Pets

A few nights ago, Jake wanted to go outside so I hooked him to his chain and nudged him out the door. I sat on the hope chest in the bedroom with my book while he “went”. Time passes. I look up from my book, wondering why he hasn’t been scratching at the door or hasn’t nudged it open to come back inside.

He’s sitting on the ground with his left paw on the bottom step, just looking at me through the door.

I patted my leg, indicating he should come up the step and push the door open. He didn’t move.

I called him, which is idiotic since he’s deaf. He’s also almost blind so I doubt he could read my lips. But whatever. He just sat there.

I stood up, yes I was cursing. I opened the door. He stood up but did not make a move to come in. I admit it, I yelled at him to come in. He tensed like he was going to and then he sat back down. On the ground.

WTF? Is he stuck? What could he be stuck on?

I look behind him and sure enough, he’s stuck alright. Not wrapped around a pole or the slide, which is common behavior when it’s not freaking freezing. Instead, his chain is stuck behind…

a frozen piece of dog poop.

I put a foot on the first step and tug at his chain. It doesn’t budge.

I curse again and put a second foot on the very cold, frozen, slippery, disgusting step and yank that freaking chain as hard as I can.

The frozen poop flies off the ground, hits the dog in the ass and the dog bolts into the house.

He stops. He sits. He looks up at me, completely defeated.

Sigh.

I know how he feels.

Shit freezes here.

It’s been a rough week around here. First we said goodbye and now Elvis is gone. She came to live with us in May of 2006 and lived a pretty long and good life in my bedroom.

I tagged this picture as “Chanel’s last Christmas” but it wasn’t. She held on for another 15 months or so. She had some pretty rough days and we probably should have let her go a lot sooner than we did. But man, it was tough to take her to the vet today and say goodbye. A lot tougher than I thought it would be.

And as tough as it was to say goodbye, it’s been just as tough going about our day without her. Who knew a tiny little old smelly mostly incontinent cocker who spent 23 hours of the day on a blanket could leave such a hole when she was gone. But she has.

When we take Jake outside, we instinctively look toward the dining room to see if she’s going to consider getting up and following us outside.

We keep leaving the garage door open, because that’s what we did when she was here – because it could take her ages to make her way from the dining room to the backdoor, even when she didn’t forget what she was doing and stop in the middle of the kitchen to figure it out.

When we’re outside with Jake, and it’s time to go in, we look for her to see how long we will have to stand there with the door open so she can make her way inside.

There are two bowls full of dog food in the kitchen. She didn’t get up off of her bed today until we forced her out at 9am and then she laid back down until we carried her to the car at 9:30. Jake hasn’t touched either bowl, and who knows whether that’s his old age or his confusion over not having Chanel around. Hard to say.

It’s weird to work all day and not have that geriatric mostly incontinent dog smell under your feet as she wanders from underneath TW’s desk to underneath mine and then back to her bed in the dining room.

TW had trouble cooking tonight without her. She’s used to having to do a weird dog dance to avoid stepping on the mostly deaf, mostly blind dog who wasn’t able to avoid getting stepped on. TW doing the dog dance without the dog… just wrong.

If Chanel’s first family (the family who lost a child while living at McGuire AFB NJ in 2000) happens to do a google search for Chanel or Big Jake… we did take good care of her, and we miss her.

Lyra. The Bird. Just flew. Into the toilet.

Now TW wants me to go online and look up “birds in toilets” to figure out if we need to do something special to clean her.

I think we should have flushed.