored out there!

After I’d had enough of the magic of leaf removal for one day, I thought I’d drag myself back in the house and watch cartoons.  Given that I’d been in the areas of the yard frequented by our three dogs, it was important to inspect the bottoms of my shoes for anything fun that I shouldn’t track into the house.  Inspection of the right foot was cool, but you know what?  Thanks to the glory of my recently sprained ankle, I couldn’t tilt my left foot up to look at the bottom of my shoe!  Too weak, won’t go that way at all.  To think all this time I’ve taken for granted the ability to inspect my shoes for poop…ah, when I get that ability back, I’ll be ever so grateful.  No worries, though; Minime was thrilled (and by thrilled, I mean horrified) to be asked to inspect my left shoe.

I’m sure there’s more fun to be had as the leaves continue to fall…but if I had any money to spare, I’d pay someone else to have all the fun of removing those leaves.  That’s some fun I’m willing to pass up.

Shame on me!

Not 24 hours later, I ended up arguing with Mr. Kat 2.0 again and I blame myself 100%.  First, I shouldn’t have answered the phone at all when I saw the number on caller ID; I was at work, I was tired and frankly, I was still irritated at him from yesterday, so I shouldn’t have taken the call.  Second, I can’t believe I fell right into yet another dispute when I know better than to even engage in it in the first place.

Here’s a sample of the irrational conversation from today:

Me: It’s your dog.

Him: He was our dog.

Me: No, you had him before we were even dating, before you even knew me,  thus he’s your dog.  Take responsibility for him.  (I’m calm at this point, completely factual.  Logic is my friend!)

Him: Well, you kept the storage building.

Me: What? What the f-ing hell are you even talking about? (I’m a little irritated at the new topic, but I’m not mad.  I cuss all day long, this use of ‘f-ing hell’ was merely emphasizing that I have no idea what he’s talking about)

Him: You kept the storage building, and that should be mine.

Me:  What does that have to do with the dog? (I’m trying to find the logic here, even though I know there really is none to be found!)

Him:  I think I paid more for the storage building than you did.

Me: (this is the part where I should’ve stopped the conversation because see how he changed the subject from the dog to something else completely random out of thin air? where did this topic even come from? random topics in mid-discussion to distract me are so annoying, but I know this trick of his and should’ve just hung up)  No, you didn’t, I have the check to prove what I paid but I don’t care about the money.  If you want it, please take it, move the damn building already! (see, at this point, I’m officially pissed, because his whining about the storage building has gone on for 18 months, and every time, I’ve said come get it if you will shut up because I’d much much much rather have peace than any storage building…but there’s no sport in taking the building, is there? It’s only fun for him if he gets to randomly argue with me about it)

Him: Why are you always so mad at me?

Me: ARG! (the conversation that followed was infused with a ridiculous number of angry obscenities flying from my mouth before I hung up in disgust, so we’ll just sum it up with ARG!)

So.  Shame on me for getting mired in the most idiotic of disputes, shame on me for falling for the random change of topic to turn nothing at all into an argument, shame on me.  I will do better next time; I will let voicemail pick up…and if I must talk to him, then I will try to keep the conversation focused and calm, not letting him digress into other conversational hot buttons just to stir up a fight out of thin air.  Above all, I will be grateful that he’s the only person that I argue so nastily with on the whole planet and I will be grateful that we don’t live together anymore, ever again, hallelujah for that.

Arg.

I have this ongoing conflict with Mr. Kat 2.0 about his dog (his dog before we were ever married, not a pet we got together), and I guess I just have to suck it up and accept that this is my dog now.

One of the 9012 reasons Mr. Kat 2.0 and I are not together would be that he is not responsible for anything…even if it actually is his responsibility, he will play the victim and lay on the “oh, I guess it’s just one more reason for you to hate me, one more thing I can’t do right.”  Arg.  Whoever you are in my life whether you are friends, family, coworkers, soccer teammates, whatever: take responsibility for yourself, your choices and your actions and you earn my respect, even if I don’t agree with your choices—at least own them and own the fallout that comes with them.  Playing victim makes me wanna puke on you.

When Mr. Kat 2.0 and I parted ways, he moved in with a buddy of his and he couldn’t take his dog right away.  I was understanding of that situation, knowing he needed time to get some funds together and come up with a plan of action, so I kept the dog for him.  He did not pay for dog food or anything else for his pet during this time.  When Mr. Kat 2.0 finally moved into a place of his own after more than a year of being shacked up with his pal, I approached him about taking the dog.  He blew it off with oh not right now, haven’t even got my stuff unpacked, etc.  Ok, still I was understanding, gave him more time.  Asked him again, and again… Stopped asking, started telling him to come get his dog.  When it comes right down to me being ready to drop the dog off on his porch and drive away, I find out he’s living somewhere where he’s not even allowed to have a pet.  He chose to move somewhere that has a no pets policy.  Lovely, lovely fellow, that Mr. Kat 2.0, so responsible!

Called Mr. Kat 2.0 this evening and asked what he was going to do about his living arrangements and his dog.  He starts in on the “oh, well I’m not there anymore to take care of him, wish I was there to help” passive aggressive victim shit that makes me want to scream.  I point out that he deliberately selected a place to live where he couldn’t have his dog, so he should either move or find a family member to take his dog.  His reply is the usual “I guess I can never do anything right, you just find more reasons to hate me, I can never fix this” yadda yadda.  My reply (at a volume so loud that a phone probably wasn’t even necessary at this point) was something to the effect of if he wanted to do something right, he could take responsibility for something as small as his dog, take the full responsibility and burden of that one situation and if he did something like that, then maybe for one second I could stifle the urge to kick his testicles into his tonsils.  This was met with more helpless victim yammering, so I hung up on him.

Arg. Arg. Arg.  I am mad at myself, because I knew before I even picked up the phone that he wasn’t going to be an adult…if he were an adult, he would’ve already driven over here and picked up his dog months ago or at the very least, offered to pay for the dog’s food.  So mostly right this second, I’m frustrated with myself for thinking that someone who always behaves the same (the helpless victim when not busy being the badgering complaining fight picking bully) is going to behave any differently today.  What the hell was I thinking?

I guess I was thinking that I’m tired.  I’m tired.  I’ve wrangled kids, worked all afternoon and the frustration of that senile little old dog trying to bite me for the 745th time today when I’m just trying to put him on a leash for a walk to keep him from pissing in my house again pushed me right over the edge.  And being so damn tired to the bone, I just wanted some help with a problem that shouldn’t even be mine to manage in the first place, so I foolishly called Mr. Kat 2.0 looking for that help and here I am now, even more tired to the core than I was before I called him.  He’s not going to help.  Ever.  Doesn’t matter that the dog was his before we were married.  He left the dog, he won’t take the dog.  I have to accept that the dog is mine now because I won’t send it to the shelter, won’t give it away to some random stranger in the newspaper—–Mr. Kat 2.0 in this instance is certainly taking advantage of my kind heartedness toward animals, and that, too, makes me angry, that he knows I just can’t make the dog disappear, I can’t do that, he’s managing to still use and manipulate me and that pisses me off.  Arg.  Mr. Kat 2.0 is not going to step up and be a man, be a grown up, take responsibility because that’s not who he is.  I can’t expect people to be who they aren’t.