Pickles & Dimes

It’s been more than three years since we adopted you, and every day we talk about how lucky we were to see you at that adoption event. What if we hadn’t gone? What if we hadn’t seen you at the bottom of the stacked crates? What if someone at animal control hadn’t taken a liking to you after your time was up and saved you from death by passing you onto the rescue organization?

This year, you’ve established your need to be near one of us almost all the time. The exception is when we’re playing cribbage or reading upstairs. Then you get bored and go hop up on the bed. If we sneak in to look at you, you get excited but don’t want to show it. So the only thing you move is your tail, in a rapid-fire thump-thump-thumping on the bedspread.

The bed is pretty much your favorite spot. You love “reading” with us. In fact, when we come home with a new book from the library, we have to sneak it into the bedroom so you don’t see it. Otherwise, you’ll jump up and down on the bed and nip at it.

We recently got you a whiteboard where we write goofy sayings “for” you. Every morning you like to watch me write on the board and then you trot proudly next to me as I display it in your room.

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So, the humidity around here lately, huh? A few days ago Jason informed me that the only place in the entire world that was warmer than Minneapolis (taking into account both the temperature and the heat index) was somewhere in the Amazon Rainforest. Wonderful! It’s the air you can wear!

Naturally, yesterday I decided to mow the lawn because what better way to enjoy my week off between jobs than to die of heatstroke, right? I got the lawnmower started on the very first try, unlike my usual experiences, and attacked the front yard right away, which was breezy and shaded and all-around wonderful. I finished by 9:00 a.m., feeling virtuous and heroic and only slightly sweaty and less-than-fresh smelling.

Then I moved to the backyard. Even though I had prepared myself by wearing my frozen neck chiller and having two ice-cold bottles of water ready, it was horrible. There was no shade, it was dusty and dirty, and because I was covered head to toe in a fine sheen of sweat, I amassed an impressive collection of grass clippings all over my body. Also, my personal scent became decidedly “funky.” When I took a water break at one point, I was panting like a dog. Meanwhile, my own dog was sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of the house, lying in a sun spot with Sunny, like this:

(Shorty lies there until he gets so warm he has to jump up, panting, and sprint to his water bowl so he can rehydrate himself and resume his post.)

When I finally finished all the yardwork (mowing, weed trimming, weed spraying, weed pulling, and flower watering), I had spent nearly three and half hours outside. (Although at least half an hour of that was spent swearing at the weed trimmer, as it “trimmed” for about 10 seconds before randomly unspooling the trimmer string to tangle itself into a complicated snarly mess.)

Worth it, though:

Today it is beautiful out. The humidity has dropped what feels like 1,000%, and of course I’m planning on staying inside all day. I did, however, decide to water the lawn this morning, and as I set the sprinkler in an optimum spot, I saw a mound of dirt wriggling. As I watched, horrified, the mound grew bigger and bigger. I ran to our nearby woodpile, muttering, “You have GOT to be kidding me!” and grabbed the longest, pointiest stick available. When I got to the mound I jammed the stick in as hard as I could. I didn’t feel like I speared anything, which was probably a good thing because I’m not sure how I would’ve explained to Jason why I abandoned a giant pointy murder weapon to remain sticking out of the middle of our yard. Stupid moles/voles/gophers – I hate them! Now they’re doing their damage in broad daylight, less than a week after we sprayed our entire yard with something that’s supposed to make their food source taste bitter. The only thing that’s bitter is me, apparently. Die, rodents!

Meanwhile, Abby is the only sane thing in this place, sleeping downstairs near the path of the air conditioning vent.

While Sunny is toasting her belly on the refrigerator:

And Shorty is suspiciously keeping an eye on his bone while lying in yet another sun spot:

This morning, I took Shorty outside for a walk. We were still in our driveway when I heard growling and whirled around to see our neighbor’s dog, Mita, barreling through a space in the jammed gate entrance between our yards (our shared fence is a leaning, tree root-entangled disaster). I had a brief moment of thinking, “They’ve met each other before; maybe it’ll be OK,” before Mita jumped on top of Shorty and started biting him. I tried to pull Shorty away, screaming Mita’s name, while I heard our neighbor screaming as she ran around their house to reach us. Shorty was squealing, Mita was snarling, I was shrieking. It was pandemonium. The neighbor reached us as Shorty’s collar slipped off in the melee, and I slapped it as hard as I could at Mita’s head, to no avail. Shorty made it to our deck steps, where Mita caught up to him, and they tussled and tumbled and rolled around some more, barking and growling the entire time. It was awful. Shorty is a dense little meatball who weighs 45 lbs., but Mita is easily 80-85 lbs. The neighbor finally pulled Mita off Shorty, frantically apologized, and dragged her back into their yard. Shorty was pawing madly at our patio door in an attempt to get inside. I went with him, my legs trembling, and Shorty immediately sat down and greeted me with a wagging tail.

“Let’s see if you’re OK buddy, all right?” I said, as I assessed his saliva-dampened coat and dirty paws. I briefly looked him over and didn’t see any obvious, serious wounds, although there were some pale streaks of blood along his back. But Shorty already wanted to go back outside. The dog who shivers uncontrollably every time we bring out the pots and pans to cook on the stove apparently had already forgotten about the incident. Since he hadn’t peed yet, I made sure our gate was shut and that Mita was gone before opening the patio door.

Shorty immediately ran to the spot where they had wrestled, peed heartily on it and jogged his way around the yard like normal. Meanwhile, I was trying to calm myself down. I heard someone calling out to me and realized that the neighbor was knocking on our front door. I called her over to our gate, while Shorty barked his head off. For once, I didn’t stop him. She apologized profusely, over and over, saying that they would pay for any vet visit. She also assured me (before I could even ask) that Mita was up to date on her shots. I told her Shorty was too, and I’d examine him more closely when I took him inside, but that he seemed all right. She told me Mita had some blood in her mouth, but that it seemed to be hers, and wanted me to make sure Shorty was all right. She apologized again and reiterated that we could send them any vet bill. She obviously felt terrible.

I don’t know much about how they keep Mita in their yard, because while it’s fenced in on three sides, one side is open (although that is not the side Mita came from). I thought they kept her tied to a stake unless they were outside with her, but the neighbor (who normally works early in the morning so Mita isn’t outside when I take Shorty out) said she was about to do some training with her (Ed. Note: she’ll need a TON more of that) when she escaped under the crappy gate (which can’t shut properly due to uneven terrain that needs to be shoveled out to be level).

I took Shorty back inside and cleaned him off gently with some dog wipes. His magic, self-cleaning fur had already made the saliva marks disappear, but it took two wipes just to get the dust and dirt off his legs. There were multiple long scratches and scrapes under his belly near his back legs, and a bloody mark on one of his legs, but using the wipe (which would’ve stung) got no reaction from him. Any blood there was had already dried. The blood on his back must’ve been from Mita, because after digging through his fur to check his skin, there was nothing. No puncture wounds, no bite marks. Just scrapes. I checked his mouth and teeth, his chest and even in his neck folds for any hidden injuries and didn’t see anything. I called Jason and told him what happened, and said I thought Shorty didn’t need to see the vet.

Jason will be home early this afternoon, but I might run home during lunch just to check on Shorty. I don’t know what to say to the neighbors the next time I see them. I know they’ve been working and working with Mita and trying to train her, and I know they keep her restrained most of the time. I’m hoping this was just an isolated incident. I don’t want to overreact or jump to conclusions, but I also want to know I’m safe walking my own leashed dog on my own property.

Because Mita?

Is a pitbull.

A few months ago, Jason came home and let Shorty out of his kennel. A few minutes later, Shorty hopped up onto our bed to stare out the window for his afternoon routine of monitoring the insolence level of the squirrels (typically, Very High). A few minutes after that, Jason came upstairs to discover a crime scene. Naturally, he left it untouched until I came home an hour later, so that when I walked into the bedroom, I saw that the blankets had been pulled down and appeared to have been part of an energetic wrestling match, my pillows were askew and my tube of lip balm – which had sat in the exact same place on my headboard for two and a half years – was on the comforter, chewed to bits. Next to the punctured plastic tube was a solitary kleenex, gently pulled from its box and shredded strategically, a red herring to deter us from the real crime.

After keeping a close eye on the dog for the rest of the evening in case there were any, um, laxative effects, we bemoaned the fact that this was our last tube of Parade Lip Balm. We had gotten it from a neighborhood parade we stumbled across the summer we moved into our house – nearly six years earlier. As we watched children climb over each other in the streets for bits and pieces of candy, one float threw something that they totally ignored. Once Jason and I saw what it was, we practically shoved the kids aside to shovel handfuls of glorious lip balm into our pockets. I don’t know what made this particular lip balm so awesome (it was unscented and unflavored), but it made your lips feel great. While I love Burt’s Bees and Chapstick, these plain silver sticks advertising “Orthodontics Ltd” were our favorite.

And Shorty just ate our last one.

Flash forward to a week ago, when I found a surprise tube of parade lip balm in one of our drawers. It was like Christmas! As a surprise to Jason, I put it on his side of the headboard. The very next day, Jason came home, let Shorty out and checked on him after he was suspiciously quiet. He found Shorty on the bed next to the chewed-up tube (which Jason wasn’t even aware existed), and a giant, waxy, oily stain polluting the tranquility of our blue comforter.

When I got home, Jason grimly reported the crime. It took two washings to get the stains out. The dog stared guiltily. Our tubes of lesser lip balm were banished to a dresser, away from canine snouts.

Barely two days later, Jason left a new lip balm on his headboard thinking it would be safe since it was a totally different brand and smelled like apples. (Jason doesn’t normally use apple-scented lip balm, just so you know. The Man Factor increases because it was a giveaway from Fox Sports Net and is emblazoned with the Minnesota Twins logo.)

When I got home, I saw that Jason was downstairs running on our treadmill. I went upstairs and found Shorty trying to nose the decimated lip balm cap under the bed. Once again, there were stain spots all over our comforter, which was about to be washed for the third time in less than 10 days. It’s never been so clean.

So now no lip balm is safe in our house, and if I wake up at three in the morning needing some (which happens very often), I can’t get any without getting out of bed and waking everyone up, all thanks to this guy:

What? I like moisturized lips.