I am Karan from Olympia, WA.
Almost every other name used here is a pseodonym pseudonim pseudonymn alias.
The rest of it is true - mostly - and all of it is my own.
Don't even think about taking any of it, unless of course, you want to pay me.
Random Wisdom: No legacy is so rich as honesty - William Shakespeare
The counter says that 2846366 have been flummelized, but I personally think it's all a big lie.
I promised to fill you all in and here it is...poop no more.
End of story.
and of course, by your birthday, I mean mine.
First...I wish me a happy blog anniversary...7 years and counting. With a quick click of the pay now button, I just committed myself to five more years of the flummel.com domain which hopefully means that I’ve got 5 more years of blogging in me.
Second, yes, today is also my birthday. It started early today, in fact a quick glance at the alarm clock revealed that it was 12:36 when Riso started all that doggy moaning and groaning that accompanies a rousing bout of doggy diarrhea. And he went and went and went all night long...interrupted only by hair melting aromas and a run through the house to the front door so his exploding happened outside. Yay.
Leonard left early for work with instructions to me to water down the doggy poo puddles all around the yard. Yeah. As if.
The good news is that Riso is feeling better. The continuing bad news is that someone had to give him a bath because he smelled way foul. El Jay long ago abscounded with our hose so the only cleansing option available was the shower. Riso hates the shower. I hate sharing it with the dog. I hosed him off. I poured water on him. I lathered him up and I rinsed him off. Still the poop remained...all that butt scrubbing failed. Scissors will be the only solution and I cannot do it alone. So, sometime between happy birthday to Karan and all that present opening, Leonard will hold the pooch and I will clip off poop laden clumps of hair around his anus. And...I still have the joy of cleaning out the shower to look forward to.
You do know that I’m going to fill you in on the upcoming details of this de-pooing don’t you?
My life is so filled with glamour.
Cell phone story - One Life to Live, June 10, 2009
This is how Riso spends his lazy afternoons. The only
thing missing is a box of bon bons and a soap opera
on the tellie.
On work days, Leonard gets up early in the morning, between 4:30 and 5. Don’t worry, I sleep right through his get up and get ready. The dog and cat don’t. They sit right in front of that closed bathroom door waiting and waiting and waiting for Leonard to get dressed and pressed and brushed and fluffed and when he at last opens that door, they seem to dance with canine and feline joy. Almost every day some part of my sleepy brain hears Leonard grouse about them being all in his way as he steps over them to go downstairs.
It’s his fault you know because every morning he lets them out to pee and gives each critter their morning measure of kibble, then shares lunch meat tidbits with them as he makes his own lunch. Please note here that I stay in bed and try to fall back into my stuporous sleep that has served me so well for so long. I do not get up with Leonard. I do not make him breakfast and I certainly don’t make his lunch for him. I am not that kind of wife. Not even.
Anyway, I noticed a while ago that these animals know the behaviors that they can reasonably expect from their humans and one of those behaviors is that I don’t get up at 4:30 or 5 am and I certainly won’t pee and feed them then. They both quietly sleep until sometimes as late as 8:30am for me to stir and take care of their physical needs and hunger. Please note here that I do not give either one of them lunch meat tidbits. Not even.
I like this arrangement and I always make sure Leonard knows how well it works for me.
Sometimes I think he might hate me when I say it.
Riso is at the groomer all day and you know what that means? We can leave food out on the counter, we can leave the trash can open and out and we can go in and out the front door without blocking the opening! It feels like a little gift.
My dog Riso is a Portuguese Water Dog, an ancient breed bred by Portuguese fishermen to do a number of water tasks including herding fish toward nets, carrying messages between fishing boats and retrieving stuff fallen over board. It is a strong breed, very intelligent and an extremely joyful, fun loving companion sort of dog. I adore him even when he drives me nuts.
Like today.
Riso doesn’t like water. He doesn’t like getting wet and when he does, it takes him a bit to recover from it. It’s true that he’s shocked me by voluntarily plunging into Puget Sound, but this has only happened three times and twice he was enticed by a swimming Rejjieje.
It’s raining here today - not the icy cold stuff that falls the other nine months of the year, but warm swimming pool rain and Riso needed to pee. First he barked at the back door and when I opened it, he stood there looking at the wet deck and refused to step out into the drippy wetness. I closed the door, sat down and about two minutes later he barked to go out at the same door. The process was repeated. He looked at the rain, thought about it and stepped away from the door.
Two minutes later, he barked at the front door. I opened it, he stepped out onto the porch and saw that it was raining in the front yard, watched it for another thirty seconds then turned around and went back inside, walked to the back door and barked there.
Now keep in mind that Riso is a very smart pooch. I doubt that he forgot it was raining in the back yard. Maybe he thought that the back yard and the front yard existed in different zip codes. As expected, he still didn’t want to go out and now I was starting to panic that he was planning to wait out the rain....a poor strategy and one that has resulted in ginormous PWD puddles inside the house.
So, I applied the technique that always works. I snapped on his leash walked him five feet beyond the deck and gave him the pee on demand order, “Go potty.”
He peed and peed and peed and I was relieved myself knowing that I wasn’t going to have to clean that flood.
He returned to the dry inside environs he favors, curled up under my desk and is currently taking a nap.
I think we adopted a Portuguese Waterless Dog, either that or we missed a trainable moment when he was a puppy.
