Life with Dogs

There is an old saying that if you lie down with dogs, you will get up with fleas.  I say, with a good application of Frontline and weekly baths, a dog is frequently a better companion and happier house guest than many humans.  However, living with dogs creates some choices in our lives.

When I purchased my little blue house under the sycamore, I had my eye on the screened in patio as a good indoor/outdoor space for animals and humans.  Roofed, it has protection against the weather, the screen to keep off ’skeeters, and enclosed so that “outside” doesn’t mean loose and exposed to the big, bad world.

What I didn’t realize was that the wood holding the screening is half-rotted from weather exposure (and from being the wrong kind of wood) and the screen was old and rotten.  Failing to check this nearly cost me the life of my dear Matilda.  On the third day of my occupancy, she went through a hole in the screen and tried to follow me to work.  This caused one of the worst 48 hours of my life  as I walked the neighborhood, calling, posting signs, calling the animal shelter, stopping at the police station, knocking doors, and walking and calling again.  I even posted notices online.

I left the door to the patio open, left one of my old shirts (one that was good and smelly from yard work) so she would know I was there, put out food and water–and kept on walking and calling. 

I lost her on a Friday afternoon, she turned up on the patio Sunday morning.  She was glad to see me, I was glad to see her!

I mended that patio screen (and mended it, and mended it), and finally put welded wire fencing on the inside of it.  I made a door in the side of the patio leading into a standard 10×10 dog kennel roofed with poultry netting so that the cats could go out and sun themselves.

Then, at the end of my first school year in my new location, we got Ebony.

Ebony was strictly unplanned.  After Babar, my German Shepard/Doby/wolf mix, I swore I would never have another big dog.  That old boy led me many a merry chase around the neighborhood, and led me more than I led him when we went walking.  Worse, when it came time for veterinary stuff, he was large enough to be quite a tussle to medicate.  Matilda and I were getting along just fine.  My old girl usually comes when called. (That 48 hours was a BIG exception.)  She’s a mid-sized dog, weighing about 35 pounds; which makes her small enough to pick up if I need to do so, and to medicate.  She’s a good girl, except when it comes to rain and potty time.  Little dogs melt in the rain, you see.  How can anyone expect such a delicate thing to get wet?  The result of a rainstorm is usually a not-so-delicate thing to clean up.

Ebby was just a baby when I got him, but he was already nearly as big as Tilda.  He had been dumped at the school where I work, and I brought him home.  Stray dogs plus school kids equals potential lawsuit.  Besides, while some are gentle with dogs, others are not.  A school yard is no place for a homeless puppy.

I got him his puppy shots, wormer, flea stuff and fed him.  And he grew.  And grew…well, you can see where this is going.  He’s even more of a handful on a lead than Babar was; and I’m several years older.  Were it not for a young friend who helps with the dogs, he wouldn’t get walked very often.  I really prefer walking on my feet to skating on my face at the end of a lead.  (Hopefully, we can fix this before the end of summer.) 

Puppies love to chew, and Ebs is no exception.  In fact, he is one super-duper shredder rending machine.  The dogs stay in what used to be the dining room.  First, I had to move out all the books I had shelved in that room because my boy loves a good book.  He will devour it and leave it in peices all over the room, or create a good start on recycling it as fertilizer.  I’m not at all sure wood pulp is good for puppies, and I was dead certain if I wanted to read my books again they and Ebby had to be separated.

Next, we moved my room mate’s nice hard wood table out (it got stored in two parts–one in the living room, one upstairs in the attic) because the dogs thought it was a lovely place to sit.  I have electronic items stored in plastic boxes in that room; even that isn’t perfectly safe.  The edges and handles of this box are well chewed.  Ebby thinks that anything that hits the floor in his area is a puppy toy, so I lost a couple of VHS tapes and some plastic coat hangers because the cats knocked them off the tall shelf where I hoped they would be safe.  Chew toys are a grocery day staple. 

For several months during the winter, I was able to let the dogs out the backdoor, and immediately let them into the patio.  They were very good about going right in when called.  But as spring rolled around, and Ebony was getting to be big boy.  The world was getting to be just TOO interesting, and after nearly losing him a couple of times, changes had to be made.  There is no door between the house and the Patio.  There may have been one once, but it was covered up in one of the many remodeling sessions this house has undergone.  The only window to the patio goes right over the kitchen sink.

It wasn’t a grand choice, but it was a workable choice.  The dogs and cats now go in and out the window, kind of like the old game.  Needless to say, I don’t do dishes there anymore.  I have a pair of red tubs that I use for dish washing.  One nice thing about that:  I can settle down in the living room and watch TV while scrubbing up the dinnerware.

Like the popular song put it, “It isn’t having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got” that makes a happy home life.  For me, that’s a life that includes animals and plants, family and friends.  To accommodate their needs, sometimes it is necessary to think outside the ordinary.

Related Articles:

• Adoption a Pet: What Our Pets Teach Us
• How to have a Homeless Pet Party
• The Importance of Adopting an Animal
• October is National Adopt-a-Shelter-Dog Month