Outside Now

“We go outside now?”

“Outside?  Now?  Now”

“Ok. We go now.  Outside.”

 

Poor bored doggies.  It has been monsooning – like relentless, sideways, non-stop pouring rain – for over 24 hours.  It’s possible my chickens have had to learn to swim.  I just could not bring myself to deal with 9 muddy, soggy dog beasts.  So we played with the camera indoors instead, which Dexter did not feel was a passable substitute.

“Excuse me?  Boring Lady? I’d still like to go play outside.”

“I would also vote for going outside.”

She’s going to be 13 this month!  I forget it constantly.  I watched Tweed get older so keenly, so carefully, alert to every nuance of his aging body, that I forgot that the rest of them are getting older too.  At work we see all these “old” dogs that come through and they are weak, and frail and failing (and smelly, and nails overgrown, and teeth rotting out of their heads).  And their owners come to get them (sometimes) and tell us their dog is “ten” or “he’s old, he’s 12” when we mention there are some problems with his health.  So when I look at 13 year old Piper I just don’t see an old dog, because she is so vibrant and youthful.  I can really see the difference if I look at photos of her when she was young, but when she is just passing on by me going about her daily business, I don’t see a senior dog.

Well, mostly not anyway.  Once in a while she projects her senior “my brain is empty now!” face at me.

I thought the WooTWoo would be entering their second decade this month right along with Piper, since I gave them all the same birthday (it’s easier for me to remember that way; some of us ARE getting old, after all).  But the other day I was leafing through Wootie’s intake paperwork (he was an owner surrender to the shelter that released him to me) and realized his birthday is in July.  Which means he and his (slightly vacant) brother turned 10 last July.  Oops.

“Thanks Food Lady.  Thanks for really getting to know us.  It means a lot to us.”

Did I say “slightly vacant?”  I meant “highly judgmental.”

So obviously they were pretty unimpressed with me, for being the worst owner ever (don’t know their birthdays, won’t take them out to hunt rabbits in a hurricane).

But the power of cookies is a higher power indeed.  Capable of moving both mountains and grouchy personalities.

I still have no idea when the birthday of the other two siblings might be.  Don’t even know how old they are, really.

But they couldn’t give a shit, because they are terriers and they don’t really give a shit about anything.

Terriers are like cats that way.  Just don’t give a shit.

(Where is Winter’s neck?)

You know who else doesn’t give a shit?  Fae.  She is completely, obstinately, unshakably oblivious to how much it hurts my back when she climbs into my computer chair behind me and makes herself comfortable.  At least one of us is comfortable.  As time passes, she slowly pushes me forward until I am balancing on the edge of my chair, my ass going numb and legs all pins and needles, while she slumbers away behind me.  And no matter how many times I lift her off the chair and hurl to a dog bed on the floor, the stupid little ninja hound clambers right back into “her” spot and resumes her endless nap.  She’s doing it RIGHT NOW and I am positive I chucked her off the chair a half hour ago.  It HURTS.

Coy little witch.

Sometimes there is hardly room for me at all at my computer, with Addy in the front sucking up all my body heat inside my sweatshirt, and Fae in the back kicking (literally) my ass.  But there is now slightly less of Addy, as we had to have her two top front teeth taken out as they were rotting away in there.  That came as a kind of surprise, as my dogs never seem to have any significant dental issues and the rest of her teeth look fantastic.  And let’s be honest, how often do you lift the lips of your needle nosed Italian Greyhound to look at the front of her mouth?  I routinely lift up the sides of her lips (because I am infantile, and I like to make growling sounds whilst I do it, as though she were my snarling ventriloquist’s dummy) but never the front.  And then one day I did and it turned out the top two were wriggling away in their sockets.  So the vet took ’em out and said everything else looked great.  And now Addy looks like someone punched her in the teeth with a really teensy tiny little fist.

I’m going to call it “charming.”  Like Addy herself – she is a perpetually joyful puppy, so happy about everyone and everything.  Except the rain and the cold, which she hates so very much.  If she goes out naked she can’t move because it’s too cold.  If she goes out in her full Hurrta slush combat jumpsuit she can’t move because IT’S A STRAIGHTJACKET AND SHE IS DYING. I’m going to have to move somewhere that’s warm year-round, just for her.

But I won’t bring this with me.  I really gotta put him up for adoption.  I haven’t because  he likes me SO much and he is such a NICE puppy.  He’s so pleasant to have around, so sensitive and eager to please, goes into spasms of joy just from getting a snuzzle and being told he is a good boy.

He is absolutely the perfect mix – he got the border collie brains without the weird, and the Lab happy without the duh.  He’s going to make someone just the most once-in-a-lifetime buddy.  That’s why it’s so hard to part with the little booger.

Come on, look at that face.  Don’t you just wanna take him home?