The Wrong Dog Blog

First, it was an awful night. My bedroom is a lot noisier without stuff in front of the front window, blocking the noise from the street. I’ve more or less put the stuff back except that Sunny’s window seat has stayed by the front window. Once again I strike out on cleaning.

Second, Sunny was in a state this morning. He was particularly hysterical about the mouslies in the wall. He kept leaping up into my face and then taking me to the Corner. I wonder if he would be any less insistent if he knew I’d e-mailed the landlord and told him that now I can hear the mouslies, provided there isn’t any competing background noise.

Third, it was a bright, sunny, bird-song-filled day. I obediently took Sunny for WALKIES!!!, but he was too concerned about the mouslies for it to be a long walk. At least there was that much relief.

Fourth, Joh is too busy to give me help with my organizing. I forgot she’s taking a course this semester, and her program’s event schedule has altered so it’s more inconvenient this year.

Fifth, Meatman gave me a DVD to watch and returned the ones I’d lent him. I don’t remember how we got into it, but we’ve been trading DVDs and like most humans, he doesn’t take care of things. I’m going to have to reburn these from the VHS tapes and watch the new copies to be sure they’re OK. I lend him clean, newly burned DVDs, and he hands ‘em back with scratches and fingerprints. How do I get out of this without saying, “Meatman, you can’t take care of DVDs, so I can’t let you have mine”? So far it’s only been ones I’m converting from videotape, so I can replace them. I’m just going to have to find some polite way to stop because humans always think they take care of things when actually they never do. You can’t tell them that they don’t; they don’t believe you and think you have some ulterior motive in saying no or that you’re just plain too fussy. Ha. The DVD player is fussy, that’s what. It took me four tries to get Meatman’s copy of The DaVinci Code to play.

Sixth, Faith and her new husband were visiting next door, and when they said hi, Sunny of course wanted to go over, so we did and I should’ve known better. Aspey’s Law of Human Behavior #1 is “Humans are sadistic,” and one of its corollaries is that if they aren’t being mean to you, that means they want something. They want money, they want amusement by torturing you later, they want social status by torturing you in front of someone later, they want your possessions, they want you to adopt their dog (Sunny wasn’t the only time—after I took him in, they figured I’d make room for any nonhuman), they want a place to stash their porn collection (don’t ask), they want an option to do any of those things in the future. Today they wanted what the folks next door most often want: money. Austin (Faith’s husband) originally asked me for $100. At first, I wondered if he was being serious, asking me for that much money, and of course I couldn’t tell, so I just honestly told him I didn’t have that much. Then he asked for fifty. Again I said I didn’t have it. I finally went to the ATM and got him twenty-five. I know I shouldn’t have, but I just couldn’t see my way safely out of it. At least he didn’t hug me.

After Austin and Faith had left for church, one of the remaining residents suggested that I take her and her child and one of the other residents to the local ice cream stand for ice cream—seriously, after her child harassed me for fifteen minutes trying to turn Sunny’s retractable leash into a toy, this woman, who is one of the residents I don’t know, just looked at me and said, “Why don’t you take all of us over there for ice cream?” It was tempting to say, “Just who do you think you are, inviting yourself out on my money?” but I could not handle the flack that would generate. I have enough trouble handling flack that I generate accidentally without knowingly walking into some. I just told her I’d given all my spare cash to Austin.

Fortunately the bank has foreclosed on the house next door and is evicting all the tenants in preparation for selling or auctioning it off. Soon they won’t be able to lie in wait for me to come out with Sunny. Sigh. It’s a sorry world when you have to delight in someone being evicted. Of course, the house will just fill up with more of the same—it’s in terrible shape, so no one who has an option would live there. I have talked with the landlord who got foreclosed on, and it’s not fixable because he tried and then couldn’t get in residents who would pay their rent. Of course this time I won’t have a bond with anyone over there, not having adopted their or their friend’s dog, so they won’t expect me to lend them money, but that means that they also won’t have any compunctions about stealing from me. One of my other neighbors and her boyfriend have been at me for a year to get Sunny used to being left alone outside—I don’t know why they take it so personally, but they do—among other reasons, if I were daft enough to take that suggestion, I’d soon be dogless, leaving a purebred out unwatched in this neighborhood, without an in to the neighbors nextdoor who would keep watch, even if they’d squeeze me for money later. I already lost the last tie-out I bought for him so that I could be hands-free when we sat outside, so I take the new one in every time after I use it. Sigh again.

OK, so it’s probably a lot funnier to me than to you, but I had to laugh about the soap great for humans and dog fur, as well as the definition of a social call.

I’m debating about what to do now that his window seat is moved. I’m not sure that even if I do move the bed, I will get better access to the air-conditioner window. I have asked Joh to give me a consult on the bedroom arrangement, and knowing how hard it is to pry Joh out of her apartment (another reason I suspect Joh of being an Aspie, although she doesn’t agree), I have offered her a pizza as a consulting fee. Of course, she may not consider it much of a fee because the spaniel will be drooling on her the whole time she consumes it. I paused in writing this to offer her a pizza delivered to her place at a time of her choosing so she can enjoy it in spaniel-drool-free comfort. (Thank goodness the woofus doesn’t know or he’d never forgive me!)

Anyway, there’s just no getting around that there’s not much room in this bedroom for anything but the bed. What to do with my clothing is a significant issue, especially as we move from winter into summer and therefore the greater half of my warddrobe needs to be stored. We are going to get down to some difficult decisions in the not-so-distant future. There’s just too little space to avoid it. Gah. It sometimes feel like once I make room for all the stuff I need, there’s no room left for the stuff I want. It’s hard to make room for the primary thing I want: the woofus. His crate and his eating area take up a healthy hunk of kitchen, not to mention his squatter’s rights in what used to be my broom-and-mop nook (better known to all of you as Obsession Corner) and the double bed in the bedroom that replaced the single one of my pre-woofus days. And Aspie does not live by spaniel alone, mind you.

Oh, well. Maybe Joh will be willing to lend her considerable organization skills. Maybe I will get more of substance done tomorrow (today was merely moving some things around). At least the woofus was so engrossed in his mouslie surveillance that he wasn’t disturbed, as he usually is, by the Strange Monkey Behavior (aka cleaning). . . .

I did at least manage to get the woofus’ woofy kibble ordered today, and the place I order it from had finally restocked on the two-pound bags that have the $3-off coupons in them. I can’t use the coupons (buying the kibble over the internet as I do), but I donate them to a local dog rescue which was kind enough to relieve me of some Sunny-rejected toys and clothing that I just couldn’t bring myself to send to the landfill. I figure that with all the pet food recalls, they probably could use some coupons to a kibble that hasn’t been affected by the recalls, and it doesn’t cost me any more to order the two-pound bags over the larger bags, so why not? Please allow me to take this moment to suggest that if you haven’t done so already, please make some donation to your local animal shelters and rescues to help them over this tough time. I can’t find the article now, but it said that shelters have been hard hit by having to dump lots of questionable food. Even just sending pet food coupons you see in the paper could be helpful. Some day I’ll do more, but with cleaning-related bills in my future (I already spent $50 this month on something to hold DVDs), I will have to be content with the coupons for now. Oh, and check out the links at Wikipedia’s article on the recall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food_recall, particularly the links at the end, to help you keep track of what is and isn’t safe for your pet.

Anyway, I knew I had to get the woofus Out promptly. He had gone out in the rain to sniff his outdoor Obsession Spots, but had refused to relieve himself, although I was sure, as long as it had been, that he needed to. So he must be in a fine state this morning!

I got dressed and hurried to get his leash and collar from the shelf they now live on when he’s not using them. I went to the door and called him. He didn’t come. He was on the kitchen side of the Obsession Corner. I called him again. Not even a tail wiggle.

I used my “I really mean it, Sunny!” voice. Again, no indication that he had heard. I went to the corner, told him he was being bad, and pulled him back far enough for me to start getting the collar on him.

And that’s when I heard it: the very faint sound of chewing, definitely coming from that corner. It’s too faint to be the bunny in the attic. There must be mouslies in the wall, but down lower, not at our level yet. Dog alone knows why he reacts so strongly to those faint chewings and not at all to the loud ones that were going on in the outer walls. Nonetheless, it is vindication for the woofus. There is something in that wall, and it’s getting worse because now I can hear it when I couldn’t before.

The general consensus, even including my landlord, is that Sunny’s problem is not psychological: it’s an actual something. Termites, mouslies, you guess it, but there’s something actually in the wall, to which the woofus is alert. I guess it’s at least something that he’s not going wonky, although he’s definitely driving his mommy there.

A couple people have suggested that I put furniture in the way so that he can’t get to the corner. That’s a little hard in the kitchen: it’s the nook where I used to keep my brooms, and Sunny had climbed in over them and knocked them around and down, so I moved them to a different corner. It’s bad enough he lives on my dirty floors; he doesn’t have to lie among the cleaning utensils.

In the bedroom it’s a little challenging because it’s the space behind a door. I was going to put some stuff there this weekend because it’s my Golden Week Goal to clean and rearrange the bedroom, but I’m not so sure I’m going to tackle the bedroom. I mean, rearranging the mess isn’t going to fix it. It’s a small bedroom, and there’s no getting around that. I’m not sure there’s an arrangement that will work better than this one. I was planning to rearrange so that Sunny had his window seat in the other window and so that there was better access to the air-conditioner window for installs and deinstalls, but the two arrangements that would accomplish this (without emptying the two big bookcases, and that way lies madness!) would either take up too much wall space and have my bed far away from Sunny’s window seat (the latter undesirable from a woofy perspective) or have my head near the street (undesirable from an Aspie-wanting-to-sleep perspective).

Organization is just so very difficult. That’s why many Aspies have very Spartan homes. We other Aspies, however, fall to the autistic love of things (ever so much more predictable and decidedly less mean than humans), but then we’ve got to organize the things. Sigh. I did have some declutterers through last year, but they managed to break most of my anime toy collection (what were they doing, unpacking my neatly packed boxes? I only found Sailor Jupiter’s arm last week—no clue where the rest of her is) and helped themselves to whatever they liked, apparently. (I know one of them has my coffee grinder, but she didn’t respond to my letter, and her phone is perpetually out of order. Today, guessing that she had also liked my muffin baking sheet, I gave up looking for that and bought a new one.) Once again, the Aspie inability to make intelligent judgments on human characters screwed me up. Not, mind you, that the conditions weren’t in general working against me then, but that’s a whole other story.

I did organize the box of Sunny’s things late last week. I took an extra half hour for my lunch and put the things he does play with or wear on two shelves that I had reserved for that purpose and actually threw away the bits of long-destroyed stuffed animals (Sunny likes tails on his toys, but only so he can rip them off and leave them lying about—I can never get him interested in the playing with them after they’re detached). There’s some rubber toys I’m going to wash and give to the dog rescue. That still leaves me with the mess in the bedroom and not much idea where to put it. Temporarily in front of the door, to see if it dissuades Sunny from his vigil over that corner of the wall, but it can’t stay there permanently. I’ve got to be able to get into and out of the room.

A couple weeks ago, I noticed Sunny was working at swallowing his food. I had heard about raised feeders back when I couldn’t afford such a beast, but seeing him have to take some trouble over swallowing, I thought that I should look into them again. One of the articles I read said that a raised feeder could help dogs with megaesophagus, so it surely couldn’t hurt a spaniel having a little trouble with swallowing. I’d get one and see how he did.

Easier decided than done! Once I had decided to get one, I had to decide which one to get, and the first question was, of course, height. I looked around for how to determine the correct height for Sunny, but had little luck. (I only found the answer after my purchase!) I had expected a measurement based on Sunny’s shoulder height (about 16″). The response I got from the store I e-mailed was from a salesperson who seemed a little surprised I’d asked: the she pointed out that the dog should be standing with the muzzle in the “normal” position (which the salesperson defined as “the dog [does] not have to bend to eat”).

That led to some interesting high jinks! Just try measuring the distance between the floor and the end of the dog’s snoot when the dog (a) tilts his head back when a measuring stick is being positioned in front of said snoot and (b) tries to escape to get back to Obsession Corner. The closest I could come was somewhere between 8″ and 13″ off the ground. Clearly I was going to have to get an adjustable feeder.

The salesperson had recommended the feeder that had the widest range of adjustment, from 4″ to 16″, but it looked to me like it was top-heavy and just asking to have a klutzy Aspie or a bouncy spaniel tip it over every time one of them passed. I ended up with a sturdy, four-legged one that adjusts from 8″ to 12″, even though each of the two bowls is a ridiculous 2 quarts in size. Two quarts is OK for water, but I decided I’d put Sunny’s pint-size food bowl in the bigger bowl. I would indeed be in trouble if the correct answer in Sunny’s range was 13″, but I suspected that it was closer to 8″ and so went ahead and ordered. (Shopping tip: Before buying something with free shipping, check to be sure it’s really cheaper that way. Had I bought Sunny’s feeder at the site with free shipping, I would’ve ended up paying twice what I did including shipping!)

The feeder arrived today, doubtless to the UPS guy’s distress: he had to climb all those stairs on the first day over eighty degrees. I quickly got it out of its box and with a little poking figured out how I was supposed to set it up. I decided to start it at its lowest height and move it up if that seemed called for. I put Sunny’s little food bowl in the big one and filled the other large bowl with water. I waited for him to come to the kitchen, but apparently the bedroom side of Obsession Corner was just too intriguing, even with Mommy in the kitchen. Finally I called him. He did come (probably would not have if I hadn’t been in the kitchen!). He came in, took a look at me, and went back to the bedroom.

I called him again. He knew I didn’t have nibbles for him (there had been no sounds of my preparing my own lunch yet, so I could hardly have eaten it and left him the last bite), so he didn’t come. I got tough and demanded his presence. Having relearned that he is scoopable and that Mommy will scoop if he doesn’t come on his own when she gets demanding, Sunny put in an appearance.

“Look, doodlebug!” I said, pointing at the raised feeder. “Just for you!”

He went over and sniffed at it, doubtless smelling the water and the kibble. He gave the water bowl a couple laps. He then sniffed at the bowl of food.

He took a piece of kibble and put it on the floor. He took another piece of kibble and put it on the floor. He pushed the kibbles around with his nose a little bit. Then he ate one. Then he went back to the bedroom Corner.

Hours of research, thirty bucks, and he’s still eating off the floor!

Earlier today, however, he was sleeping next to me as I worked. In addition to seeking without success a photo of him sleeping with his tongue hanging out, I want one of him asleep on his back. It’s just so humorous: his legs splayed, his head lolling, his tongue hanging out (from beneath it’s comical while from above it’s cute), the very tips of his fang teeth showing from beneath his upper lip, which has flopped back a bit from gravity. Just gotta have that one for my memory box.

I glanced up from my work. It was the perfect tummy-up shot! All the ingredients above, with a really good angle on the head for seeing the tongue and the teeth, all of it just far enough away from me to allow the camera to focus. Usually he’s too close and of the few times he isn’t, he’s often lying so he looks decapitated. He was out so cold that he wasn’t even twitching his hind feet as he often does when sleeping that way. And, wonder of wonders, the camera was in its bag right next to me on the bed.

I carefully extracted the camera from the bag. I got the camera into position. I slid the lever that removes the automatic lens cap and turns the camera on, and it made only the tiniest of clicks.

Unfortunately that click has deep meaning to my flash-hating woofus, and it pierced straight through his state of oblivion, righting him and leaving him, with his tongue still hanging out, giving me a bleary-eyed glare over his shoulder. “I knew it,” the face said. “You were gonna set off that awful light, weren’t you?”

The obvious solution is just not discussable: with the lens cap off, the batteries run down and the lens is unprotected from damage. I can’t leave it lying around on my bedside box for his eventually resuming that position.

Obnoxious woofus. I feed him expensive organic noncontaminated woofus kibble, I took him for WALKIES!!! in the middle of the work week, I refrain from kissing him, I give him woofy treats without requiring him to do tricks he doesn’t like (”Paw”). When he brought me his chipmunk yesterday, I was so thrilled that he wanted time off from the Corner, that I threw it and immediately put my computer away so we could have a real frolic—even though I was working for the boss who appreciates me a lot more than certain woofi I could mention and who, incidentally, makes the woofus kibble and woofy treats and chipmunks possible!—although he then took the chipmunk back to the living room and himself back to the Corner. After all this, I should think the occasional camera flash would not be too much to ask.

We got out so late because I did the unheard of and took a nap in the middle of the day. I’m afraid of naps—afraid they’ll disrupt my diurnal cycle—but as sleepy as I feel, I expect I will still sleep tonight. I also usually can’t nap because it’s too noisy outside, but this time I didn’t even have to sleep on my good ear (I’ve a hearing loss in my left ear and therefore usually sleep on my right).

I called Sunny’s vet today about it. I didn’t actually speak to the vet; I spoke to the receptionist who has been a receptionist so long that she probably could sit the vet tech exam without studying and pass. She says that if Sunny is that determined that there is something in the wall, there is something in the wall, and what we really need is an exterminator. She says if I want it to stop I should discourage the behavior, by putting furniture in the way and so on.

But if it’s real, and there is something in the wall, should I be discouraging Sunny from telling me about it? I don’t want him to decide he shouldn’t try to get my attention when he thinks something is important. Also, what he does with his time when he isn’t watching the wall is hardly exciting: he ends up sleeping, for want of anything more fulfilling to do. It drives me squirrely to have him “on duty,” but it doubtless drives him squirrely to try to survive in such a low-stimulus environment.

I did take him for WALKIES!!! today. I was hoping to bump into the Corgi person we met the last time we were out: she’s got a six-month-old Corgi and is looking for playmates for her. With my slow social processing, it didn’t dawn on me to give her my name and phone number so we could set something up; she probably thinks I’m not interested because she was dropping hints (”Do you live around here? We live right around this corner. I’m just desperately looking for dogs who might like to play with her”), and I didn’t respond to them. I’ve been kicking myself ever since I figured it out (a couple days after we saw her), and today on our WALKIES!!! I took a piece of paper with my name, Sunny’s name (and description–I remember dogs better than people, and she may, too), phone number, address, and e-mail address with me so I could give it to her if we met her again. I made a point of walking in her neighborhood. No luck. I should also have gone to the grocery store for some things and avoided the weekend crowds, but I felt one trip Out was enough. Of course, I will probably have to do both tomorrow: it’s going to be sunny, and the woofus will want his WALKIES!!! and I’ve got to get my errands done before Sunday, when my work week starts. Gah. What I want is a day without Out.

I should never have adopted Sunny. He would have found a family quickly, and I’ve cheated him of a life of woofy interest because I was so worried that he’d get stuck in the shelter. Him, with that face? With that personality? He’s the kind of dog people dream of getting. And now he’s six and a half and therefore stuck with me and probably too old to be frolicking with a puppy anyway and has to make a hobby out of the mice that are probably not in our walls but the walls of the apartment downstairs or even in the basement. Poor woofus. He could have done so much better.

4 December 2005

I’ve been having trouble with the bottom end of my comforter being curled upward. I don’t mean just the edge tilted up; I mean that edge actually being rolled upward at least one revolution. I supposed it was either things my cast was doing while I was sleeping or things it did as I tried to extricate myself. The roll is not easy to undo, the cover being a king-sized one for a full-sized comforter and therefore inclined to do some independent curling of its own.

So I keep smoothing it down again. And again. And again. The other evening, as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed it was curled up again, and muttering to myself, I spent about five minutes detangling and smoothing it down. I went off to get my nightly cup of Kava Stress Relief tea. [This was back before I developed yet another food-allergy, to something in Kava Stress Relief tea. Aspey's First Law of Food Allergies: If I like it, I am or will become allergic to it.]

As I returned, I heard scratching. I came in to find Sunny on the bed, scratching at the bottom edge, carefully creating an upward roll along the end of the bed. He looked my way and gave a rather absent wag of his tail to acknowledge my presence and then went almost fiercely back to his task. The roll reestablished, he turned around once, dropped into a doggie curl next to it, and wagged his tail enthusiastically. “OK, Mommy, I’ve got the bed ready, so you can get in it now.”

I should’ve known. How could I fail to recognize the edge of a doggie bed when I see it?