At first sight, the new worker looked like at most a volunteer. She was standing at the backdoor of the big house, bulging through her big cotton red tshirt, her short, bright white hair in vague disarray. Turns out, however, she was a temp worker. A few days later, she was hired. Now, I have a housemate.
I write this not in the best of moods. One, most immediately, is that the Prescott library is far from the haven I wish it were. I guess I’m spoiled by Dartmouth. Needless to say, I have suffered, so far, through a small children Halloween parade, where small children screaming thronged through the library in outfits while the oh-so tolerant librarians smiled at them while the other patrons glared. Then an old man sat himself down to do some sort of figuring, chomping away so furiously at his gum that I could hear every chew ten feet away. Finally, he left. Except he was replaced, in an even closer-proximity, by a man with a bag of crunchy snacks he’s assiduously working his way through while listening to a book on tape. And I forgot my headphones.
Crankiness of the moment aside, I have decided that, despite everything, the moving-in of my new housemate is quite possibly contributing to my inability to shake a bad mood for the last week and a half. Her presence is unavoidable. Her cheerfulness and pragmatism are evident. Her stories have already become old.
Kim—old Kim, as we call her, since young Kim is the current dog manager—is a large, ebullient woman in her sixties. She is from the Milwaukee area, a combination of outer-city roughness and Midwestern forwardness that is friendly and assertive. The first story she told me, as she sat at the kitchen table while pushing the dogs away with her feet, was how she lost the two teeth on her upper left jaw from taking a rough shot of Tequila in Mexico. Slammed the glass right into her teeth. (The cabinet above the now broken fridge was designated as her alcohol closet). She is an ex-Harley biker. Tatoos everywhere. Has a daughter and a husband. His name is tattooed on her hip, but she wants to make it so it says, “In Memory Of ______”—“Not that he’s dead,” she assured me—“but he’d be better off that way.”
Man to my left is now ripping foil off of more food.
The whole process of gaining a housemate was a little sketchy, considering I wasn’t told she was moving in until they hired her. But, young Kim assured me, she’s “like everyone’s grandma,” and it wouldn’t be a problem. I guess, not like everyone’s grandmother, although acquiescent in the best ways—respectful about personal space and everything. But she is innocently self-centered, and this is where the problem lies. I used to be here in isolation. I used to wish for people. And I still do, of a sort. But old Kim has no problem with plopping herself down, even if I’m obviously doing work, and she’s on the clock, and talking about the dogs, or telling some story that goes on for minutes. She doesn’t have any world opinions, and here I go being a snob, but I’m sorry. If my space is going to be invaded, I’d rather be enlightened by it. Then again, if you count meeting a “character” as enlightenment, this is it. This whole experience would count towards that, if you look at it in the best humor. I miss my solitude, however.
Anyways, for all my insistence at being coherent, I’m apparently struggling at it myself. Either way, I haven’t had any time to myself. The wireless works in the kitchen, but then, here comes Kim, plopping herself down and then young Kim comes in and all of a sudden, all the dogs are barking and chaos reigns. Then another dog person comes in, sees a “gathering” and all of a sudden they’re rehashing the last week and the stories have all been told before (no one really likes to work, not that I blame them for a break, but does it really have to happen in MY kitchen?)
I guess I’m just miffed that I have been reminded forcefully how little space is actually mine. Everything’s dedicated to the animals, but it’s that whole vegan mindset that turns this place into chaos. I guess that’s been on my mind too, so here goes.
Vegans believe that animals should never be “used.” This means, they are considered complete equals. This extends from pets to farm animals to wild animals to silk worms. True vegans won’t wear wool or silk because you’ve “used” an animal to get it. Look how far society has come. If you ask me, that’s pretty stuck up in regards to our roots, but hey. They think they’re doing the right thing. You can go off and have an argument about animals and souls, I don’t care. But sticking to the facts, animals are animals, and get confused when they don’t know their place(this will be repeated by anyone who knows animals, any professional trainer, anything). Meet the animals on the ranch. Deb the owner, the vegan, couldn’t care less if any animal is adopted out, as long as it’s being fed and thus is “happy.” And here is the fundamental flaw. Horses and dogs each respond to owners in their own ways. What is true for both of them at the ranch is that they are afforded hardly any individual attention, because there just isn’t time. They are kept in some sort of enclosure and fed, and watered, and petted when they’re near to whatever job is at hand. Horses that were once perfectly manageable now don’t allow humans near them. And sure, it’d be one thing if they were turned totally loose and allowed to establish, in lieu of human interaction, their own packs. But instead, they are kept in a charade of “care,” where they are given their way, their every ‘need’ attended to, and let go without any sort of discipline.
This man has an incredible amount of foil-covered food.
The newest development is that Deb is considering making the ranch part of things—horses and goats, etc, into a complete sanctuary. As in, absolutely no horse would be adopted out. This comes on the heels of three horses being returned in the last few weeks. The policy, not being-no-return, had a few people taking advantage of the fact this is a rescue. One person took their horse out on a trail immediately after adopting it, where he pulled a tendon. When it showed no signs of improvement in a week, they insisted the horse was permanently lame and said they needed to return it. Another was returned because it would bite other horses, and the woman had a business giving trail rides and didn’t want that, and then another one was lame as well. So fine. People took advantage of it and were ignorant—of course you can’t take a horse who hasn’t been exercised in months, and expect it to perform like any other horse. How would you like it, if you had hung out in your house for months being fed, and then told to hike a mountain with a kid on piggyback, just because you were stronger than the kid? So, Cheryl decided this just wouldn’t do. She talked to Deb, who sided immediately with the animals, thinking maybe it would be better not to adopt any horses out at all. This is incredibly ignorant and selfish. So many other horses have been adopted out and have gotten love and rehabilitation by owners who were willing to work with them. Take Roy.
Roy was a beautiful young Arabian gelding who’d been a show horse and then been abused. When we had him, he wouldn’t let you approach his sides, although he was curious and wanted to be better and would come up to you and let you pet him on his face. A woman came and fell in love with him, and within a month after adopting him was able to ride him. Roy was obviously in such a better place, than kept in his stall on the ranch, given food but living in fear. And then there was Señor, an old horse who was brought home by a family with twin 12 year old girls who loved him and are taking care of him, riding him some and making sure he’s got a good home, and is kept groomed. The horses here don’t even get grooming! And baths only occasionally, and never when Cheryl is around. Cheryl, really, is the greatest boon and bane to the horse side of the ranch.
Cheryl from Long Island apparently wore her western style clothing even back on the East coast. (And by western style, think Roper shirts, bandanas, cowboy boots, and a Stetson in the summer). She got her first horse when she moved out here. Saw goats for the first time, too. Now, she claims, even though she has no money, she “couldn’t be happier,” because she’s here, being a “servant to the animals.” And loving her goats. She is dedicated. She is persevering. She is stubborn. She is blind (metaphorically). I believe she never knew enough about animals to understand them completely, and is totally happy seeing them as perfection. She loves them indiscriminately and, while she would do anything for them, believes herself to be doing that. So they get overfed, get grain as extra treats, and they are fat and spoiled and cranky. She made friends with Bellatrix, a goat who is over 7 feet high when he stands on his hind legs, who is scared of other goats but is also moody and obnoxious. Bellatrix is kept in a stall with Hank, an old thoroughbred, and he believes, because she allows him to do so, that he rules the place. This means that entries to his stall are intrusion. Which means he rears up at you and butts you. We took off his horns, thank god, because otherwise I probably wouldn’t have a knee. And yet, as I go to scoop up manure, getting manhandled by Bellatrix, Cheryl couldn’t care less. My shouts of pain go unheard, but at his first Maa-aaa when he hears the sound of grain poured out, she’s talking to him, “Bellatrix, my Bellatrix, who loves you? Who loves you, baby? I missed you Baby, I love you love you love you.”
It’s all I can do not to take the rake I was previously wielding in self-defense against the goat, and fling it at her.
So. She loves the animals. She puts in 12 hour days 5 days a week. But she doesn’t think about them. She doesn’t think that maybe, instead of harrowing the fields cause it’s on the schedule (dragging around what’s essentially a large rake attached to the tractor, to spread out manure and improve appearances, and in the summer keep the flies down), she should maybe go into the pens and handle some of the horses, so when they get into trouble and need the vet, they aren’t impossible to catch. She doesn’t think of putting that on the schedule at all, claiming there’s just too much of other work to be done. And in her mind, there is. That is the ranch’s problem—its mindset that if everything is functioning properly, animals are happy. That’s the way Dr. Deb runs it. Whereas a real animal person would think about the animals welfare, and understand them a little more. Deb, Rory, Deb’s friend who’s lived with horses, Deb’s friend who worked on a dude ranch, and some of the other people who have interviewed here, have all shared that view. Read up on animals, and it’s clear that other people would too.
So I don’t know if it’s completely the vegan attitude, or also just ignorance, but probably a large combination of both (I’ve talked to a reformed Vegan, Kat who came and interviewed for a position with the dogs, who said that’s how she viewed animals when she was a vegan, but since ‘reforming’ has seen her own animals become much happier, once she gave them a place instead of letting them have their own way).
So this isn’t just me bitching. It’s frustration at seeing such a good thing have so many easily correctable problems, but problems that will never be fixed because in the eyes of Dr. Deb, self-righteous animal fanatic, they aren’t problems. Not that she isn’t doing something incredible here, putting all her money into her cause, and it’s probably only that single-minded devotion that lets her do it—but like everything else, such a great belief can cause so much blindness.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Dog Days, minus the Nostalgia
I live in a doghouse. While this is an aforementioned fact, it’s worth revisiting, for the fact that, most people don’t really understand what it’s like to live in a dog house. It holds thirty-plus dogs. The reason it is able to do this is because it was once a real house, for people. It’s one story, spread out in the southwestern way, where the floor plan goes horizontal instead of vertical. Now that the previous owners—Deb and Steve who finance the place—have moved out, the house, minus my bedroom and bathroom—is completely devoted to them. The old furniture is adorned with fluffy blankets to make their recline in them more comfortable. Dog beds fill the area of the living room, previous master bedroom, study, and back porch, so the dogs can congregate with ease. Dog bowls—the dogs are fed via free feed, which means the bowls have a container above them filled with more food to keep them fat and happy whenever they might desire to have food—are sprinkled against the walls everywhere. The dogs live mostly in the front yard or the backyard, as the doors between those yards are the only thing barring them—although they’re free to saunter through whenever a human scampers through for one reason or another. The house is open to the dogs who live in the front yard, and the backyard dogs get the back porch. That is the territory mostly of the younger dogs, who are staying on this side of the road either for space reasons, or because they get along better here. I am the trespasser, apparently, which is reinforced each morning as I wake up to barking dogs—if all goes well not earlier than 5am, when my alarm is set. I stumble from the bedroom, careful to put on shoes with soles, and peer down the dark hallway. I can then generally avoid the piles of dog poop, but the pee puddles are far more tricky. Often I look back, once I have the light on (it’s at the other end of the hallway) only to see glistening puddles that I have to assume I trekked through, unknowingly.
Breakfast occurs amidst the dogs who I couldn’t persuade to run out in the general rush that I herd out when I get to the kitchen and the back door. The dogs who stay are either too old to bother getting up when I turn on the lights, or are far more interested in the prospect of a dropped crumb than they are in the cool and dark of the backyard. After leaving the house, sometimes the chaos, sometimes sleepy dogs, I go to work, where the work with goats, sheep, and horses (thank god for the horses) commences. At lunch, the next dog encounter begins.
In the middle of the day, most dogs are passed out. My entrance, however, heralds another slim possibility of scraps for them (yes, their feed bowls are all still very full, and no, I don’t feed them because that = dogfights). The dogs get up and crowd around in their pecking order, sometimes barking, sometimes just looking. If Deb and Rory come in with me we sit at the table, where the bigger dogs like to stick their noses up, just to see if they can get to our plates. When we ignore most of them, they eventually pass back out, stirring only if they hear the sound of something drop or if I get up, which apparently is enough of a signal of “more food!”
I come in sometime, done with work for the day, between two and four. Often most are still passed out, but this changes if I a) get a snack, b) open something, c) walk to the sink, d) heaven forbid, turn on the microwave. Whenever it’s time that I eat, the hordes are back again. And thus they remain wakeful until feeding time for them, for which I attempt to already be hiding in my room, to avoid the barking and squeals and chaos that is “medicine time”—given to them in much-coveted canned dog food. Hopefully none get into my room, which is another story, as Zeke especially likes to ransack and pee in it. More on that later.
Because now, it’s time for dog specifics. These are the dogs who have some sort of relatively sizeable impact on my life, ones who either have a constant present inside the house, or have done notable things while on this side. I couldn’t decide what order to describe them in. I was thinking, in order of most-homicidal-impulses-I-experience-towards-them, level of annoyance (this is almost the same though not quite), noise-level-of-bark, relative age, although so many of them are just “old” that I couldn’t do it. So I suppose I’ll go with the most democratic and do by order of size.
That means Curly comes first:
Curly is a giant black dog with somewhat curly hair. Apart from his tussled appearance, he is most noticeable by virtue of being huge. Not terribly tall, although probably the tallest on the “old dog side”, but his breadth is most impressive. He’s wide and really fat and solid. And old. So fat and old he sometimes can barely get up and he has sores on his elbows from using them to struggle to his feet. He has an asthmatic bark/whine that is fairly loud, although this could be because most often, it is magnified by the fact he is vocalizing directly outside my bedroom door. He loves to wedge himself there between my bedroom and the bathroom. This means that often times, in the mornings, there is pee there because he probably didn’t bother getting up, at least not all the way. This morning there was barf. Occasionally he gets confused and barks, usually around 3am, until I walk outside my bedroom, and if he can get up, I let him out the backyard. Though he is annoying and huge, he is not as high up on the homicidal-urges list, simply because he’s too old to do much and he looks really cute when he’s carrying around a stuffed animal in his mouth, as he likes to do (picture a giant, cumbersome, senile old man, in dog-form, and that’s Curly)
The next biggest, and really not too much smaller than Curly, is Norman. While I am not too resentful towards him, as he has yet to wake me up, he is the picture of the problem of free-feeding here. (that’s another issue. Fifty dollar, 20lb bags of premium, vegetarian dog food liberally dispensed, and there’s just one of the financial ‘puzzlers’ of the ranch.) But anyways. Norman is a giant dog who probably has some kind of yellow lab in him. But something gave him a roman nose and big wide googly eyes, and his love for weating has made him fat to the point of danger—this is a dog who begins to pant if he walks ten feet around the kitchen—usually this is done to circle to another food bowl. Once he has reached his objective, which is always food, he collapses, panting, in front of the bowl. He proceeds to gorge himself from this lying down position. Eventually, when the bowl is empty or he is sated, he moves himself a few feet to pass out. His biggest crime, in my book, is the fact he is so fat, he generally moves only by rolling a little bit. And this, one day, caused him to knock over my computer as he burrowed further into the space between the counter and my stool, wedging himself there to get at the bowl on the side of the counter, and pulling the cord out of the socket as he did so. He is ridiculous, does not have many cute moments, and would be the fat person in sweats—because normal clothes are no longer an option—sitting at McDonalds with a full tray, double fisting burgers and fries and maybe, just maybe, switching his over-sized Coke to Diet.
Wellington is the next biggest. He’s a pit-lab mix, who’s friendly. He amuses me, because he plays “big dog on campus,” and I took him for a walk once. He got the 4 minutes down to the bigger street, crossed it, freaked out, and demanded to be taken back. Once back inside the house, he once again put on his swagger, as though he’d just climbed a mountain, and strutted for days especially when I came by.
Louie is the next biggest dog who unfortunately plays a role in daily life here. He is tan and white and shaggy, with cataracts in each eye. He is the bane of the kitchen. No one likes him—dogs, people, probably mice. The most obvious reason is his heinous, high-pitched bark. One sounding off and you raise your eyebrows, thinking—really? The next time he barks, you think someone needs to put a muzzle on him. As the sound continues, it is no longer possible to stand. And so, the nearest person inevitably grabs him by his collar and drags him unceremoniously out to the back porch, where he sometimes tries to beg for re-admittance, or sometimes, hopefully, gets distracted by some shiny object, or something. He is also a jerk. He terrorizes dogs, going up to a select few and barking and barking, when he knows they won’t respond in kind. He likes to stick close to whoever is in the kitchen and growl and show his teeth if other dogs come too close. He is the only dog, say the dog-people, who has never been bitten. They say, they don’t know if that’s because his bark is too annoying for other dogs to mess with them, or, more likely, the other dogs know he’s just crazy, so senile they shouldn’t bother because he will do something worse(who knows what) than bark, and they shouldn’t test him.
There are two other dogs who I like, who almost go together—Sasha and Maggie. They didn’t come together, aren’t related, but look alike, some sort of Doberman mix, except smaller. The biggest difference is that Maggie has a bobbed tail, who knows why. Maggie likes to jump through windows. In fact, she likes to so much that she knocked out or destroyed all the screens in the house. Therefore, no windows can be opened, and the only circulation in this place are the few ceiling fans. Sasha is the one with the tail, and she’s sweet. She is probably my favorite older dog. Doesn’t bark, always comes say hi, and is even good on a walk.
Shakespeare is notable only because his name fits him so well. He is a black dog with long wavy hair, who, when sitting, somehow manages to convey an Old-English playwright just by his distinguished presence. He also has the most sonorous bark. This is often a nice change of pace, but can quickly grow old as he is the most likely to start a ‘howling session,’ which is interesting to hear once, as there will be about seven or so dogs all harmoniously howling at different pitches, low voices weaving in and out and higher ones crooning a counterpoint. Then again, this also is not always welcome, chiefly when it begins at three am. At this point I’d like to cut the stage out beneath them, wouldn’t feel so bad if it was kind of a long drop…
Fanny is one of the last who’s around really often. She’s a small, white dog, probably some sort of lab mix. She’s incontinent, responsible for not the piles of dog-shit, but the occasional turd that spread liberally throughout the interior of the house. However, she’s not to blame for this—the dog-people believe that before Fanny came here, her previous “owner” was involved in some sort of bestiality cult, and therefore her incontinence is a result of muscles that no longer have the strength to do what they should. She is also extremely sweet. She loves to lick dogs, often going to dogs who are barking, or laying down, and gives them kisses until they shuttup or nuzzle her back.
So I saved the one I hate the most for last. That would be Zeke, the elderly beagle. He is fat, bow-legged, and the most obsessed thing I have ever seen about food. He goes beyond obsession. If a person were this obsessed, they would probably be put in the mental hospital. If I walk into the house, he is immediately present, looking up at me wide-eyed though he knows full well my dislike. And then, he proceeds to walk around me, sniffing, grunting, waiting hopefully for any sort of crumb that might pass through my fingers to fall on the floor. And then, the bow-legs become an obvious disguise, that the other dogs might be fooled for a second that he is some sort of docile. But no—when something drops, he darts with unbelievable speed to the scrap, getting there, eating it, and rooting around for more before most dogs even reacted to the sound of the drop. Then again, no matter their size, the other dogs give him space. This is because Zeke has absolutely no fear. If a dog comes too close merely when he’s sitting near, hoping for a scrap, Zeke doesn’t hesitate to bite, snarl, growl, snap, and show his many yellowed teeth. Inevitably this causes the other dog to snarl, and then some other dog misunderstands, and before you know it, there’s a fight going on. Why not just lock him out of the kitchen, you ask? Well. Put Zeke on the porch and in a minute he is howling, baying, wailing at the door to get back in. He is the loudest dog of all of them, and he probably also is the most persistent. No matter how many times you tell him you hate him, he doesn’t care. Because sometime, maybe, somehow, you’ll drop a crumb of a cracker. And then, the time is worthwhile. Apparently.
Zeke has also desecrated my room. My room, the one room with carpeting, the one thing that is free of dogs, is no longer free of dog smell. This is because, the door occasionally jams not-quite-shut. Zeke-the-monster has learned to check for this, apparently more stringently than I have. When he gets into my room, he rips apart my trash, tracks pee in, and then, as his crowning moment of glee, deposits puddles of pee into the thick shag carpet. These I generally identify first by smell, and finally by stepping in them, which is when I realize to what extent he has once again decided to ruin my night. My bottle of Febreeze (pet febreeze, the “strongest yet”) is almost gone, applied liberally but not quite successfully to quell the smells of the pee. No carpet cleaner can get to the far reaches of this shag. And so my room is a strange mixture of ammonia, weird “fresh” Frebreeze scent, and sometimes Tide, which I employ after the carpet cleaner in a vain attempt to scrub the excrement out. It is possibly the most depressing smell on the ranch, and keep in mind I spend most of my day around shit of various origins.
Yesterday I decided I’d try and kill him by food (he also has heart failure. Did I forget to mention this fact? I try to forget it because all of a sudden I’m feeling sorry for him. I hate when I feel sorry for him, because I am certain he has no feelings. But then he has a coughing fit, and there it goes, I can’t help it, I feel sorry for the ugly beast.) As for killing him, I decided that no one will know, if I just feed him all the stale donuts some guy brought by, he’ll probably keel over from heart failure. Ooh, right, his already-existing condition. Which is much easier to explain than the shoe marks he’d receive, otherwise, when I can’t stand the fact he’s once more drooled over my food in the refrigerator, which he unfailingly tries to climb into.
This is a secret plan. Shhhh, I’d probably be fired for even thinking the thought.
Okay, I’m done with my rant. The last dog I’d talk about would be Lucy, but it’s too soon. The dog I’d adopt if I possibly could. I don’t even LIKE dogs that much, they smell and they drool, etc. Except, I’m pretty sure Lucy’s fur smells like roses and she gives the driest kisses of a dog, ever. As in, she keeps her mouth shut. She is the only dog I have ever kissed. Okay, I promise, I’m not going insane. I’m just upset my favorite dog was adopted out, and they didn’t even tell me (as promised) so I could say goodbye.
That’s all on the dogs for now. They’re barking. They say hi.
Breakfast occurs amidst the dogs who I couldn’t persuade to run out in the general rush that I herd out when I get to the kitchen and the back door. The dogs who stay are either too old to bother getting up when I turn on the lights, or are far more interested in the prospect of a dropped crumb than they are in the cool and dark of the backyard. After leaving the house, sometimes the chaos, sometimes sleepy dogs, I go to work, where the work with goats, sheep, and horses (thank god for the horses) commences. At lunch, the next dog encounter begins.
In the middle of the day, most dogs are passed out. My entrance, however, heralds another slim possibility of scraps for them (yes, their feed bowls are all still very full, and no, I don’t feed them because that = dogfights). The dogs get up and crowd around in their pecking order, sometimes barking, sometimes just looking. If Deb and Rory come in with me we sit at the table, where the bigger dogs like to stick their noses up, just to see if they can get to our plates. When we ignore most of them, they eventually pass back out, stirring only if they hear the sound of something drop or if I get up, which apparently is enough of a signal of “more food!”
I come in sometime, done with work for the day, between two and four. Often most are still passed out, but this changes if I a) get a snack, b) open something, c) walk to the sink, d) heaven forbid, turn on the microwave. Whenever it’s time that I eat, the hordes are back again. And thus they remain wakeful until feeding time for them, for which I attempt to already be hiding in my room, to avoid the barking and squeals and chaos that is “medicine time”—given to them in much-coveted canned dog food. Hopefully none get into my room, which is another story, as Zeke especially likes to ransack and pee in it. More on that later.
Because now, it’s time for dog specifics. These are the dogs who have some sort of relatively sizeable impact on my life, ones who either have a constant present inside the house, or have done notable things while on this side. I couldn’t decide what order to describe them in. I was thinking, in order of most-homicidal-impulses-I-experience-towards-them, level of annoyance (this is almost the same though not quite), noise-level-of-bark, relative age, although so many of them are just “old” that I couldn’t do it. So I suppose I’ll go with the most democratic and do by order of size.
That means Curly comes first:
Curly is a giant black dog with somewhat curly hair. Apart from his tussled appearance, he is most noticeable by virtue of being huge. Not terribly tall, although probably the tallest on the “old dog side”, but his breadth is most impressive. He’s wide and really fat and solid. And old. So fat and old he sometimes can barely get up and he has sores on his elbows from using them to struggle to his feet. He has an asthmatic bark/whine that is fairly loud, although this could be because most often, it is magnified by the fact he is vocalizing directly outside my bedroom door. He loves to wedge himself there between my bedroom and the bathroom. This means that often times, in the mornings, there is pee there because he probably didn’t bother getting up, at least not all the way. This morning there was barf. Occasionally he gets confused and barks, usually around 3am, until I walk outside my bedroom, and if he can get up, I let him out the backyard. Though he is annoying and huge, he is not as high up on the homicidal-urges list, simply because he’s too old to do much and he looks really cute when he’s carrying around a stuffed animal in his mouth, as he likes to do (picture a giant, cumbersome, senile old man, in dog-form, and that’s Curly)
The next biggest, and really not too much smaller than Curly, is Norman. While I am not too resentful towards him, as he has yet to wake me up, he is the picture of the problem of free-feeding here. (that’s another issue. Fifty dollar, 20lb bags of premium, vegetarian dog food liberally dispensed, and there’s just one of the financial ‘puzzlers’ of the ranch.) But anyways. Norman is a giant dog who probably has some kind of yellow lab in him. But something gave him a roman nose and big wide googly eyes, and his love for weating has made him fat to the point of danger—this is a dog who begins to pant if he walks ten feet around the kitchen—usually this is done to circle to another food bowl. Once he has reached his objective, which is always food, he collapses, panting, in front of the bowl. He proceeds to gorge himself from this lying down position. Eventually, when the bowl is empty or he is sated, he moves himself a few feet to pass out. His biggest crime, in my book, is the fact he is so fat, he generally moves only by rolling a little bit. And this, one day, caused him to knock over my computer as he burrowed further into the space between the counter and my stool, wedging himself there to get at the bowl on the side of the counter, and pulling the cord out of the socket as he did so. He is ridiculous, does not have many cute moments, and would be the fat person in sweats—because normal clothes are no longer an option—sitting at McDonalds with a full tray, double fisting burgers and fries and maybe, just maybe, switching his over-sized Coke to Diet.
Wellington is the next biggest. He’s a pit-lab mix, who’s friendly. He amuses me, because he plays “big dog on campus,” and I took him for a walk once. He got the 4 minutes down to the bigger street, crossed it, freaked out, and demanded to be taken back. Once back inside the house, he once again put on his swagger, as though he’d just climbed a mountain, and strutted for days especially when I came by.
Louie is the next biggest dog who unfortunately plays a role in daily life here. He is tan and white and shaggy, with cataracts in each eye. He is the bane of the kitchen. No one likes him—dogs, people, probably mice. The most obvious reason is his heinous, high-pitched bark. One sounding off and you raise your eyebrows, thinking—really? The next time he barks, you think someone needs to put a muzzle on him. As the sound continues, it is no longer possible to stand. And so, the nearest person inevitably grabs him by his collar and drags him unceremoniously out to the back porch, where he sometimes tries to beg for re-admittance, or sometimes, hopefully, gets distracted by some shiny object, or something. He is also a jerk. He terrorizes dogs, going up to a select few and barking and barking, when he knows they won’t respond in kind. He likes to stick close to whoever is in the kitchen and growl and show his teeth if other dogs come too close. He is the only dog, say the dog-people, who has never been bitten. They say, they don’t know if that’s because his bark is too annoying for other dogs to mess with them, or, more likely, the other dogs know he’s just crazy, so senile they shouldn’t bother because he will do something worse(who knows what) than bark, and they shouldn’t test him.
There are two other dogs who I like, who almost go together—Sasha and Maggie. They didn’t come together, aren’t related, but look alike, some sort of Doberman mix, except smaller. The biggest difference is that Maggie has a bobbed tail, who knows why. Maggie likes to jump through windows. In fact, she likes to so much that she knocked out or destroyed all the screens in the house. Therefore, no windows can be opened, and the only circulation in this place are the few ceiling fans. Sasha is the one with the tail, and she’s sweet. She is probably my favorite older dog. Doesn’t bark, always comes say hi, and is even good on a walk.
Shakespeare is notable only because his name fits him so well. He is a black dog with long wavy hair, who, when sitting, somehow manages to convey an Old-English playwright just by his distinguished presence. He also has the most sonorous bark. This is often a nice change of pace, but can quickly grow old as he is the most likely to start a ‘howling session,’ which is interesting to hear once, as there will be about seven or so dogs all harmoniously howling at different pitches, low voices weaving in and out and higher ones crooning a counterpoint. Then again, this also is not always welcome, chiefly when it begins at three am. At this point I’d like to cut the stage out beneath them, wouldn’t feel so bad if it was kind of a long drop…
Fanny is one of the last who’s around really often. She’s a small, white dog, probably some sort of lab mix. She’s incontinent, responsible for not the piles of dog-shit, but the occasional turd that spread liberally throughout the interior of the house. However, she’s not to blame for this—the dog-people believe that before Fanny came here, her previous “owner” was involved in some sort of bestiality cult, and therefore her incontinence is a result of muscles that no longer have the strength to do what they should. She is also extremely sweet. She loves to lick dogs, often going to dogs who are barking, or laying down, and gives them kisses until they shuttup or nuzzle her back.
So I saved the one I hate the most for last. That would be Zeke, the elderly beagle. He is fat, bow-legged, and the most obsessed thing I have ever seen about food. He goes beyond obsession. If a person were this obsessed, they would probably be put in the mental hospital. If I walk into the house, he is immediately present, looking up at me wide-eyed though he knows full well my dislike. And then, he proceeds to walk around me, sniffing, grunting, waiting hopefully for any sort of crumb that might pass through my fingers to fall on the floor. And then, the bow-legs become an obvious disguise, that the other dogs might be fooled for a second that he is some sort of docile. But no—when something drops, he darts with unbelievable speed to the scrap, getting there, eating it, and rooting around for more before most dogs even reacted to the sound of the drop. Then again, no matter their size, the other dogs give him space. This is because Zeke has absolutely no fear. If a dog comes too close merely when he’s sitting near, hoping for a scrap, Zeke doesn’t hesitate to bite, snarl, growl, snap, and show his many yellowed teeth. Inevitably this causes the other dog to snarl, and then some other dog misunderstands, and before you know it, there’s a fight going on. Why not just lock him out of the kitchen, you ask? Well. Put Zeke on the porch and in a minute he is howling, baying, wailing at the door to get back in. He is the loudest dog of all of them, and he probably also is the most persistent. No matter how many times you tell him you hate him, he doesn’t care. Because sometime, maybe, somehow, you’ll drop a crumb of a cracker. And then, the time is worthwhile. Apparently.
Zeke has also desecrated my room. My room, the one room with carpeting, the one thing that is free of dogs, is no longer free of dog smell. This is because, the door occasionally jams not-quite-shut. Zeke-the-monster has learned to check for this, apparently more stringently than I have. When he gets into my room, he rips apart my trash, tracks pee in, and then, as his crowning moment of glee, deposits puddles of pee into the thick shag carpet. These I generally identify first by smell, and finally by stepping in them, which is when I realize to what extent he has once again decided to ruin my night. My bottle of Febreeze (pet febreeze, the “strongest yet”) is almost gone, applied liberally but not quite successfully to quell the smells of the pee. No carpet cleaner can get to the far reaches of this shag. And so my room is a strange mixture of ammonia, weird “fresh” Frebreeze scent, and sometimes Tide, which I employ after the carpet cleaner in a vain attempt to scrub the excrement out. It is possibly the most depressing smell on the ranch, and keep in mind I spend most of my day around shit of various origins.
Yesterday I decided I’d try and kill him by food (he also has heart failure. Did I forget to mention this fact? I try to forget it because all of a sudden I’m feeling sorry for him. I hate when I feel sorry for him, because I am certain he has no feelings. But then he has a coughing fit, and there it goes, I can’t help it, I feel sorry for the ugly beast.) As for killing him, I decided that no one will know, if I just feed him all the stale donuts some guy brought by, he’ll probably keel over from heart failure. Ooh, right, his already-existing condition. Which is much easier to explain than the shoe marks he’d receive, otherwise, when I can’t stand the fact he’s once more drooled over my food in the refrigerator, which he unfailingly tries to climb into.
This is a secret plan. Shhhh, I’d probably be fired for even thinking the thought.
Okay, I’m done with my rant. The last dog I’d talk about would be Lucy, but it’s too soon. The dog I’d adopt if I possibly could. I don’t even LIKE dogs that much, they smell and they drool, etc. Except, I’m pretty sure Lucy’s fur smells like roses and she gives the driest kisses of a dog, ever. As in, she keeps her mouth shut. She is the only dog I have ever kissed. Okay, I promise, I’m not going insane. I’m just upset my favorite dog was adopted out, and they didn’t even tell me (as promised) so I could say goodbye.
That’s all on the dogs for now. They’re barking. They say hi.
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