Tag Archives: dogs

The Best Kind of Motivation

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about motivation and its many forms. It’s a timely topic, of course, because this is the general time of year when people are already beginning to give up on their New Year’s resolutions, which often seem to involve unused gym memberships and anti-chocolate sentiments that are frankly unnatural. (This video blog by danisnotonfire is a terrifyingly accurate summary of same.) Personally, I don’t go in for New Year’s resolutions; I like to make resolutions and completely fail at them year-round, because I feel like with any skill it’s important to keep in practice. So my struggle with motivation is more or less perpetual.

My dog Trudeau with a snowy muzzle

This face right here is pretty motivating, too. If I don’t take this dog outside, how is he supposed to frolic joyfully and cover himself in snow?

It’s not that I don’t want to do the things I should be doing, it’s mostly just a matter of overcoming inertia. If it’s a choice between staying on my computer or running the dog, the choice is obvious because one of them’s entertaining and the other one’s going to leave me gasping like a landed fish. And then once I’ve dragged myself away from whatever is fascinating me on my computer screen to take the dog for a run, I have to spend the entire duration of our exercise making myself keep going when I’d really rather walk or stop or possibly collapse into a heap in the nearest pile of snow. (Trudeau does it all the time, it seems like fun.)

Still, I’m pretty serious about the running, I want to improve, I want to keep going, and it makes the dog so happy that he has like joy-seizures, so I drag myself out of the house for it. Plus, in cold weather like we’re having, it’s easier to keep warm at a run than at a walk. (Usually I can’t feel my face, but you don’t need your face for running, anyway.) I also motivate myself with a solid rewards system: I have a few good audiobooks on my MP3 player, most of them read by either by Benedict Cumberbatch or Tom Hiddleston, and which I am only allowed to listen to if I’m running. (As it turns out, beautiful voices murmuring in your ears while you exercise is really motivating and also kind of distracting. Not that I’ve jogged face-first into any lampposts or anything. Yet.)

Today was finally the breaking point of our long cold snap; I’d been pondering a movie matinee but I didn’t want to waste the weather, so I resolved to at least take the dog for a short run. Between my hectic holiday work schedule and my traditional end of year being-sick-a-thon, I hadn’t gone running in at least a month. Trudeau was absolutely beside himself when we headed for our usual running route, but I wasn’t doing so awesome. I managed to turn my ankle just crossing the street before we even got to the park, which is probably why as soon as I started carefully picking up the pace, my knee started making its own contributions of weakness and shooting pain. I ran it off like every one of my gym teachers ever have wisely advised, and for most of our run — which really I should call a “slow meander” because I was trying to ease back into it — I was doing pretty good. Around the halfway point, everything started to hurt and I really, really wanted to stop running.

And then I found my motivation.

There hadn’t been anybody at all out and about on the walking path, but suddenly Trudeau started craning his neck back behind us and generally acting like a psycho, which is usually a sign that somebody in the vicinity has a dog and Trudeau thinks he needs to fight it. I looked back and there was nothing there. So I urged Trudeau on, but I don’t know if you realize this, it’s really difficult to keep up a steady pace when there’s a 110-lb jackass on the other end of the leash displaying behavior that’s usually only seen on Jersey Shore. So I turned to look again, and this time I saw what Trudeau was so worried about: a big black lab sprinting after us through the snowy field beside the trail, right across the frozen pond.

I found my second wind, dropped a few dog biscuits on the trail in hopes that our follower would get distracted, and we ran for it. Every time I thought we’d lost him, the little bastard would turn up again, keeping a careful distance but running for us flat-out every time we started to pull away.

For all I know that dog was running after us shouting the doggy version of “Let me love you!” but he was a good 80 pounds and didn’t appear to be neutered and frankly, unleashed dogs are the bane of my very existence in any case. They might be perfectly friendly, but Trudeau has a talent for being so offensive to other dogs that even the saints among them want to give him a beating, and the last thing I want to deal with basically ever is a dog fight and the vet bills that are always sure to follow.

So I dropped more dog biscuits to slow him down, and he probably thought it was all a great game where I run like hell and he gets dog biscuits, but that all ended when I turned and stood my ground, shouted at him that he was a very bad dog and go home, and started lobbing snow balls. At which point the lab looked at me like I had crushed all of his dreams, like he thought we were bros, man, and then he turned and wandered back the way he came, like it was all fine and he didn’t want to hang out with us anyway.

I was relieved to finally be rid of him, but then I realized I was back at the entrance to the park, and I’d run my entire route without hardly thinking about the agony, and then I wondered if maybe I could convince that lab to terrify me regularly, if only I could bring along enough dog biscuits.

What We Have Here Is An Interspecies Failure To Communicate

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My dog Trudeau is a constant source of bewilderment to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pretty good with animals. At least, I think I am, if I judge myself by the standards I’ve developed from watching It’s Me or the Dog and My Cat From Hell. Admittedly, I might be skewing my sample about what constitutes an average pet owner by only comparing myself to people who are in such desperately bad situations with their pets that they have to go on television before the nation and admit that they’re the worst pet owners ever. At least it’s good for my self-esteem.

It’s just that reading an animal, at least on a basic level, isn’t that hard. I’ve always thought it’s pretty easy to tell the difference between a horse’s “oh yes, please scratch me there” face and its “if you touch me there I am seriously going to bite you in your most sensitive and squishy bits” face. A cat will clearly tell you whether it is pleased with your attentions as its minion or whether it’s about to scratch your face off as punishment for your impertinence, and it can communicate that with nothing but the tip of its tail. Dogs are even easier, because their happiness involves full-body wriggling and tail-wagging while their “I am so freaked out I might try to bite your jugular” body posture tends to be unsettling in a way that our human hindbrains can recognize as an impending wolf attack.

This is the expression that means he’s pining for the fjords.

It’s not like Trudeau himself should be all that complex a puzzle, anyway. He’s not by nature neurotic or hyper or mean or moody. Sure, with some of those ultra-intelligent herding breeds you end up expending so much energy just trying to keep them busy that eventually you find yourself thinking that it wouldn’t be that hard to teach your dog to play Scrabble. And anyway, Scrabble is the last of your worries because you’re starting to suspect that while you’re at work, he’s building a nuclear reactor in the basement. Trudeau is decidedly not one of those dogs. He’s mild-mannered, eager to please, quite trainable, and overall pleasant (unless you’re another dog, in which case he’d like for you to come closer so he can punch you in the face but he might warm up when he gets to know you better). He’s usually pretty low-maintenance. Usually.

The problem is simply that we don’t speak the same language, and this leads to frustration on everybody’s part. Like, sometimes I’ll be doing my thing, chilling on the couch with my laptop watching cat videos on the Internet or whatever it is people do (people being me, it usually involves staring at pictures of Tom Hiddleston and making whimpering noises), and Trudeau will come stick his head all up in my business, which I’m pretty sure he finds funny because of the squawking sounds I make while I’m desperately trying to keep his drool and my keyboard from meeting one another. In any event, this sort of aggressive affection is international Trudeau-speak for “I want something and I want it too badly to be polite about it right now so can we just set aside the Canadian prime minister jokes and please get on this issue right now.” I’m totally magnanimous, I can rise to the occasion and refrain from making cracks about Canadians and politeness, obviously. The problem is working out what the “something” is that he’s so desperate for.

Most of the time it’s not complicated: he wants to go out, or he thinks it’s his mealtime regardless of whether it’s anywhere near his actual mealtime. (He recognizes that time is not linear and is rather a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey… stuff. Which means it should always be dinner time.) But when he’s just been for a nice long walk an hour ago, followed up by a trick-training session to exercise his mind, a rousing game of “find the treats I have hidden around the house,” and a delicious supper, it’s kind of hard to think of what else he might need. And since he doesn’t actually speak English, except for a few key words like “sit,” “stay,” “roll over,” and “outside,” he can’t even give me the nod when I’ve hit the right item on a whole list of potential answers. I usually rattle them off aloud anyway, because it makes me feel like I’m being proactive about the situation. When “outside” fails to elicit any sort of obviously enthusiastic response, I’m forced to get more creative.

He may try to convince you that he’s never been on a walk before while you are in fact still in the middle of taking him for a walk. Do not believe his lies.

Does he want a snuggle? Is he just trying to weasel his way onto the couch? Maybe he’s distressed that I’ve moved the ottoman to where I can put my feet up on it and have therefore screwed up the room’s feng shui? Is Timmy down the well? Is he concerned about the situation in Gaza? Am I neglecting him? Does he feel like his life is passing him by and he’s not achieving any of his dreams and he’s only just realized that he’s never going to be able to start that woodworking business he’s always dreamed of because he doesn’t have thumbs? Is it just a general sense of ennui? Does he want to discuss his feelings? Do we need to hug it out?

Usually I end up trying at least a few of my more practical suggestions, like giving him a hug or relocating to the floor so I’m in a better position for snuggling if that’s he needs. I’d offer to buy  him a lathe or something so he could hone his woodworking skills but honestly I think it would all just end in tears. I try explaining that to him gently while he just stares at me, getting more and more frustrated, expressing his dire and all-consuming need for something by decorating me with streaks of drool.

Once we’ve dispensed with this ritual, I’m usually flabbergasted enough to try the things I’ve already ruled out, and since he’s never actually succeeded in convincing me that I haven’t actually given him dinner yet, I usually end up taking him outside, where it quickly becomes apparent that at some point he has slurped down his entire very large bowl full of water and does, indeed, need to relieve himself again. Or he just needed a nice wallow on his back in the grass. Or he was dying to try to make friends with a neighborhood squirrel. (Not normal friends, though. Murder friends. Trudeau is not pro-squirrel.)

Mostly, I think it’s just a test he likes to conduct occasionally, to make sure my obedience training is coming along: he wants to make sure that he’s still able to convince me to take him outside on demand for no apparently obvious reason. Which actually is okay with me, because I live in fear of the day that he truly realizes how quickly he can get me off the couch and out the door just by hacking like he’s about to toss his proverbial cookies. I don’t think my nerves could take it.

My Dog Trudeau Makes Some Seriously Poor Life Choices

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My dog Trudeau is kind of an idiot. I say this with all possible love and affection, but seriously though.

“I don’t know what you mean. I am ALL CLASS.”

Case in point. Trudeau is kind of dog-aggressive, meaning that sometimes he gets on just fine with other dogs and sometimes he is a colossal tool. This makes my life difficult primarily because it’s generally impossible to tell, when Trudeau reacts with excitement to another dog, whether he wants to play with it or beat it until it pees itself. Also, since Trudeau weighs in at 110 pounds, he can be a little hard to handle when he decides to get in touch with his inner bastard. As a result, he’s simply restricted from getting anywhere near other dogs, which clearly drives him crazy and doesn’t help the problem, but what the hell, dog? You’d be able to indulge in all the glories of the dog park if you weren’t such a son of a bitch.

I guess if you’re a dog this could be like… the canine equivalent of Chucky? Or clowns, maybe.

We’ve been working long and hard on his ability to listen to me rather than flipping his lid, but still, he is a dog. It’s not like I can just explain things and expect him to be rational. I thought at least his issues were rooted in some form of genuine dog behavior voodoo until the other week when we were passing a vendor’s table at a street fair. The guy had a stuffed German Shepherd toy on his table to show off the collars he was selling.

Trudeau caught sight of this completely fake dog and went full Cujo. I have never, in all the time I’ve had him, heard him bark and snarl and generally just go ape-shit the way he did over that stuffed toy. I’m pretty sure we gave the booth vendor — who had his back to us at the time — a heart attack. His life probably flashed before his eyes.

Once I’d dragged Trudeau away from the offending plushie, I said, “What the hell, dog?! THAT IS NOT EVEN A REAL DOG YOU JUST WENT INSANE OVER.”

And he said, “What? That was totally justified. He said something about my mom.” Or at least, that’s what I imagine he said. It’s sort of what he said with his eyebrows. I don’t actually think my dog talks to me. Honest.

Still, sometimes I think his general psychopathy is the least of his problems. A few days ago I took him for a walk on the local parkway, which runs along a sort of small swampland and is generally just choked with weeds and gnats and kind of nasty river grasses. (It’s actually not always a pleasant place to walk and it’s kind of covered in graffiti for some reason but whatever, it’s close to home and well removed from Utah’s insane drivers.) Trudeau chose to divert himself by eating vegetation, which normally I don’t mind — I feed him greens myself and I think variety is important to a dog’s diet, plus eating grass seems to be an important part of settling his stomach when he’s feeling not-super. But normally he’s eating a few handfuls of grass here and there. This time he chose to eat weedy seed-heads. You know, the kind that sort of look like wheat, with essentially big spines on them? The kind that look profoundly inedible? Things sort of went like this:

Me: Oh my GOD, dog, STOP eating those things! You are going to puke them back up and it is not going to be pleasant because they are practically BARBED.
Trudeau: You’re not my real mom! *noms*
Me: This is not going to end well for either of us, you realize this.
Trudeau: These are SO GOOD! *noms* Let’s take some home! We can grow our own! I’ll poop the seeds out and we can start a GARDEN, lolz! *noms*
Me: I hate you, did you know that? I wish I could just let you walk home by yourself so nobody would know that we know each other.
Trudeau: I don’t know what you’re so upset about. *pukes*

He waited until we were at the farthest point from home, of course, and then he started throwing up seed-heads, one seed-head at a time. We’d take ten steps and then he’d start hacking like a twelve-pack-a-day smoker, and leave behind a little puddle of vileness with a single sprig of vegetation at its center. Walk ten steps, repeat. When we finally got back to the river again, I let him eat swampgrass for a good five minutes, which finally settled his stomach, but that really could’ve gone either way… it could’ve just caused him to puke even more violently for the next twenty minutes. These are the kinds of choices that our dogs drive us to.

Trudeau is known for his poor food choices, though. He once chose to sneak a drink from a pasture drainage ditch while I was busy re-tying my shoelace, and took a nice big drink of brackish, standing manure run-off water. (That didn’t end well.) The photo below was taken his first time at the ocean, and as you can see he is drinking huge mouthfuls of seawater, presumably because his previous mouthfuls of seawater made him thirsty.

He will also eat anything that is thrown at his face, and simply assume that it is edible. He’s a very trusting soul. Usually he won’t bother to smell or taste it, he’ll just shovel it down his gullet. I’m pretty sure if I threw a chainsaw at his face he’d swallow it. Actually, we could possibly turn that into a sideshow act and maybe he’d earn his keep for once. Lord knows he’s not going to acquire any other sort of gainful employment, unless you can count “being a total knob” as an occupation.

If you enjoyed this post, I would like to offer you some additional recommended reading. You might enjoy my previous post about the day I threatened to develop psychic powers just so I could destroy my dog remotely, but I also want to very seriously recommend both Texts From Dog (every moment of it is pure genius) and Hyperbole and a Half‘s blogs titled Dog (in which the author administers an IQ test to her dog) and Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving, in which the Simple Dog discovers she’s magical and can make food, and the Helper Dog has a nervous breakdown. Both of these authors are seriously genius and I hope you will enjoy the ever-loving hell out of them. While you’re doing that, I’ll be over here, giving my dog Trudeau this IQ test…

A Walk Through Dimple Dell Nature Park

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Recently I took my dog Trudeau on an excursion to Dimple Dell Nature Park in Sandy, Utah. This adventure was extensively researched and pre-planned, by which I mean that I was looking for directions to somewhere else on Google Maps and found myself wondering what that big block of green was over there and whether it might be of some use to me in attempting to exhaust my dog, and so I decided to take him there completely on impulse.

Exhausting my dog is, in fact, something of a personal mission of mine. It never works out — he always out-staminas me, the bastard — but he likes to allow me my illusions and I find it diverting to seek out new adventures on his behalf. Because it was raining off and on even in the valleys that day, there was no way that I was going to attempt any mountain trails, but Dimple Dell looked promising, since according to the maps it ran right through the middle of residential areas. Our duties discharged and errands run, we drove on toward the trailhead (well I say we, but I was driving, because no matter how much he begs I am not going to give Trudeau the keys). The Granite Park Trailhead was surprisingly easy to find, and from there we had plenty of options, with several small dirt tracks branching off directly from the trailhead and a single large, well-maintained, woodchipped path which soon revealed itself by way of signage to be the North Rim trail. Figuring that it would be very difficult for me to get lost on such an expanse of trail (difficult but not impossible, because it is me we’re talking about here), we stuck primarily to the North Rim trail.

Although the wood chips undoubtedly make for a nice dry trail even on wet days, I found the footing far too spongey to be comfortable — it’s just enough like walking on a sand dune to tire you out. Trudeau had no such qualms, but he also spent most of the walk sniffing things, peeing on things, and trying to engage other dogs in fisticuffs, so he probably wasn’t paying much attention to the footing.

Dimple Dell is an on-leash park, but Trudeau makes a hobby out of breaking the rules, because he is a rebel. And I only took his leash off long enough to snap a photo, because he is also kind of a dick.

Despite the fact that Dimple Dell is apparently 644 acres in total, the sections of trail that we covered felt more like a neighborhood park than a wilderness trail. The trail truly does run through neighborhoods and often winds along the back fences of houses, which is not always a pleasant experience when there are dogs in there and you have Trudeau along, because as mentioned previously, Trudeau is kind of a dick.

Still, the walk was quite pleasant, with some beautiful views of the very close Wasatch range, and more distant views of the Oquirrhs.

We didn’t spot much in the way of wildlife, unless you count lichen…

I don’t even know if this is actually lichen, I just like to say “lichen”.

…and a few scrub jays, which insisted on staying just far enough away that I could barely get a decent photo, even with my longest zoom.

Come over here bird, I just want to be your friend. Trudeau might try to eat you, though. He tries to eat everything.

There was also a dog in a backyard, which I heard but never actually saw, which made a growling sound that was eerily similar to that of a mountain lion and which nearly gave me a heart attack. Oh and also a few kids in a backyard, one of whom leaned over his back fence and shouted to his friends for a good five minutes, “DEER POOP! THERE’S DEER POOP BACK HERE! HEY YOU GUYS, I FOUND SOME DEER POOP!” So one must assume that there are occasionally also deer, but I never saw any. Nor their poop, for that matter.

All in all, it was an enjoyable way to pass an afternoon, and it warmed up enough that I wished I had in fact pre-planned (water would’ve been a good idea) and Trudeau almost seemed a little tired by the time we got back to the trailhead. We could probably spend weeks covering all of the trails in Dimple Dell, which branched out like spiderwebs along the ridgelines and valleys, but since we don’t live in that area — and I prefer more well-packed trails — we probably won’t be frequent visitors, no matter how attractive the lichen is.

[Edit: WOOHOO, thanks WordPress for Freshly Pressing this entry, and thanks to everyone for visiting! If you'd like to read more on what it's like to live in Utah and how it can turn you into a homicidal maniac, you might also be interested in one of my most recent entries, It's Just Like the Road Warrior, Only with Minivans. I hope you'll stick around and read a bit more!]

In Which Trudeau Performs The Reverse Jackrabbit

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My dog Trudeau loves the snow. And by “loves,” what I mean is “goes completely insane at the sight of it and possibly has a seizure.” I’ve often said that he’d be an easy job to track in the snow, because not only are his paws massive, but every few steps you’ll find a bite-mark between his front paw tracks where he’s paused for his own personal version of a snow cone.

I hadn’t realized exactly how much our incredibly mild winter — we’ve gotten almost no snow until this week — had depressed the poor little guy until we had a few storms this week that brought with them a scant few inches of accumulated snow. I took Trudeau out in the early afternoon and snow was just beginning to fall; he didn’t seem to notice. A few hours later I took him to the Jordan River Parkway for a walk — we both needed some exercise before it started snowing again — and it was as if tasty-fluffy-fun-whiteness had just appeared on the ground for his entertainment.

Trudeau isn’t given to the sorts of displays that other dogs might give. He almost never barks, he doesn’t really do much that’s high-energy… but he loves to bound in the snow and he loves to play tug. So I indulged him when he found his joy in the fresh-fallen, almost unmarked snow. He’d leap and twist in mid-air, making a grab for the leash and then dropping it because he’d found a particularly nice drift in which to suddenly flop as if he’s forgotten how to stand. We left mad, looping tracks in the snow (which was already melting away, and hadn’t amounted to much to begin with), and I couldn’t help but think of the next person who came along pulling a Prince Humperdinck (from The Princess Bride, natch) and deducing our epic battle from the tracks we’d left in the snow.

Trudeau proudly displaying the chaos of our tracks in the snow

"There was a mighty duel. It ranged all over. They were both masters."

Trudeau seems to be most fond of aerial moves — and with his natural grace and agility it kind of amazes me that he always seems to land on his feet — but my favorite is one I like to call “The Reverse Jackrabbit.” He jumps, lands in a bow with his forelegs on the ground, and his lower jaw thrust straight into the snow like a shovel. Then he bounds up again, half-melted snow flinging from his jowls… it’s not what John Masefield was talking about when he wrote about “the flung spray and the blown spume” but that’s still the phrase that comes to mind. The tracks Trudeau has left behind in the snow make it look as if a giant jackrabbit has sat there for a moment, before hopping away.

He's a very dignified creature.

It’s nice to see him get excited, at least. One of the things that makes him perfect for me is that he likes to spend a good portion of his day just lying around and sleeping, but it is nice to see him go a little nuts about something other than the prospect of hitting another dog until it pees itself.

He does get a bit excited about walks, though. We had a nice stroll around the Parkway, and I purposely took him down a path that was nothing but mud and goose-related smells, and he had a hell of a good time. Then the neighbor’s dogs threatened him and he enjoyed that too, and then I took him home and we practiced his new tricks for awhile. (He mostly enjoyed that because of the dessicated lamb bits, but his circus-pony rear and his playing-dead are coming along beautifully.) And then he made his favorite derp-face. Again. The end.

Derp!

Excuse me, my good sir or madam, would you like to see a bald eagle?

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I’m walking my dog in the park. It’s nearly dark already — slept away my weekend again, second verse same as the first — and the streetlamps have just come on. A pair of men pass on the sidewalk, going in the opposite direction, and I smile and nod absently; it sounds like they’re speaking Russian to each other, but I’m not really listening; in my earbuds, The Tragically Hip are singing, Twenty years for nothing, well that’s nothing new; besides, no one’s interested in something you didn’t do. The cold is getting sharper quickly as the last of the light leeches away. I shouldn’t have spent those ten minutes standing at the park’s north end, watching a murder of crows wheeling overhead, squabbling amongst themselves about who would be perching next to whom in the branches of the single bare tree that they’d all decided to cram themselves into. (It was like watching children fight over who sat where at the lunch table, but their wings were outstretched so beautifully against the gray sky and they tumbled so easily through the air, like leaves caught up together in a whirlwind.)

Behind me, one of the men says in English, “Oh, I should tell her. Excuse me, miss!”

I turn around. There’s no one else about that he might be addressing, and sure enough he’s walking back toward me, while his friend hangs back, looking a bit embarrassed.

“Excuse me, miss,” the fellow says. “Would you like to see a bald eagle?”

Beside me, my dog sits down, like he’s too puzzled by the question to remain standing and needs to sit and think on it awhile. I picture him smoking a pipe with a perplexed expression on his face, and make a mental note to Photoshop that later. My brain also conjures up a few helpful suggestions: Decline offer if said bald eagle is in his van. Decline offer if “bald eagle” is nickname for something in his pants. I imagine the side of a van with “free candy” crudely crossed out and “free bald eagles!!!” spraypainted over the top, and I have to admit that were this the case, I would at least have to applaud his originality.

Considering and subsequently discarding several witty rejoinders, I eventually settle for saying, “Um?” I’m fairly certain my mouth is hanging open, and my dog Trudeau and I are probably wearing matching expressions of eyebrow-raising confusion.

The man seems to pick up on this. “I’m telling everyone,” he says reassuringly, which isn’t actually reassuring at all. I still haven’t even the faintest of ideas what in the hell he’s talking about, and I’m not sure what “everyone” he could be talking about, unless he’s been chasing down joggers on the footpaths clear on the other side of the park’s loop road. I wouldn’t be any more surprised by that than I am by the whole conversation.

He points up into a cluster of bare trees that stand inside the aviary fence, and says, “Look up there, in the branches of the bare tree. Can you see it?”

I can’t help but think that this is like that part in a fight scene when somebody says, “Look, it’s bigfoot!” or “Wow, naked ladies!” and distracts their opponent long enough to knock them unconscious. I’m putting my back to the guy’s buddy by peering into the trees, but whatever; if this elaborate ruse is all in aid of a mugging, then I say they’ve earned the contents of my wallet ($7 in cash and a maxed out food stamp card; suck on that, muggers), and besides, I’m pretty certain that Trudeau will avenge me. I mean, unless these guys are prepared with dog cookies in which case Trudeau can probably be bought, the traitorous bastard.

The point being, I turn and look up at the tree — trees, because “the bare tree” isn’t very descriptive when there are like ten of them right there — and I squint and curse my eyes, and I don’t see a single damned thing. (My conservation biology teacher in college used to mournfully lament that people were only interested in the “charismatic megafauna”… animals like lions and elephants and pandas and whatever, the ones you see lots of nature documentaries about. I argued that I was rather restricted to a study of large animals because my eyes are so bad I’d never be taking up birdwatching.)

“You see it?” the guy says again, and he’s so earnest that I tell him yeah, I do, that’s so cool, even though it takes another ten seconds before I actually spot it, because I really don’t want this to turn into a truly awkward moment where he tries somehow even harder to share his birding discovery with me. I do see it now though, a hunch-shouldered shape huddled on the farthest branch, looking down into the aviary like it’s deigned to come and visit its stranger relations.

“That’s awesome,” I say, and Trudeau sighs because he hasn’t the slightest interest in birds (he has a much keener preference for squirrels).

“It’s visiting from the wild,” the guy tells me, proud and earnest, like the eagle is here on his personal invitation, just to give him the opportunity to interact with strangers. “It’s not part of the aviary.”

“Yeah,” I agree, because come on, obviously. Ticket sales would probably go down if their own birds were free to perch high above the aviary and fly away on a whim. “Thanks,” I tell him again, which is actually another way of saying, Yes I see, please go away now because you are making this awkward.

He seems to pick up on the unspoken social signal, and finally rejoins his friend, leaving Trudeau and I to continue on our way, though we don’t go far, just to where the view improves. I’m grateful to the gentleman, strange as the exchange was, for pointing the bird out, and grateful even moreso that he left us alone to enjoy the sight. The eagle is a splendid, large adult, and its perch is just high enough that I’m wishing for binoculars and just low enough that still, even with my poor eyesight, I can see that while I’m standing there looking up, the bird is looking back down. We’re both caught in the pool of light cast by a nearby lamp post, and it makes the white feathers on the bird’s head shine with a particular brilliance.

The eagle doesn’t do anything in particular, just sits and stares, but just its presence makes something stir in my chest, some weak thing fluttering inside my ribcage, the beating of phantom wings against my heart a reminder that even a little piece of the wilderness can make us feel just a little more alive.

After awhile, the eagle turns its head again, apparently bored with its view of us, and the deepening darkness gathers in against its brown body like the evening itself has also chosen to roost on that branch. We continue on — reluctantly, in my case, and quite eagerly in Trudeau’s, as I think he still had hope for a squirrel sighting — and though I keep my eyes peeled for other intrepid park-goers to share the discovery with, none are forthcoming. And while I wouldn’t mind sharing this sight with someone else — I’ve no doubt it would be just as wonderfully random and awkward as it was for me — I’m not quite mad enough to go running after the joggers.

A post about the day I threatened to develop psychic powers just so I could destroy my dog remotely

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Don’t be fooled by this face.

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Look, I understand: he’s difficult to resist. I know he looks all innocent and angelic. He’s using those eyebrows on you and he’s totally working it and all you can think is, “Aw, what a handsome fellow! He’s so well-behaved and charming!”

That’s what he wants you to think. He wants you to be impressed by his easy-going and affectionate nature. He’s trying to draw you in, and when you make the mistake of thinking that “adorable” is the same thing as “trustworthy”… well, then he’s got you.

Then when you least expect it, he’s gone.

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A couple of weekends ago, we had a pretty good snow storm here. I spent most of my Saturday doing chores around the house. I took Trudeau with me to check the fencelines, because we have electric fencing all around our little pastures and dry lots, and the strands tend to sag pretty alarmingly when the snow clings to them.

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At first I had Tru clipped to the leash that I’d looped around my belt, but it wasn’t terribly comfortable for either of us. It’s hard to get any work done when you’ve got a dog attached to you and he makes it his mission in life to step in front of you every two seconds and then stop dead. Or just suddenly jolt off in another direction, because all he really wants from life is to eat snow. (It wouldn’t exactly take an experienced wilderness tracker to follow Trudeau’s trail in the snow: just look for the giant paw prints punctuated every few feet by a huge bite-mark in the snow.)

So, to enrich both our lives and prevent myself from ending up on my butt in the snow, I let Trudeau off his leash.

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I was prepared, mind you. I’ve been here and done this with Trudeau before, and I know very well that without proper incentive, his understanding of the word “come” is conditional at best, in addition to the tragic medical condition he has which causes him to be occasionally inexplicably struck deaf. This is why I had a comprehensive collection of hot dog bits in my pocket.

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To give him credit where it’s due, the Sasquatch actually did great. We did a complete circuit of every fenceline on the place, shaking off the snow and checking that none of the strands were down. Tru didn’t stray more than ten feet from me, and he came when called every time, (because he knew me for the god I was, the all-powerful dispenser of hot dogs). We hauled more firewood into the house, cleared the snow from the top of the backyard trampoline, shoveled the front walk and the back deck, fed the barn cat, filled the stock tanks, then did another circuit of the fencelines, this time adding flags of vinyl taping at intervals to make the fence more visible for the horses.

It had been hours and hours, and many a piece of hot dog had passed between us, but Trudeau is a traitor, and he doesn’t understand these things that are supposed to keep us together, these bonds of love and processed meat. We were flagging the fenceline at the road, and he started to slip under the fence, and I made the designated sound that meant, “Don’t you dare, you little son of a bitch, I will hunt you to the ends of the earth.” And when he didn’t seem to find that convincing, I shouted, “Trudeau, COME!” in a tone of voice which is not to be disobeyed.

He stopped just outside the fence, and turned to look at me as if weighing up his options: the freedom of the open road versus the lure of hot dogs. His love for me versus the fact that somewhere out there, he might find new and interesting animals to chase. Maybe some that spray smells or shoot needle-sharp spines! What incredible adventures awaited him out in the snow-white world, if only he could throw off the shackles of his oppressor and his heroin-like addiction to hot dogs.

He stared at me for what felt like a long moment, completely ignoring another command to come, and then, clearly mistaking himself for Cool Hand Luke, he bolted.

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I tell people that I started running for my health, and to keep my dog exercised, and because my toe shoes make it incredibly fun. These are all true, but sometimes I have to admit to myself that the most useful aspect of working out is that I’m better able to chase my dog down and destroy him.

It’s not that I get mad that he disobeys, it’s that I don’t react well to animals attempting to cause me heart attacks. Sometimes I’m a worst-case-scenario sort of person, and the moment something goes wrong with my dog, all I can think is that he’s going to be hit by a car or attack another dog or find himself drawn into the international arms trade. I worry.

Trudeau headed straight across the (thankfully not terribly busy) road and down one of the gravel side streets. I sprinted after him, and quickly encountered a driver moving very slowly down the road, obviously having just passed my dog and looking disapproving. I trust that by the manic and murderous look on my face, they can rest assured knowing that we weren’t just out for a nice weekend stroll.

Coming up the road, I got to experience a heart-stopping moment of panic when I realized I couldn’t see Trudeau anywhere. He’d disappeared that quickly, and he could be anywhere. There are mountain lions in the area, and I don’t expect they’d invite Trudeau over for poker night. I might never know what had happened to him; he might simply vanish, never to be seen again.

I had just long enough to consider every possible nightmare scenario and how I was so going to kill the recalcitrant beast when I found him, and then my idiot dog wandered back onto the road from the bushes he’d been studiously sniffing, and he caught sight of me, and his expressive eyebrows took on an expression that was less, “Ha ha, freedom!” and more, “Oh, shit.”

“Trudeau, come.” I didn’t shout it this time, I growled it. My tone of voice implied that if he did not obey, I would be coming over there to personally rip his throat out with my teeth. There was a suggestion that I would enjoy it.

And he came. He came practically on his belly, and he threw himself at my feet as if to throw himself upon my mercy, and I chanted to myself, “You can’t kill him for coming, you can’t kill him for coming,” and I had to just let it go. Because he came. Too little and too late, and I hate to see him groveling but also, every part of me was experiencing the instant relief that came from being able to touch him and knowing he wasn’t gone. He came, knowing full well that he’d done something very, very wrong, and I was so happy about finding him before he’d gained any real distance, before he’d had a chance to hitchhike to Mexico or take up the life of an itinerant sheep-farmer in Argentina.

So I petted his stupid head, gave him the last of the hot dog, and told him he was a good boy even though it was a horrible, egregious lie. I clipped on the leash that I had wisely kept attached to my belt, and we went home to finish flagging the fence, and pretty soon I even let him off the leash again, because he seemed to realize now that I was serious about the “if you ever try that again I will develop psychic powers just so I can kill you with my mind” thing.

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Then I took him back inside, and I shucked off my layers, and we went into my room and I made him snuggle with me as punishment. We sprawled out on my bed and I tried my best to hug him to death, and I buried my nose in the soft, sweet-smelling fur at the top of his head, and was very glad that he hadn’t made it to Argentina.

Don’t worry. He’s friendly. Ish.

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My dog Trudeau is easily one of the best dogs in the history of time. Sure, he’s over a hundred pounds and approximately the size of a shetland pony, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly.

Unless the fly is dog-shaped. Then he will cut a bitch.

It’s possible that Trudeau has a little bit of a dog aggression problem. Okay, he definitely has kind of a big dog aggression problem. He doesn’t seem to want to, say, draw blood or destroy his enemies. He just wants to, you know… push the other dogs into the ground and make them cry uncle and maybe pee themselves. He’s like a schoolyard bully on a sugar-high. We’re getting professional help, and by that I mean obedience training, not a dog psychiatrist. (I already know that he has abandonment issues and probably unresolved feelings about his parents.) I have confidence that it is very fixable, and in the meantime, we’re managing the issue.

I keep Trudeau leashed and under control (though in order to do this I have to make frequent use of my Look of Disapproval and my incredible biceps), and generally this wouldn’t be a big problem, except that I’m apparently the only person in the county who believes in leashes. And though everybody’s off-leash dogs are perfectly friendly, they don’t quite seem to understand that my dog is not. Not too long ago while walking in Sequoia Park, Trudeau and I came upon a man who was crossing our path and who, I did not notice until we were almost upon him, had a tiny and adorable little shepherd puppy stumbling along at his heels. Off-leash.

The puppy happily trotted up to us, blissfully unaware of the nature of his impending demise. I held back my instantly over-excited bloodhound/silverback-gorilla-cross monster, who was either determined to lick the puppy to death or determined to devour it in a single gulp, and who either way was very likely to kill it by accident with one of his huge clumsy platter-sized paws.

The puppy’s owner, unconcerned, didn’t seem to notice me struggling with Trudeau (who was doing his very best Kraken or possibly Cthulhu* impression, complete with “GIVE ME NOMS OR I WILL DESTROY UR TOKYOS”), glanced over and, apparently utterly misinterpreting the nature of my concern, said, “Oh, don’t worry. He’s friendly!”

As you can imagine, I was very relieved that the puppy — who seemed barely old enough to be weaned, and certainly not old enough to have joined Fight Club — wasn’t going to attack the slobbing gorgon. I don’t think said gorgon realized how much danger he might’ve been in. From the puppy.

Loose dogs are a problem in my neighborhood in general, and particularly since I walk my dog after dark, I’ve ended up with a bit of a case of the nerves about the whole thing. There’s Maxi-the-fleabitten-mongrel down the street, who actually vaults right over the fence so that she can bark ferociously at us, and the Akita on the other side street who stalks us creepily from the shadows, and the pit bull on the school road who is only held back — and only occasionally — by a gate that seems to have been made from an old wooden shipping palette. The latest addition to the giving-me-a-freaking-heart-attack brigade are a pair of massively-muscled pitbulls, who after running amok in the neighborhood for a few days seem to have taken up residence in the cemetery, which they clearly chose for its theatrical properties. A pair of snarling pitbulls charging at you isn’t quite enough; with the whole cemetery thing they were going for more of an H.P. Lovecraft-style effect, in which dogs in addition to having sharp teeth and bad attitudes are also demonic and will eat not only your face but also YOUR VERY SOUL.

I probably wouldn’t have much of a problem with these animals if it weren’t for Trudeau, who attracts trouble like he’s a gravity well, and who certainly doesn’t help these situations by baying back what I can only assume are lewd remarks about the pitbulls’ mothers. Honestly, I cannot take him anywhere, and I hope he realizes he has only himself to blame.

* When I typed “Cthulhu,” my blog insisted that it was a misspelling and suggested instead “Cuchulain.” Thanks, blog. Now I have The Pogues running through my head, and that’s not a bad state of affairs if you ask me.