Dog Revolution

My dogs are taking over my life. Back in the old days, I had two young dogs, Rusty and Maxine. Their coats were shiny and sleek. They hadn’t been through any cold winters, so they had no extra hair. They slept in the house on the floor. They drank out of one water bowl. They ate out of one food bowl. I just kept it filled. Once a month, I went to Wal Mart and bought a 40 lb bag of dog food for $16. Once a year, I took them to the vet for their rabies shots. Life with my dogs was simple and cheap. No more.

Twelve years later, they have been through a lot of winters and summers. Their coats never seem to catch up with the seasons. In the dead of winter, they are shedding big hunks of dog down. I suspect in the summer, they are regrowing their winter coats as they lounge all day in my air conditioned house. We also have added two more dogs, Dashell and Pancho. Both are short haired, but they still make their contributions to the high level of dog hair in the house.

No matter how I try, I cannot leave for work in the morning without getting dog hair all over my pants. I put a lint roller in my car because that is where I always discover that I have dog hair on me. I try to keep the dogs from rubbing up against me in the 10 minutes between the time I get dressed and I walk out the door. I stopped hanging my jacket over my chair because I realized that they were rubbing up against it and then when I picked it up the next morning, I got dog hair all over me.

This morning, no dogs rubbed against me, I plucked my jacket from the hook high on the door, grabbed my bag, jumped in the car and roared off. Sitting at a stop light, I noticed three dog hairs on my black pants. I easily removed these with the lint roller and was dog hair free (well as dog hair free as a woman with four dogs can ever be). When I arrived at the carpool, I snatched my purse and bag and leapt out the door. I looked down as I exited the car. My pants were enveloped in dog hair from my waist band all the way down to my cuffs. My bag! I hung my bag on the side of my chair that is next to the back door. As I let the dogs out last night, each dog must have scratched an itch by rubbing against my bag.

Besides dealing with their hair there are the requirements for special food or medicine. Rusty is now an old guy with two blown out knees. (I think he played too much tackle football in his youth.) He has to take anti-inflammatory medication at a cost of $80 every 60 days. I stick the pill and my finger down his throat every morning. Then I reward him with a spoonful of peanut butter for not throwing up. Also, kidneys evidently give out when a guy gets old, so Rusty has to eat special food to prevent further kidney damage. For variety we mix the dry food ($18 per bag) with the canned food ($20 per case). At meal time he is segregated from the other dogs to prevent them from eating his food and vice versa.

Dashell has always been a special problem. Allergies cause his skin to turn bright red whenever he comes in contact with detergent, grass or too much sun. Marty washes all of the dogs blankets in baby detergent ($8 per bottle) just so that Dashell can lay down wherever he wants to in the house without breaking out. Dashell requires two pills twice a day to calm down his allergic reactions. One pill is $27 for 100 capsules and the other is $25 for 120 capsules. On the last visit to the vet she excitedly told us about a new therapy for dogs with skin allergies: special food. Now Dashell is eating fish and rice kibble at $23 per bag. The first bag lasted about a week and a half.

No special diet or medicine for Pancho or Maxine. They just act offended that I never give them any medicine or the treat that goes with it.

Just in the last two days, Dashell has started an annoying habit. He is digging in the yard. Not just in the yard, he is digging around one of my $300 trees that I planted last year. The vitex tree has beautiful purple blossoms that erupt all over the tree and continue blooming throughout the summer. Marty and I were discussing purchasing chicken wire to surround the tree and protect it from this canine invader. I mentioned this problem in the carpool and my friend suggested that perhaps Dashell had a mineral deficiency. What a brilliant thought. With his new restricted diet, he could easily be missing out on something. A quick call to the vet and now Dashell has a new medication to take twice a day: Flintstone vitamins with iron ($10 a bottle).

I guess there is one consolation. After all this money I spent, I can be sure that only healthy, high quality dog hair will show up on my black pants.

Cooking with Grammy

Marty and I babysat my 4 year old grandson, Addison, this past weekend. Excuse me, I mean I kidsat my grandson. My sister called while he was here. When I told her I was babysitting Addison, he corrected me. “Grammy, I’m not a baby.”

One of our favorite things to do together is cooking. Ever since Addison was small, I have let him help me cook. I used to hold him while I stood at the stove. I would explain to him everything that I was doing even when he was 6 months old. This past weekend he insisted on pulling a chair over to the stove so that he could watch and help me. I measured out the ingredients and let him pour them in the bowl. He is getting pretty skilled now but it used to be when I let go of the spoon or the cup I didn’t know where the ingredients were going to end up. Some of it did actually make it into the bowl, but a lot of it ended up on the counter, the floor, or the dogs.

This weekend, I let him help set the table and I asked him to take his plate to the sink when he was through eating. I also let him help me make fruit salad. I put orange juice in the bowls to keep the fruit from turning brown. Then I let him stir it after I put the cut up apples in. I also had him cut up the bananas with a butter knife. He let me know that he is not allowed to touch knives but I showed him that this knife couldn’t cut him. I cooked about a dozen sausage patties and put them on a paper towel in a plate. I let him carry them to the table. The dogs sniffed at the plate as he was walking. His carrying height for plates is well within the dogs’ snatching range. He tried to protect the sausage by holding the plate at a 45 degree angle above his head. I pictured the sausages all sliding off the plate and landing in the dogs’ eating range. With the hair of four dogs swirling throughout the house, I am sure not going to eat anything off my floor.

Earlier Addison brought one of his Legos® to me because it had a dog hair on it. I pulled it off. He said “How did that happen, Grammy?” I said, “There is dog hair everywhere in Grammy’s house.” He looked straight up and said, “I don’t see any on the ceiling.” I had to admit that even in my house, there is no dog hair on the ceiling.