The Perils of Aging

You become a Stegosaurus!

Why didn’t anyone tell me that dogs with hair could be so much fun??  Gemma badly needed a groom as she was so shaggy I couldn’t tell her back from her front, so I took her into the marvelous folks at Markeydas Grooming who groom our shelter dogs for free, because they are awesome.  I said Gemma was a bad ass who needed a fauxhawk and a goatee, and they kindly obliged.  And now I have a tiny little Goatasaurus meandering about lookin’ killer stylin’.

Gemma is like Mork from Ork – she is aging backward, I think.  She gets more and more animated all the time and has even started running around a little here and there if the stars are in alignment.  She has also gotten very bossy, yelling at me when she thinks it’s meal time, and today she BOOFED at some people she heard walking down the road.  So much for my “palliative” foster dog!

Tweed, OTOH, only thinks he is aging backward.  Although he is in remarkable shape for an old man dog, he is nevertheless 4 days shy of 14 years and he is not the square little athlete he once was.  But he BELIEVES he is, which leads to some imagined-world/real-world conflicts sometimes.  That’s when this happens:

He was trying to join in the merry reindeer games of Dexter The Delirious and Ender The Ever Aloft, and ended up going teakettle over ass, performing a surprisingly graceful backwards somersault and ending up back on his feet again.  When this sort of thing happens – with somewhat alarming regularity, I might add – he always gets a scowl on his face and walks back to me with a body posture that is half accusatory that I let him get old and half hopeful that I will save him from aging.  It always breaks my heart a little.

But you know what’s good for a broken heart?  A PARTY.  And we are having one on Tuesday for Tweed’s birthday.  I bought party hats, and I am making a cake, which Auntie Mia will decorate, and then some of Tweed’s friends will come by the shelter and we will feed dogs cake and take pictures and enjoy the fact that Tweed is still ending up back on his feet again, after 14 long years!

Of course, much of this is predicated on my imaginary-world belief that I can make a doggie birthday cake.  Usually I just buy one, but the doggie bakery went out of business.  Got a favourite recipe?  Please share with the Food Lady!

Tweed is not the only dog getting older – Miss Piper is going on 12, and for several years I have been promising her that she would have her own personal flock of India Runner ducks, ever since the neighbour’s ducks got out of their enclosure several years ago and Piper calmly and politely put them all away again.  Ever since, I have been telling her that she would have her own ducks to work.  She has heard me say it so many times she no longer believes me.  And with her back end starting to falter on her, I decided I better make good on that promise.

This is another lofty goal that is predicated on things I like to think I can do, but can’t actually do.  Things like building a duck house.  I have a saw, and even went so far as to buy an electric screwdriver/drill thingie and built a lot of fantastic duck houses in my head, but none in the ACTUAL world where the ducks would have to live.

Stalled there for a bit until I acquired this:

A perfect duck house.  For crying out loud, it has an adorable little porch!  It weighs about 4,000 lbs though, and does not fit in my van, so I am working on getting my hands on a truck to get it home.

I was full of good intentions today and spent a long time unearthing my rolls of livestock fencing – which nature and ALL ITS PLANTS were trying to reclaim – and then remembered how tedious, painful and full of swears putting up fencing is.  I got into my dog brain and practiced all kinds of avoidance behaviours, like putting up a new shelf in my mudroom so all the stuff living on my porch since the Great Bathroom And Mud Room Renovation of ’13 could be put away again.  Then I cleaned up an entire winter’s worth of general acreage garbage, the odds and sods that get left laying around outside because I have the space, so I can.  Nice and tidy outside, but no duck enclosure. I will try again tomorrow.  I PROMISE PIPER!!

Still had time for a little fun and games, which involved Ender in the air (shocking, I know)…

Addy digging holes for IEDs (f*cking little terrorist Italian Greyhounds.  Look at her, just standing there plotting ways to destroy me and all humankind – or least steal our breakfasts)

Actually, what the little devil does is dig up a bunch of dirt madly and then throw the loose soil in the air with her nose to see if anything good comes flying out.

I thought she was crazy until the day I saw her toss a juvenile rat in the air with her nose and catch it on the way down.  Apparently there is a method to her madness.  TWooie still ate the rat in the end though.

Ender looks likes one of those fish that attach themselves to the sides of sharks, doesn’t he?