A Shout Out to Zeke

I absolutely love that the town I live in has a place called Zeke's Bridge.


Now, I don't know who Zeke was, but he must have been a nice guy if they named this beautiful spot after him. Aaaahhhh!

Even though I don't know Zeke, I am thankful to him because it was his bridge that put this smile on my labrador's face.

I've never seen Griffen happier than when he's in the water. Look at the gleam in his eyes, the smile on his lips, the overall look of contentment. Now, if he was swimming in gravy this would be a labrador fantasy come true. For now, he'll settle for the lake.

He is a coiled spring, ready to pounce.

Nemo, however, is not quite convinced that in the water is the coolest place to be when you're a dog. We threw a rock in, trying to convince him to go in after it. No dice. He throws a casual look over his shoulder, as if to say "You think I am going in there? For a rock? I don't think so. Not for a rock. For a steak bone, maybe. Maybe. We could try it, you know, just in case."

Griffen, however, will chase anything that splashes within a mile radius of where he swims.

He is so intently focused on whatever Todd was going to throw into the water. If he manages to lose track of the object thrown in the water, he will swim in concentric circles until he finds it.

You can't see it, but Todd has a stick in his hand. "Ba-ROOOOO!" says Nemo, which is beagle for "Oh would you throw it already?? I am dyin' over here!"

Thanks Zeke. We love your bridge.

3-2-1 Contact!

Sorry, I’ve been very neglectful of my blog. But as always I can explain. See, I am starting the new job on Monday and it was my goal to finish writing my book before I start the job and I did it! I finished the book yesterday afternoon.

I haven’t talked about the book here because I don’t want to turn into one of those bloggers who shamelessly promotes the living hell out of my book should it ever get published. I think it’s inevitable that some promotion happen, I mean I would want people to buy it, but I don’t want to be annoying about it. So anyway, I’ve written a fictional book, and now I need to print it all out, settle down and read it and make a few more edits, and then I’ll be ready to start querying literary agents and see if I can net one that can sell the book. So, this last week it’s been all-book-all-the-time in our house. As a result I’ve largely given up on the endless “settling in” process that happens when you move house, and it also looks like a bomb went off in our house as it’s now filthy where I live.

:::

Today we spent the day at the boat, getting it ready for launch. I have mentioned in past posts about Sabine’s leak and how we’ve been attempting to isolate the source of the leak, and in the process jacked up our electrical system. Well, the electrical was a quick and cheap fix today, and then tomorrow we’ll lay down some fiberglass inside the bilge so we can seal up any holes in there. During the week we’ll replace the depth sounder, which has a crack in it. Hopefully this will do the trick and Sabine will be floating at her mooring by the end of next week. Conveniently said mooring is a only a few blocks away from my new job, so I will have a very short commute on the nights when we stay aboard.

:::

We left the dogs home while we were at the boat, because the temperature has been in the 90’s today. Normally we’d take them along, but leaving them in the truck would have been way too uncomfortable (and deadly) for them, and because the boat is in dry dock right now, it would be impossible to carry a 70 lb Labrador up a ladder. Since we’ve lived here we’ve been leaving them in our vacant master bedroom (which we’ll start renovating in the fall, so we didn’t bother to move our bedroom furniture in there) because there’s nothing for our mischievous dogs to get into in that room while we’re out. Today we decided to let the dogs have the run of the house.

In our old house we couldn’t let the boys have run of the house while we were out because Griffen learned how to open the fridge and help himself to the contents. In the new house we have a side by side fridge and freezer. The handles are higher, so we figured that Griff wouldn’t be able to open it.

Boy, were we wrong.

While we were out Griffen grew a thumb and opened the freezer. He helped himself to a pound of frozen ground turkey, whatever was left of the peas and a package of brats. Of course the styrofoam and cellophane packaging was strewn all over the house, licked clean.

Looks like they’ll be banned to the bedroom for the rest of their lives.

The Well-Informed Beagle

In the morning I turn on the Weather Channel as I eat my breakfast and check my email. Then I switch over to CNN after I get the chance to see the animated “Local on the 8’s” update with the bad musak and the ro.bo.tic.voice.tell.ing.me.a.bout.the.temp.er.a.ture that will let me know what to wear that day.

After a few minutes of CNN, I hook the leash on Griffen and we head out for a run. I haven’t been talking about my running goal lately, though I used to keep you all updated with my progress every month. I started 2008 with 1801 miles on my pedometer, and I want it to read 3000 miles by the end of the year—I would have to run roughly 100 miles per month. I used to update you all every month with my progress, and even pictures of my pedometer. But then life got busy. I moved house. I unpacked the boxes. I found places to put things, then moved things to other places only to forget where I moved them and I still head for the drawer to the left of the stove for a spoon instead of the one to the right of the dishwasher, which is where they now live.

The second week of April, after not running for about 2 weeks, I set out to get myself back on track with my running and my goal. (Kinda. There was a bout of laziness and a trip to California that got in the way.) The first thing I needed to do was to find somewhere to run. The street we live on now is a busy street. It is pin straight, and people (myself included) speed on it all the time. It’s so easy to look down and discover that you are driving more than 60 mph without feeling like you are diving that fast. (In fact just yesterday a state trooper blew right by me as I walked out to the mailbox, he was easily doing 70.) Because our street is so busy, I was nervous about running with Griffen on our street.

There is a satellite URI campus just a few miles down the street that Todd and I drove through when we first moved here. It’s a beautiful setting with a working farm, lakes that perfectly reflect the trees on shore, and a conference center in the very back of the campus. In other words, heaven. We stopped in at the conference center and asked if jogging was permitted on the campus. The woman manning the desk said “Yes, we encourage joggers to use the facility, here’s a trail map.” I was excited to find a 4 mile route that was not only safely off the road, but in such a beautiful setting.

After jogging there every day for two weeks, and racking up an impressive 40 some-odd miles, I was stopped by the director of the campus and told that I am not permitted to jog on this campus. It would seem that they hold children’s programs there in the summer and need to keep the (tax paying) riff-raff off campus.

“Well, then I suggest you tell the folks in the conference center to stop handing out trail maps and ‘encouraging’ joggers to use the campus,” I replied, trying very hard not to sound like a smart ass, but sometimes (well, most of the time) I just cannot help it.

I mean, I understand the precautions that the staff needs to take in keeping the children on campus safe. It annoys me that I am prohibited from jogging on a state university campus during the early morning or evening hours when the children are not there. (It’s been about a month since I was banned from campus, and I am still a bit irritated with the situation. I will get over it soon. Maybe. I make no guarantees.)

I’ve since fooled around with Google Pedometer, which is the best invention for road runners looking for new places to go, and set up a new route and have taken to running on my street—which really is not as bad as it first seemed, and am now back to doing 4-5 miles per day. (Not running all the way, yet. But I am working on it. What can I say, there are lots of hills. Big ones that make me very tired.)

Today I’ve hit 2190 miles on the pedometer. By Friday I expect to cross into the 2200’s. That means that since the start of the year I’ve gone nearly 400 miles and am somehow still 100 miles shy of my goal to date. (That’s what happens when you take most of April and May off, after running your ass off January-March.)

There are two side effects to all the running. The first is my jeans are falling off of me. Literally. I can take my jeans off without unbuttoning them now. I’ve lost about 12-15 pounds, depending on the day. Before we left for San Diego I hit up the local consignment stores in town and bought 3 new pairs of jeans, and one of them is already falling off of me. I am in that awkward place between two sizes and the larger of the two is what falls off of me, but the smaller of the two is uncomfortable to wear. That’s what happens when the hips are about a mile larger than the waist—my jeans sag, and dresses cling to my ass while hanging shapelessly over my chest.

The second side effect is that Nemo, the dog I normally leave behind when I go jogging, would be able to display an encyclopedic knowledge of current events if he could talk. I leave CNN on while Griffen and I are out, so he has some noise to distract him from the injustice of being left home alone. As I am implanting my ear buds into my ears to drown out the mournful beagle howl that equates being left home alone to being skinned alive with a butter knife, he eventually flops back onto his dog bed and watches “American Morning” while Griffen and I rack up the miles.

If he could vote, I wonder who he’d vote for in November.

The Sounds of Spring

Jingle jingle jingle…

…Snarf farf farf farf farf

Slurp slurp slurp…

…Thwap thwap thwap thwap

Chomp chomp chomp chomp…

…groooooaaaannnn.

Griffen has allergies. Bad ones. A few years ago we noticed that he was scratching himself constantly. Then we noticed his skin was getting raw where he was scratching, and then the raw spots began to bleed. After a few unsuccessful vet appointments we managed to get hooked up with a pet dermatologist.

Just to be clear, I don’t have a dermatologist. But my dog does. But it could be worse; at least my dog doesn’t have an astrologist, or a therapist. But I always feel like a dork when I tell people that my dog has a dermatologist.

After experimenting with different foods and doses of Benedryl and ketokonizole (the combination of these two drugs actually makes Griffen hallucinate. A dog tripping is possibly one of the most hilarious things I’ve ever seen—and scary all at the same time.) Eventually the dermo shaved his side and injected Griffen with 50 some odd allergens. It turns out he was allergic to roughly 49 of the 50 some odd allergens. On a scale of 1 to 4, with 4 being the most severe, Griffen rated in almost all 3’s and 4’s in his reaction to all these injected allergens.

He’s allergic to tobacco, weeds, pollen, grass, and even cats. Cats! My dog is allergic to cats! (But at least this was the motivation Griffen needed to finally quit smoking.) Griffen’s dermatologist has since developed custom injectable antigens. She’s had to develop two formulas because he is allergic to so many things she couldn’t fit all the antigens to each allergen in one bottle.

Todd injects Griffen every week with one of the formulas, and it’s been working so far. But in the spring, when the leaves and flowers are blooming and the grass is growing Griffen starts to scratch. And scratch. And scratch. Luckily the antigens have prevented him from scratching until he goes bald and bleeds.

But every spring, like clockwork, the tags on his collar jingles in rhythm with the excess scratching. He buries his snout into his fur and nibbles at some unseen irritant, with a snarf farf farf farf sound. He slurps endlessly at the yeast build up on his lips, which is a side effect of the allergic reaction. His back claws thwap in rapid succession against his snout, and he chomps at another unseen irritant on his legs. Then he flops on his side and groans in response to the Benedryl making its way through his system.

Right now he’s dozing and it is debatable as to whether the drowsy effect of the Benedryl is making him sleepy of it it’s just that he’s the world’s laziest dog that sleeps for 23 hours a day. He’s wearing one of those lampshade collars around his head to keep him from scratching, and he bumps into everything with it as if to say “If you don’t use your thumbs and get this damn thing off of me I will destroy your house and bash the living shit out of your shins with it. Boom! HA HA sucka!” But with the irritation growing on his snout, in the form of raw red sores, we both know that the lampshade is really for his own good.

Dogged In

What is it to be dogged in? It’s the situation that two dogs create when you are lying under a blanket and each dog lies on top of the blanket on either side of you. The result is that you are stuck under the blanket until you can get one of the dogs to move.

Being dogged in has its advantages. It instantly removes any responsibility around the house. Is that the phone ringing? Your spouse has to get up from his seat and answer it when you are dogged in. Thirsty? Want a snack? When you are dogged in, your spouse is also obligated to serve you so as to not disturb the dozing hounds that have incapacitated you.

The nature of the dogged in condition also has its disadvantages. Sleeping dogs need the body heat of a human under a down comforter so that they can sleep peacefully—never mind that their normal body temperature is 102 degrees, almost 4 full degrees warmer than a human’s body temperature, and they are covered in fur. They still need the warmth of a human against their back or their belly. As a result, in the middle of the night you will not only discover that you are dogged in, but you are also dogged under.

Todd’s in Idaho this week, so I have been sleeping in a dogged in state ever since he left. Normally Griffen will sleep at the top of the stairs or the foot of the bed when we are home without Todd in case either a. Todd comes home and decides to play with him or b. a burglar comes in and decides to play with him. You see, Labradors do not discriminate. Any hand throwing the tennis ball will do, even if that hand is making off with the stereo between throws.

For some reason Griffen has been cuddling with me on the bed and not keeping the riff raff away while we are home alone. Though I am not quite sure what would happen if a burglar did enter my house in the middle of the night. I can only hope that a burglar who breaks into my house is allergic to dog saliva, and has the patience for a Lab with a tennis ball.

Jogging with Griffen

We’ve lived in our house for nearly 6 years now, and Griffen is 5, almost 6. Griffen has been jogging in our neighborhood for more days of his life than he has not, if that makes sense. He’s a very lean dog, as he weighs in at 65 pounds, and our vet often says things like “Now this is what a Labrador is supposed to look like” when she examines him on his yearly physical.

When he was a puppy he was limping on his back legs quite a bit, as he was doubling in size every week until he became a full grown dog. We brought him to an orthopedic vet who x-rayed him and pointed out that Griff will have hip dysplasia when he’s older. His pelvis bone displayed the tell-tale signs of not having a socket to house the top of the femur. This vet also said that he’s seen older Labs who didn’t look like they were dysplastic until he x-rayed them because the scar tissue and tendons were holding the leg into place. He said to exercise Griff often, keep his weight down, and chances are he’ll be one of those dogs who won’t suffer from dysplasia when he’s old.

As a result Griffen jogs with me every day so we can both keep our weight down. I remember the first time I ever took him jogging with me. I clipped him into his leash when he was only a few months old, and he dragged behind me, not quite sure what was going on. He quickly tired out, as he didn’t have a sense on how to pace himself over a 3 mile jog. His legs were short and stubby, as he bounded down the street at my heels. I kept taking him with me, and eventually he understood not to put the leash in his mouth, not to encircle my legs, not to cross my path. In fact, he knows that when I bark out the command “Left!” he is to move over to my left side. He learned the hard way not to sniff something on the ground right in front of my feet, as I wasn’t paying attention and kicked him in the face one winter as we were walking in the snow.

This morning my alarm went off, and he came over to my side of the bed and rested his head on the mattress as he does almost every morning. He let out that Labrador sigh that often means that he needs something from his people. I rolled over, and his chocolate brown eyes sparkled just as they did when he was a puppy—what I’ve come to call his “Puppy eyes.” He hopped back from the bed, and did that dance he does when he’s excited to go somewhere. Griffen’s come to love our morning jogs just as much as I do. And not wanting to let him down is what gets me out of bed and into my running clothes every morning.

We’ve jogged the same route so many times I could blindfold him and he would know our route. He knows which houses have dogs, and as these dogs bark from behind a closed window he will gaze at them defiantly as he pees on their lawn. He knows where that pit bull will come running out from behind a house at the end of our route, and he will raise his hackles for an entire block before we get to that house—just so he can look bigger as he shyly skulks away from the dog.

This morning I was looking at the muscle tone on his back legs, and marveling at how sculpted his legs are from all the running. I really hope I’ve done enough to keep his muscles strong and toned so far so he won’t end up dragging his back end when he’s old. All I want is to keep jogging with Griffen every day for the rest of his life.

An Example of My Husband's Brilliance

I took some pictures of one of Todd's latest inventions just to illustrate Todd's MacGuyer-esque quality. I raced to our computer, memory card and Oreo cookie in hand. It took me a few seconds to realize I'd nearly put the memory card in my mouth, and the cookie into the card reader. So, I nearly commited a random act of stupidity while preparing a post on how smart my husband is. There's a joke in there about me being the yin to his yang. Or something.

Anyway, during the day we tie the dogs behind our house on a dog run. Todd has created an elaborate run that clips each dog onto both a harness and a collar. Just in case one of my Houdini dogs manages to get free of the collar, he cannot get free of the harness. And vice versa.



Todd has built out quite the outdoor environment for our boys. He installed an automatic dog watering dish that will keep a constant supply of cold water on hand for them. The hard top of my Jeep rests on the picnic table and serves as shade on a sunny day as well. At one point he even fixed some sort of rope toy with tennis balls on it to the actual dog run so that they would have something to play with while tied out. I actually envy my dogs for this dogtopia that Todd has created. He had even had a web cam positioned at the back door so we could log on and see what they were doing. It was then I knew who ate the lattice off the bottom of the deck. (Nemo, I am watching you, little dog.)

There's only one problem with the beautiful dog world in back of my house. When we'd come home from work, the cables for the dog run would be horribly tangled. Over the course of the day, the dogs would change their mind about the optimal lounging spot approximately 435825 times, or get thirsty and would have to change positions throughout the day. As a result the cables would tangle into something that resembles those metal puzzles that you have to finagle the ring off of to solve. It would literally take 5 minutes to untangle the blasted things.

On Saturday morning Todd developed this.

Not sold in stores, ladies and gentlemen. It is a multi-dog run swivel thingy that will keep the lines from getting horribly tangled. Manufactured from a space-age polymer, this multi-dog run swivel thingy will keep your dogs free to roam the yard in search of that one perfect spot to pee for the entire day.

Look out Ronco, here comes Toddco.