2006 Posts

 05/06/06
CATCHING UP (Blair, Rosie, etc.)

My bad, I haven’t been updating this site for the longest time.  Lack of time and interest.  There’s knitting, there’s the new laptop, and a host of other things.

On February 15th, we lost Blair. She had mellowed down quite a bit and we were getting along quite well.  She has been very attentive to what I want her to do and I thought we were bonding really well.  I bought her this Christmas paw stocking, embroidered with her name…of course with treats inside.  I was just lavishing so much on her because we WERE so much closer.  She never gave any problem as far as getting out to do her business.  She asked to be let out, did it, asked or sometimes demanded to be let in.   I thought we were going to have a great time training her to be just perfect, because she seemed to be on the way to it. She stayed on the bed a lot but we didn’t think much of it because we thought she just loved the bed and she was spoiled. She sometimes wet beds and we didn’t think much about it.  We thought it was just a phase. Then she had this wound on her nose which we thought happened after she stuck her wet nose on icy metal outside. The wound stayed fresh because of where it was, and then it looked like it was getting worse. She was taken to the vet to have it checked out, and she was given antibiotics for it. There was a significant difference between normal concentration of uric acid and her test results. Later on it appeared that that was the problem. She was given steroids.  That didn’t help much.  The sore spread to her mouth and she refused to eat or drink.  She lost 10 pounds in the span of a month, apparently.  Her breath started smelling like pee way before we started worrying.  And with the sores it smelled even worse. The vet said he didn’t think there was anything we could do, unless we want to spend money to bring her to the U of M and have her checked out. It was too much to spend on something that the vet thought was hopeless. So she had to be put to sleep…which we thought was better for her than to have her suffer through it and probably starve to death.

It was very uncharacteristic of me to be so affected by it but, as I said earlier, we’d been bonding.  She had the Christmas stocking which I expected to use every year to put her treats in.  I got her a doggie fleece blanket too.  Also I have sort of accepted that I most probably will not have kids of my own, so I focused on Blair instead.  So the thought of her being put to sleep was especially painful to me.  I told Scott that I wasn’t going to be there when he brings her to the vet. I can’t stand the thought of being there when that happens.  I would have become really hysterical and that wouldn’t have been any help to anyone. There was a lot of crying on and off the day before, on the day itself and then days after that. There might be a few times now that I still think about her and how she was, and that still gets me teary-eyed. It might also have something to do with Rosie being her exact opposite, therefore emphasizing what I don’t see anymore with Blair not being around.

Who’s Rosie?

Way back, I got Scott to agree that I will pick the next pet.  I didn’t expect for that to come so quickly.  Scott said on the day that Blair was put down that maybe we should just see who’s at the shelter.  We don’t have to pick a dog then, he just wanted me to look at my choices. Then later he said we’ll do it the next day. At the time it was upsetting but it did work for us. The next day we went to the shelter and I laid out my criteria.  I wanted a female, adult, not much shedding, mellow, potty-trained and about 30 pounds. There wasn’t anything there that met all the criteria. There was a 6-month old puppy but it was too young and too hyperactive for me. We had passed a yellow lab on the way to the said puppy but she was too big so we didn’t give her much thought. But the volunteer said the magic word…mellow.  And so we had to take a second look. She was the wrong size but that was about it.

He said that a buddy of his found her wandering around his ice house on one of the lakes.  She had no collar, later found to not have a chip either, and she had some icicles hanging down her nose. So the friend brought the dog to the volunteer who kept her over the weekend at his house.  There he found that she’s good around kids and cats and that she’s toilet-trained.  Apparently they called her Betty initially at the shelter but she didn’t answer to that.  She seemed to respond to Rosie though.  She was let out of the kennel and she immediately pranced towards the door, like saying “come on, let’s go” to us. She came back, sat there while getting petted, didn’t bark once, and then proceeded to give me a big wet kiss. I think that’s when she got me hooked, and I decided that I’ve found our dog.

I said earlier that it worked out for us that we didn’t go the day Blair was put to sleep. The day we got there was the day that Rosie was moved from quarantine/observation to adoption.  If we had been there the day before, she wouldn’t have been up for adoption yet.  She needed to be spayed and checked out so the volunteers at the shelter set her up for the next morning at our vet’s clinic. And we were to pick her up there.  So we waited another day. We brought her home later that day and she was her usual quiet self, but also she was quite drowsy from the painkillers.  I didn’t hear her bark until maybe a week later. She doesn’t bark at people or jump on them.  She won’t chase the cat, which puzzled the cat immensely that he found it scary.  the first few days all he did was watch her very closely, arch her back and hiss. Everyone loved her.  It seemed ridiculous to think back to when Scott said that if I choose a dog that the kids don’t like, he’ll get one for them too.  She hit it off just fine with the kids.

At first she was throwing up every now and then. I was thinking it might have something to do with erratic feeding. With 5 people in the house, I guess some people assumed that other people were going to feed Rosie and so sometimes she went without food the whole day. And likewise there might have been days when she was overfed.  I thought that might have something to do with her throwing up. So I told Scott that I was going to take over feeding her so that there will be a fixed feeding schedule.  Of course there’s no assurance that other people are not feeding her leftovers, which Scott had told them not to do.  But at least with the dog food, it was a regular thing. She hasn’t thrown up since. We do have some accidents in the house because she’s so quiet and she doesn’t really let us know when she needs to go out.  She does get walked once or twice a day and it takes 20 minutes or so for her to do her business.  It could also be that she’s letting us know and we just don’t understand that that’s her way of telling us.

She has gotten so attached to our bed that anytime she’s in the house, she’s most likely on our bed. Unlike Blair who was happy enough laying by our feet, Rosie likes cuddling. So a lot of times she is in the middle of the bed, getting some loving from both sides. She loves attention and she loves her “parents” a lot. I don’t know if it’s because we’re the first people she saw here or what, but she’s closer to us than to the kids.  With Blair, she was equally close to everyone.  Rosie seems to prefer our company over the kids’. I think that is a good thing though. Just a couple of days ago, I caught her going downstairs with a hotdog on a bun in her mouth.  The kids don’t discipline her like they need to.  They don’t watch her to make sure she doesn’t get into anything she’s not supposed to have.  She used to not care even if I ate in bed; she didn’t want to smell my food or have some of it.  I assume that someone has introduced the taste of human food to her here, or else she wouldn’t have gone for that hotdog.  She wasn’t hungry, I knew that because she’d just eaten about an hour before that.

I don’t think anyone here is disciplining her as much as she needs to be.  I let her lay on me in bed, which is not a good thing, because it’s an act of possession.  Scott lets her off the leash sometimes, and she just bolts. I dare not do that and I don’t see me taking her off the leash for another 3 years or so, or until I know I can trust her not to get distracted and run after something.  Right now birds and squirrels make her want to chase them.  I suspect that’s how she got lost in the first place. She got out of the house or was let out, and she spotted a squirrel then chased it.  Then she got lost.  I try to train her not to focus on birds and squirrels when she sees them.  She would sit on command but she’s not very good at staying where she is. On average I’d say she would stay put for 5 seconds, no more.  There’s still quite a bit of training to do and she has to be rid of the habit of yanking when she sees the creatures she wants to chase.  I haven’t fallen from her yanking but she’d pulled me a couple of steps a couple of times.  I can almost tell when she’s about to yank, and I yank at her leash just a bit to snap her out of it.

Overall she’s a big sweetie (15 pounds heavier than Blair at her healthiest) and everyone loves her. I just wish people would think more of her welfare than their own motives.  The oldest brat, for some reason, insists on leaving the door to the garage and the back door of the garage open at the same time when he’s grilling out back. It’s wrong on two counts.  First off, the cat has wandered into the garage twice before, and wasn’t found for a couple of days each time.  Second, the dog was the wandering type and, unlike the cat, she’s not afraid to go outside. She actually got lost for a while. One day when I was doing payroll over at the in-laws’ house, I called home to tell Scott to feed Rosie because I wasn’t going to be home in time for her afternoon meal.  He found out she was missing and the two doors mentioned above were both open.  Well, duh!  She wandered out and someone found her a couple of miles away.  Good thing she had our number on her tag and he called to let us know he found her. He had absolutely no trouble getting her to come to him so he could put a leash on her. Another time I caught her just as she got in the garage and was on her way out to the back. She knew to go to the back door, and I concluded that’s how she got out the first time.  Still the oldest brat wouldn’t do anything differently.  The stupid stubbornness just boggles the mind.

And speaking of the oldest brat, he’s supposed to graduate this year.  Scott has said that he has to move out on graduation day.  He refuses to cooperate and live by the rules, he is a bad influence on his brother, and he just refuses in general to use his brain. He can’t be grateful that at 19 he still lives at home rent-free.  He can’t appreciate that his grandpa is the only reason that he’s still working with us is to make his grandpa happy.  He takes up half the space in the fridge with food he claims to share with everyone, and yet if someone finishes off his milk, he’s upset.  He’d use eggs that Scott bought but if Scott used any of his, he rants.  He would not take money from Scott so he can buy groceries on his way home…groceries that he uses up very quickly himself.  It’s not like he’s being asked to pay for them.  All he had to do was pick them up.  Apparently that’s too much to do.

Another thing that’s apparently hard to do is leaving his brother alone. If he’s not bullying him, he’s teaching him a whole bunch of crap, of course with every other word being a foul word, or he’s distracting the kid from schoolwork that needs finishing just by being there.  He can’t see how he’s not being a good example or influence.  He refuses to open his mind to the idea that he might need to let up or change how he deals with the kid.  No kid needs to get used to the language he uses.  It’s not something anyone wants to hear from a 12-year old, so why constantly expose him to it? But that’s what he gets from listening to that rap crap that teaches nothing good. That’s what he wants to emulate, never mind that he didn’t grow up in a ghetto or had a hard life.  In fact, even if he thinks he’s tough, there is that undeniable fact that he grew up in a small town that’s mostly white, and he’s a suburban kid through and through.  If New York scared him, I don’t know where he got the idea that he’s tough. I personally think he’s afraid of more things than I am. I personally think I am a lot more streetsmart than he ever would be.

Of course there is the usual disrespect that’s always been there.  There’s no reason for him to follow rules, according to him.  Apparently he can’t wait to get out of here and be on his own.  I sure hope so. No one would like that better than me. The sooner he’s out the better.  No one is made happy by his presence in this house. If there’s anyone out there that thinks he’s a delight to be around, I suggest they live with him for a couple of years, then tell me if they still think the same way.  If they do, more power to them. If not, they can just shut up. I wouldn’t go so far as to say no one is going to miss him even if he moved out of state but I think it will be a great relief to Scott and me if he stayed out of our house. He doesn’t do anyone any good, he wouldn’t exert any effort to make other people happy or even just make their lives easier. As far as I’m concerned, he needs to learn just how tough it is dealing with him.  I think he should be on his own. I am curious to find out how he intends to pay the rent, pay the bills and and eat the way he does now. I want to see how he can afford to eat 2 pounds of meat a day, 2 dozen eggs a week, drink a gallon of milk a day…all on minimum wage, after taxes and bill payment.

Maybe then he’ll have an appreciation of his dad buying things for everyone…or maybe not.  He probably will be too damn stubborn to see the lesson behind everything. That would be just like him. I pity whoever thinks he’s good enough to live with. I pity the girl who decides he’s the one for her…either she isn’t smart or she has very low self-esteem. She’s going to be someone easy to manipulate and prone to take abuse without so much as a groan. He’s never going to have a long-term and stable relationship for as long as he’s the same as he is now. He thinks he’s all that. All he needs to change that view is to sit back and think about what talents he has and what he actually has to offer.

It’s really going to be curious how this all works out.  I don’t think that he’ll make it on his own too long. He will run out of money because of how much he spends on food.  He will start eating at his grandparents’ and he just might move in with them after the funds have run dry. I think he might drop by here too to eat.  Once a moocher, always a moocher. Why stop now?  Especially with grandparents and a father who can’t turn him down no matter how badly he treats them. I’m just glad he’s not my kid…although I doubt that the bad behavior would go so far if he were mine.

Well, that’s all the ranting that’s left in me for now.  We’ll see how it goes this year.  I don’t promise to add a lot more unless one of the brats acts up enough to rile me…I almost expect that to happen.

This entry was posted on August 16, 2006 at 6:15 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.