We took our puppy to get neutered today. He was rather distraught when we picked him up. And he was really angry about the Cone of Shame. Like, REALLY. So, we agreed to let him release this statement in lieu of my writing about his experiences today.
Are you kidding me with this?
“Hello. My humans call me Loki. I am also known as The Dog. This morning, at approximately 0715 hours, the tall human brought me to the place where I normally get lots of pets and treats. This morning, though, there were no treats. They took me away from the tall human into a back room I had not seen before. They shaved my paw, and while I was busy sitting there wondering how this weird haircut might mess things up for me with the ladies, they stuck me with a needle. I was appalled. I don’t remember much after that, but I do know that I woke up without my balls. They were there this morning. I’m positive they were there this morning. Anyway, I got some pets and a weird shaved paw and then my balls were gone. I’m still trying to wrap my head around this crime. I feel violated. They took away my reproductive choice without even consulting me about it. What kind of family is this? I’m not sure I can trust these people again. I don’t think we will be working this out. Ever. Like not ever.
Oh…wait. Hold up a second. Gotta go. The tall one just brought my kibble. I’ll take the food from him, but I am for sure going to knock over my water bowl every day for the rest of my life in retribution for the cruelty they exhibited by absconding with my gonads. And the tall one shall henceforth hold my bones when I chew them.”
I took the puppy on his morning walk earlier today while it was snowing. He loves the snow. Loves it. Actually, love might be an understatement. He and his short legs hop through it like a casual rabbit inspecting a yard. He buries his face in it and comes up with his black, button nose covered in white. He flattens himself out into the corgi sploot, the spotted paw pads on his back feet facing the sky, and pulls himself along on his belly as if he is his own sled. His joy in the snow is contagious. And so I love walking him, especially when the snow is still falling and I can revel in his exuberance and the beauty of Mother Nature’s the-sky-is-falling impression.
The snow was powdery and low in moisture. It was so cold that my boots squeaked as I stepped through the snow. About two inches had fallen by the time I got home from carpool and got suited up in my Sorels and my waterproof ski jacket. As we rounded the corner onto the path that runs behind the houses on our side of the street, I noticed an area ahead where it looked like a dog might have rolled around trying to leave a doggy snow angel. When I got closer, though, I noticed there were no dog tracks. Odd, I thought, as I continued on. Next thing I knew my right foot slipped and, before I had the opportunity to save myself, I landed hard on my right side, my elbow and wrist bearing the brunt of the fall. I sat there on the ground a bit dazed for a few moments, and then I noticed there was pain in my shoulder too. Nice. Loki looked at me impatiently. You gonna sit in the snow all day, lady? I have sniffs to get, and we’re not getting any younger. At least now I knew why there had been that impression in the snow. It wasn’t a dog that had rolled but another person who, like me, took a digger. Too bad I hadn’t Sherlock Holmes-ed my way to that conclusion before I discovered there was ice under that snow.
I finished the walk by hobbling along on any grass I could find, hoping to avoid another fall. I made it home without another incident and began packing for my evening flight. Luke and I are flying to Portland for one last college visit. He was accepted into Reed College, but we weren’t able to do an in-person visit there before now because of the school’s Covid restrictions. When they sent Luke his acceptance letter, though, with a copy of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, it felt like Reed might just be a good fit for our fearless reader. So we are on our way to spend a couple hours with a student and see if this is his place.
At any rate, after my fall earlier and in anticipation of developing bruises and pain from my Ice Capades, I decided it might be prudent to add a heat pack to my bag. So I tossed in this eucalyptus-and-peppermint-scented neck wrap I bought off Etsy last year from the Flax of Life shop. The hotel room has a microwave, so I figured better safe than sorry. Getting older can be a bit of a bummer.
The snow stopped in time for our drive to the airport, and with a gorgeous sunset to our west over the Rockies I was feeling pretty confident about our trip. We got a spot in the garage and headed straight for the Clear queue at security. After I did my chalk outline impression in the millimeter wave scanning machine thing, I went to grab my carry on roller bag and noticed it was set off to the side. Well, crap. A TSA employee grabbed the bag and opened it up. She unzipped the portion where the heating pad was and took it out to test it for explosives, I guess, and as she did the stuffed dog I sleep with nightly fell out onto the inspection table. Of course it did. I stared at Elliott (that is his name) on that cold metal table and felt bad that he had been so unceremoniously outed. The residue test on my Etsy purchase came back negative for whatever nefarious crap they were testing it for, so she put it and my dear stuffy back into my bag. No harm, no foul. We were on our way.
There is a beautiful thing about getting older. Eventually you learn not to care. I mean, you still care about the important things, like your family and friends and the health of the planet and maybe the date the next season of Ted Lasso hits Apple TV. But you stop caring about little things you finally understand don’t matter at all and aren’t worth your brain power. I don’t care if the entire TSA line saw my stuffy sitting there (although Elliott might have words for me about it later). I don’t care if I had a heating pad in my bag for an injury I sustained while trying to walk and failing. I don’t care if any of the neighbors saw my less than graceful wipeout. What I do care about anymore is only what my circle of concerns contains. And it definitely does not contain any dignified concern about being exposed as a 53 year old who travels with a stuffed dog.
A friend was telling me today that she is sick of people on hiking web sites complaining about rock piles. I had to ask for clarification about this, but apparently people who are nature purists get quite bent about the rock cairns other people create to help mark a trail. These people feels this is an aberration in the whole “leave no trace” movement. All I have to say about these people is that they haven’t become wise with age. Because if you are lucky, as you age you learn not to give a flying figlet about things that don’t really matter. If you’re lucky, you get old enough to realize that you can only be shamed when your stuffed dog falls onto a TSA table if you decide to give that shaming power to someone else. You learn that there are only so many hours in a day, so righteous indignation about rock cairns might not be the best use of your precious time. You learn not to focus on small things you can’t control (an undignified, painful fall on some hidden ice) and only to focus on what you can control (putting a heating pad in your carry on bag). You learn to say “bless his heart” when an idiot in a lifted truck with truck nuts speeds around you and then cuts you off. You learn to let go.
Life is short. Walk the dog. Fall on ice. Take a trip. Enjoy the relief of a heating pad. Overlook the rock piles. And for holy hell’s sake, stop worrying so damn much. Everything will be fine.
I know spectator sports are not meant to be taken too seriously. Certainly, there are more important things in life, like health, love, food and shelter, and dogs…all the dogs. In every game, one team has to lose. I understand that. I try to keep it in perspective. But, for the love of pete, I am a Buffalo Bills fan and have been my whole life. Tonight’s loss, like the loss last year to the same, stinky Kansas City Chiefs, sucks. It SUCKS. As a Bills fan, I know that each season I am subjecting myself to an endless run of hitting my head against a wall, but I keep hoping. Always and forever hoping that I won’t have to go to my grave without the Bills winning the Super Bowl.
Tonight I made a big old charcuterie platter for the game. We opened a bottle of Beaujolais. I was prepared to lose, but was really hoping we would be able to celebrate. Steve, the boys, and I all cheer for the Bills. As we were watching the game, my mother-in-law said she was rooting for the Chiefs. Wait, what? Excuse me? I should have ejected her from the living room right then and there, but I decided to let her stay and eat. I’ll never know for sure if her misguided support for Kansas City changed the trajectory of the game, but I am still looking for someone to blame. So, there’s that.
Now I will be all in on Team Cincinnati next week. Go Bengals. And at the end of the day, I don’t care who wins the Super Bowl, just as long as it’s not the Chiefs.
About the only good thing to come out of today’s NFL games is that even if the Bills aren’t moving on, neither are Tampa Bay and the insufferable GOAT, Tom Brady. In the absence of a Bills win, I’ll take a Brady loss. Being a sports fan means always trying to keep things in perspective.
This is the forecast for the morning commute tomorrow. Ask me how excited I am. They might as well have written this:
Tomorrow morning your commute will be shitty. Make sure you have your insurance card ready for the accident you will likely be involved in. If you do manage to avoid an accident, rest assured it will take you a full hour longer to get where you are going. Oh….and the roads will be ice covered in snow for the afternoon commute, so that should be fun. Good luck, losers.
I mean, with recent Covid-19, work-from-anywhere transplants from Texas, Florida, California, and Georgia will be on the roads. How bad could this be?
A few months before we went to Hawaii, I mentioned to my husband that it might be a great opportunity to have some family portraits taken. So, I did some research to find us a photographer. The one I tried to book was already spoken for, so she pointed us towards another woman and we booked a thirty minute photo session with her. We ended up taking the photos right at the house where we were staying, which was perfect. At any rate, the photographer took all sorts of different poses with different groups of us. And when we received the photos today, we were happy to discover that we did all actually clean up well and take some lovely photos.
We took some more traditional, look-at-the-camera-and-smile photos, and then she said she wanted to take some candids. She asked us to look at each other and pretend like we were having funny conversations. So, we did. And this is when I discovered my true calling.
I could be a fake model. I am really good at tossing my head back and laughing as if someone just said something really funny. Now that I’ve told you about my skill, though, try to forget it when you tell me a joke.
Some times, due to time constraints, you have to cut corners and do something less than optimal, like have a plain turkey and swiss on gluten free bread for dinner. On those occasions, though, don’t think of yourself as anything less than the marvelous queen (or king, I guess) that you are. Even if dinner is just a yawn of a sandwich, make sure you cut that shit on the diagonal because you are absolutely worth it.
Joe seeks an escape from the deadly dinosaur fangs of a teething, five month old corgi puppy. He finds refuge in the escapee’s usual area of perpetual confinement. Loki runs towards him, desiring to sink his teeth into the socks of distraction, and realizes with regret his fangs cannot find purchase with the plastic wall of dissatisfaction in place. With nowhere for his hormonal malice to go, our tiny, angsty dinosaur regards the human in his cage, and asks the question on everyone’s mind:
We have an almost five month old Pembroke Welsh Corgi puppy named Loki. Years ago, our youngest became obsessed with Corgis and passed his love of them on to us. It wasn’t a hard sell because Corgis are cute. But there are things to know about these sweet, funny puppers before you add one to your family.
They are herding dogs, which means they are definitely not for everyone. Because we’d already owned a herding dog, when we began looking for a second dog, we were well aware of what to expect from one. By nature, herders are incredibly intelligent and energetic. Perhaps the most difficult part of owning a herding dog is understanding that they know what they want, and it can be very difficult to convince them to do something they are not interested in doing. When our border collie was a pup, I took her to training. She would do the requested behavior three to four times and then decided she knew what I was asking for and had enough of doing my bidding. She would then stubbornly sit down and refuse to play any longer. We have discovered some of this same stubbornness in our Corgi, but this is softened because he is highly food motivated and will do almost anything for a snack. Herding dogs are good at amusing themselves, which can be a positive if they do so by playing with a squeaky toy or a negative if they do so by chewing on your carpeting. Overall, we found herding dogs to be our favorite group because of their intelligence and independence, but they can be handful until they are trained and settled in with your family.
Corgis have become quite popular in the last thirty years. Depending on the list, they rank somewhere between 11th and 20th in breed popularity. They draw a crowd wherever they go. We can’t take him anywhere without people stopping to ask if they can pet him. He is eager to meet everyone too. He loves all dogs and all people. I’ve heard them described as the clowns of the herding group, and that is absolutely correct. They can be doofuses. They are endlessly entertaining, tearing around the house with their unlimited energy doing their zoomies, sliding under furniture with their stubby legs (Corgi translates to “dwarf dog” in Welsh), and dramatically flopping themselves down into a Corgi sploot when they are tired or annoyed. They often sleep on their backs, which is adorable. Their appeal is undeniable.
Corgi splootNap time
Although Loki is only 19 weeks, he is almost fully housebroken and already knows several commands. He has most of the basic commands (sit, come, watch me, touch, and leave it) and is learning to walk on a loose leash. I’ve also been able to teach him some tricks. He will spin in a circle on command, stick his nose through a donut toy (I call this command “boop”), and use an “inside voice” (quiet bark).
Boop
But it hasn’t been a non-stop honeymoon. There were a few times over a few weeks when I wondered if we had made a mistake. He is super high energy. On days when we don’t give him enough exercise or mental stimulation, he can be a giant pain in the ass, barking a lot and chewing on every single thing he can find (including our flesh). Since we discovered that our lack of attention and lack of puppy exercise leads him to boredom, which ends in angst, life with our Loki has been infinitely better. We have created a routine that keeps us on track with him. He eats, goes outside, get training time and then play time or a walk, and then gets a nap. With that cycle more or less in place (minus eating more than twice a day), Loki is a charming and sweet little fellow.
During those moments when I thought perhaps we had chosen a demon, I took solace in the fact that in corgi groups on Facebook, many people had multiple corgi dogs. Certainly people wouldn’t purposely subject themselves to several demon dogs if they didn’t at some point become amazing family pets. And, indeed, like many dog breeds, when you understand them and what makes them special, you can curb the less than ideal traits and harness the good ones. Although we were around Loki all the time, on some days we weren’t giving him the mental stimulation he needed. As soon as we changed how we interacted with him, everything turned around. It’s all about understanding the creature in your house.
So, would I get another corgi and join the legions with multiple, short-legged corgi floofs? I would, but I definitely do not think these dogs are for everyone. I knew enough about the breed to realize that naming our puppy after the Norse trickster god of mischief was a good idea. If you aren’t prepared for situations like this, you might want to skip over corgis and get yourself an affectionate lap dog:
This sums up corgi ownership…mischief saved only by cuteness
I was born in a suburb of Buffalo, New York. In 1977, when I was 8 years old, my family relocated to Littleton, Colorado. Most of our family still lives in New York, primarily in the Buffalo area. Although I’ve spent 75% of my life in Colorado and feel as close to a native Coloradan as one can get, one part of Buffalo has always remained with me. I am a Buffalo Bills fan. I know. I know. The Bills can’t win. You think I don’t know that? I was a Bills fan back when they lost four Super Bowls. I am well aware of their history. So, what keeps me a Bills fan despite all the heartbreak? Two things: first, I like an underdog, and second, Bills fans are resilient and have huge hearts.
Don’t believe me? Last weekend, the Bills suffered a disappointing loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers led by Tom Brady. Many Bills fans believe the loss was due at least in part to missed calls by the NFL referees officiating the game. So, what did the Bills Mafia do? Did they sit around and whine about it? No. They found a constructive way to shed light on their loss by donating $17, reflecting the number Bills QB Josh Allen wears, to a local charity for visual impairment. Yep. Bills fans from across the nation and the world have been donating to Visually Impaired Advancement and trolling the NFL refs while doing it. It’s genius. And it reflects how passionate and big hearted Bills fans are. Thus far, Bills fans have raised over $40k for this charity through their generosity.
So, while the Bills may have lost their game last weekend, they haven’t lost their sense of humor or their kind, generous hearts. Bills fans, when encountering another Bills fan, no matter where or when, always shout out “Go Bills.” It’s exactly that camaraderie that makes being a member of the Bills Mafia an honor. Some people cheer only for a winning team, but Bills fans show up win or lose, season after season, always hopeful, always devoted, always involved.
My son sent me a photo yesterday of him and his new(ish) girlfriend. Six hours after he sent the photo, I asked him what color his girlfriend’s eyes are because it was hard to tell from the photo. He answered and that was the end of that. Or so I thought. Today, nineteen hours after I asked what color her eyes are and eighteen hours after he told me they were hazel, he sends me a random text inquiring why I want to know. He had no problem answering the question for me yesterday, so why was he suddenly curious about the question today? It felt like a trap somehow, although I didn’t know why. I decided to deflect thusly:
When I was a kid, my mom had a saying that went, “Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.” Today seemed like an apt time to employ that logic. I mean, why did he think I asked? He has a new girlfriend. Am I not allowed to be curious about her? Geesh.
Because he’s such a good sport, Joe’s response was, “Yooooooo. That’s a solid reason.” Damn skippy, it is, junior.
I’m not really going to harvest her eyeballs for my pagan rituals. It’s a small college and word would get around. Besides, Joe really likes her and she seems to like him too. So, I guess I will save my eyeball harvesting ritual for a girlfriend I don’t like.
Live Now and Zen 