Category: dog ownership

We Broke Them

Up bright and very early Monday morning, I could only stand it until about 4:30, I had to get up and out of the torturous bed. You would think that after two days of walking over six miles a day across uneven terrain, up and down hills, tripping and yes falling flat on my face that I would be so exhausted I could sleep for at least five or six hours. Not so, that bed was the most miserable experience I have had since my bilateral mastectomy a year ago. That bed may actually have been much worse than my mastectomy, at least when I was in the hospital I was given good drugs. I crawled out of bed and turned on the coffeepot, put in my contact lens and turned to look at the dogs. Both were still sacked out on the bed, neither one jumped up ready for breakfast.

I dragged out the dog food bucket and began filling each dish with dog food. At least the dogs lifted their heads to watch me, so I knew they were still alive. Both dogs just waited patiently for me to finish and bring them their dish. Not excited about food, who were these dogs? I think our dogs love food more than us sometimes. Wow these guys must really be tired. Charlie moved forward and sort of melted off the bed onto the floor to get his breakfast. I turned to Orso who looked at his dish then me then back to the dish, took a deep breath and halfheartedly stepped off the bed for his breakfast.

Each step Orso took reminded me of an old war movie where the Nazi soldiers goose stepped when marching. He would extend his right leg straight out in front of him then gently set his paw on the floor stop, lick the bottom of his paw, then repeat the process with his left leg. His right paw was especially tender and wouldn’t put much weight on it. I grabbed Mitch’s small flashlight and turned it on as I gently spread his pads apart to look for lacerations or any foreign objects stuck in his foot. The pads were fine, with no tears or cracks, but the skin between the pads were raw and inflamed from running around in the dry grasses and corn stubble fields. Orso’s nose and the bottom of his jowls were also red and raw looking. After two steps he laid down and didn’t move. Orso didn’t even look up when I put Charlie’s harness on to go out and pee. That was one pooped pup because Orso never lets me go anywhere without him.

Charlie was just as tired and showed no interest in walking very far. He quickly went about his business and turned around to go back to bed without any encouragement from me. So much for a half day of hunting, the only way Mitch and I were going to get anymore hunting in was to get new dogs. We decided to pack up, leave the hotel from hell and head home. Neither dog lifted his head all the way home.

Day 2 – The Continuing Saga of the Hotel Room from Hell

Thankfully Mitch brought soap from home so at least I could be clean and not forced to use the used bar of soap, which I threw in the trash. I finished my shower, put on my makeup and fixed my hair. Yes I know, I’m going to walk around in the field carrying a gun, tripping over roots and stepping into badger holes, maybe even get shot by a fellow hunter, but at least I have on makeup and under my hunting hat my hair had been washed. All dressed and ready to go I left Mitch to shower and get ready and walked around to the front desk to check out the free complimentary breakfast.

There were frozen waffles, prepackaged cinnamon rolls cut in half, whole wheat and white slices of bread, a couple of apples, four packets of instant oatmeal and a choice of either raisin bran or frosted flakes cold cereal. Carb city, yummy. I popped two frozen waffles in the toaster and poured a glass of orange juice for Mitch. I buttered the waffles and poured syrup over the lukewarm waffles and carried them back for Mitch. After unloading the waffles and orange juice I headed back with my own oatmeal packet from home. I searched for hot water, but no hot water was not an option. How do you make hot oatmeal without hot water? My option was to add water from the faucet and put the bowl in the microwave to heat it up. Of course the only bowl offered was Styrofoam which meant I was going to get all of those bad nasty Styrofoam chemicals transferred from the bowl to my oatmeal. I don’t know how true that is but I figure why push it.

As I turned to walk back to our room Mr. Happy came up to me to tell me that the dogs couldn’t stay in the room if we weren’t there with them. I asked what he meant and he said, “You in 112?” I said that I was, he said again, “Dogs can’t stay in room if you are gone.” I assured him that the dogs would stay with us. How much fun would we have walking around in the field searching for birds without our chief sniffers? I walked back to the room finished up breakfast, loaded up the dogs and headed out for a day of communing with nature.

I had my fingers crossed for fresh towels, clean sheets and Kleenexes, but I wasn’t holding my breath. We got out in the field about nine a.m. and had really good luck in the morning. Orso turned out to finally get it, that he was a bird dog. We called it a day about 4:30 in the afternoon and headed back to the luxurious suite of our dreams. We walked in and saw that the bed looked the same as we left it, the sheets pulled up and the comforter pulled over the pillows. The sheets hadn’t been changed. I walked into the bathroom and saw towels folded and stacked into the slots for the towels. I don’t know if they were clean or just refolded. I looked on the back of the toilet and saw a new package of soap, that wasn’t opened yet. I could just imagine how busy the housekeeping staff was with seven rooms occupied.

But guess what, still no Kleenexes. There must be a world shortage.

Orso – Who Knew?

This was our first hunting trip in two years and the first time I would carry a gun in three years. Last year we didn’t go hunting and two years ago we were hunting quail. Quail are hard for me to shoot, they fly up so fast that by the time my heart stops racing and I realize what flew up the little birds are long gone and way out of range. So I carried a camera two years ago and had much better luck capturing the moments through the lens than with a gun. Two years ago was also the last time we had AJ, our black lab, to help us search out birds. We lost him the week after we came back from that trip. Now we’re down to just two dogs, Charlie, our ten year old german shorthair/lab mix and Orso, our eight year old chocolate lab. Charlie is a good hunting dog, great nose and fast. Orso on the other hand, has preferred to walk behind us letting us beat down the path for him enjoying the outing rather than getting out there looking for birds.

Saturday morning brought clear skies bright and sunny with a fairly strong wind out of the north that felt quite biting. Our group consisted of six hunters, Mitch, me and longtime family friends that spanned four generations. The oldest in our group was eighty-nine and the youngest was fourteen, a wide range indeed. We thought that since Charlie is now ten he might be a little slower and Orso was just along for the ride. Even though Mitch is ever the optimist, saying this might just be the year that Orso gets it, I am the skeptic saying, remember we only have one dog that hunts. We started off working a long strip of tall grasses, Mitch on the outside edge on the left, me just to his right in the grass and the other four spaced out to the right across the expanse to the outside on the right to block any birds from running out and escaping unscathed. The dogs ranged back and forth between us trying to pick up that elusive wonderful scent of the pheasant.

We hadn’t gone fifty feet when Charlie stopped and went on point off to my right in front of the father, grandson combination. A pheasant flew up and caught the wind to fly across my position, the grandson fired off a round and winged the bird, I shot right after and helped bring it down, with Charlie racing hot after the downed bird to make the retrieval. After two years, nothing has changed, it doesn’t matter who shoots the bird the dogs always bring them back to me. A good omen, finding a bird so quickly.

The big surprise came about twenty five yards farther as we walked the field. Orso stopped and stood stock still with his ears cocked up and forward staring at something.

I gave the command, “Get him Orso, okay.” Nothing, Orso just stood there looking at the form in the grass. I gave him the command again, this time with more emphasis, “Okay Orso, get it up!”

Orso moved forward and the bird flew up and to the left trying to catch the wind. Three shots rang out winging the bird but no one got off a clean shot. The bird flew down the hill across the road and into the trees on the other side. Mitch ran toward the spot where the bird went down with Orso following behind him. They crossed the road and worked their way down into the draw where the bird went down. The rest of us stood where we were not moving, waiting for Mitch to resurface. Charlie even came and sat down beside me waiting, taking a rare rest break. About five minutes later I spotted Mitch coming back up out of the draw fifteen feet farther west than they went in and next to him was Orso carrying the bird. Orso had rooted the bird out hiding in the grass next to a tree, went in and grabbed the bird, just like a seasoned hunting dog. Orso trotted back up the hill straight to me bringing his prize, head held high.

After eight years Orso was finally a real live hunting dog. Miracles do happen.

The Hotel Room from Hell

Once a year maybe two if we’re lucky, we head to central Nebraska to go pheasant hunting. For the last five years we’ve stayed in a little town in central Nebraska at a national chain. The rooms have always been clean and the staff very friendly. Last year we didn’t go hunting because I was diagnosed with breast cancer and had my surgery about the time we normally go hunting. When I called to reserve our room a man answered with a very heavy accent that made conversation a struggle with a lot of repeating on both our parts. I was just hopeful that I had actually made a reservation and there would be a room for us when we got there on Friday evening. It turned out that we would have been better off if we haven’t gotten the reservation. The name had changed and was no longer a part of the chain. The man at the front desk was the same one I spoke with on the phone. In person he was not very friendly, I don’t think he ever smiled in his life. He spoke loudly and repeated everything I said. Granted I had a difficult time understanding him. I tried but I am not good at accents. He gave me the room key cards and pointed to the direction of the room.

We drove around the building found the room and started unloading. Evidently the new owners were economizing. The room was tiny with one bed, my mistake, I usually ask for two beds but having missed a year I forgot. There was a piece of cardboard taped to the wall presumably covering a hole. Spackle and paint must be very rare in this part of Nebraska. There was no in-room mini coffeepot, good thing we brought our own. The towel bar over the sink had no bar, just the two mounting brackets supporting the missing bar. The sink stopper was lying on the sink next to the sink, not in the drain for some reason. There were two bath towels, two hand towels and two wash cloths. One roll of toilet paper and no Kleenexes. There was a small refrigerator that sounded like it was on its last leg. Mitch’s favorite thing about the room was the hand written piece of paper with the new name of the hotel taped to the telephone in the room. Vary classy.

The bed was a full size bed, not queen size bed mind you, a full size. At least the television worked. I walked back to the front office and asked Mr. Happy for a roll of toilet paper and a box of Kleenexes. He handed me a roll of toilet paper and said that I had to wait for housekeeping the next day for the Kleenexes. I said that there were no Kleenexes in the room now and I wanted a box today. He said that I had to wait for housekeeping tomorrow. Customer service 101 was a class he evidently skipped. I walked back to our room toilet paper in hand and started to get ready for bed when I realized that I forgot my contact lens solution. Mitch offered up a bottle of water for me to use. Thanks but I don’t that would have worked. I jumped in the car and buzzed across the highway to the Walmart for contact lens solution and squirt cheese for the dogs to hide Charlie’s pill in. I should have bought two pillows and pillowcases, but I hadn’t seen the pillows before I left the room.

While I was gone, Mr. Happy knocked on the door of our room. It took Mitch a minute to answer thinking it was me and that I forgot my key. Anyway when Mitch finally answered the door the dogs bounded out in front of him and out the door before he could stop them. Mitch always thinks that everyone loves dogs. He looks at our dogs as big friendly dogs that love everyone, he forgets that a lot of people are apprehensive around dogs, especially large dogs. Mr. Happy was a few feet away from the door with a plunger in his hand thinking that because I asked for a roll of toilet paper I must have clogged the toilet and we were under water. He took one look at the dogs romping toward him only seeing giant brown monsters with poisonous venom dripping from three foot long fangs coming to eat him. He waved the plunger back and forth in front of him like a light saber warding off the evil creatures of darkness. Of course by waving the plunger at the dogs Charlie saw it as a threatening act causing him to bark and growl at the man. Orso just wanted to be petted by someone new and just kept moving toward the man. Mitch got them under control and shooed back into the room and turned to Mr. Happy. He asked if we needed a plunger to which Mitch politely declined.

I came back contact solution in hand and finished getting ready for bed. That’s when I realized I should have bought pillows. The bed had two pillows on it, one small pillow and one smaller pillow. The bed had a definite tilt to it. The foot of the bed was higher than the head of the bed. Sitting on the bed felt like sitting on quarter inch plywood laid over springs, not comfortable at all. To top it off, Orso was disoriented and clingy, making himself at home across the foot of the bed, shortening the length of the bed by two feet. Mitch on one side, me on the other and here comes Charlie making himself comfortable between us. A full size bed is large enough for the two of us, but add in one hundred eighty pounds of dogs and the bed gets really small very quickly. Charlie wasn’t happy with the hardness of the bed and kept squirming around flopping on my stomach. We laid there for about thirty minutes listening to the refrigerator cycle on and off. I finally couldn’t take it anymore got up and unplugged it. Between Orso at the foot of the bed, Charlie squirming around in the bed and a bed that felt like sleeping on plywood neither one of us got more than a couple of hours sleep. If I hadn’t been afraid of what disgusting things had been ground into to the carpet I would have slept on the floor.

We lasted until about 4:30 in the morning, that was all my lower back could take. I got up and noticed a puddle of water on the credenza next to the refrigerator. I looked down on the floor at the shotgun cases directly below the fridge and saw that two of the four cases were wet. Great. Neither one of us thought about the refrigerator defrosting when I unplugged it.

Mitch took the shotguns out of the cases to see how wet they were, salvaging three. One of mine, my back up shotgun took the brunt of the water. He dismantled it to dry out. I turned on the water in the shower turning the knob all the way over to the hot side in order to get the water warm enough, pulled the flow knob to shower and can only say that the best part about the shower was that the water was wet. I realized I forgot soap and reached for the bar of soap offered by the hotel. I picked up the package to unwrap it and discovered that it was already open and the bar had been used. Super disgusting.

It was going to be a long three nights. This trip was starting off a high note for sure.

One of Those Days

You hear stories all the time about the strange behavior of people and animals during a full moon. I’ve always laughed at the stories and made jokes about it. Wednesday morning it was even better, we had a full moon and a total lunar eclipse of the full moon. It’s called a Blood Moon, because of the reddish glow the moon has at the peak of the eclipse. I think the eclipse caused the lunar waves to scatter and pull the earth into mass chaos.

As usual the craziness started on the morning walk. I took my camera along with the dogs to try and capture a few shots of the start of the eclipse. Both dogs were behaving well until we topped the hill and started down. At the bottom of the hill there was a truck parked on the side of the road with a man standing in the middle of the road holding a flashlight. He had attached a large hose to the fire hydrant and had opened the water valve to the hydrant causing water to gush across the street forming a large pool of water. He had the flashlight pointed down at the water looking for something. Now I don’t know about you but trying to see things floating around in rushing water is something I’ve not mastered. Maybe he just liked looking at rushing water in the dark, or maybe he was a victim of the lunar eclipse. Anyway seeing a man in the road that time of the morning is something the dogs don’t usually see, so consequently they took exception to his presence and let him know by barking and growling letting the man know whose road it was at 4:30 in the morning.

In a rush to get back home, get showered and dressed so I could get back out and take more pictures of the eclipse as it progressed across the sky, I pretty much dragged the dogs along, leaving little time for them to pee along the way. I rushed through putting on my makeup, luckily I applied mascara to both eyes, threw some clothes on and went looking for my tripod. Of course that morning I couldn’t find it and knowing I was running out of time I grabbed my camera and went outside looking for a better vantage spot to catch more of the eclipse. By then the moon had moved across the sky and the best spot meant a trek up a gravel road in the dark, the perfect location to twist an ankle. The eclipse was almost at its peak and the moon was well on its way to a full dark reddish color. I tried but couldn’t get any good shots without the tripod to hold the camera still long enough for the shutter to fully open and close and being on a gravel road probably wouldn’t been much better even if I had the tripod. Oh well, I tromped back down the road went back in the house and realized that the clothes I put on did not look good which necessitated a wardrobe change.

I changed my clothes and went to fill my coffee thermos, pack my lunch and head out the door. Orso turned and walked into the dining room and proceeded to vomit his breakfast all over the rug, not just in one spot but two. Why couldn’t he have done that on the tile floor in the kitchen? I couldn’t get to him fast enough. I went through almost a full roll of paper towels cleaning it up, which I put in a plastic trash bag. Wednesday was trash day so I thought perfect, I’d just walk this bag down to the trash can and it won’t have to sit in the trash can for a week. I walked back in the house and washed my hands for about five minutes loaded my lunch container and walked it and my thermos to the living room with my purse so I wouldn’t forget anything when I left for work. I called Charlie and nothing, he wasn’t there. I waked from room to room with Orso in tow but no Charlie anywhere in the house. It dawned on me that he must have followed me out the front door when I took the bag of vomit and paper towels to the trash can.

Now I was late and missing one dog. I walked to the front door calling him and no Charlie. I then walked to the kitchen door and called, still no dog. I went back inside and walked to the back door and called, sure enough he came running. My first thought was that I was really glad he came back and my second thought was that we have too many doors. I got the dogs settled gave them each a rawhide chew, hoping that Orso doesn’t vomit again after I leave, grabbed my stuff and headed out the door.

It dawned on me as I drove to work that the blood moon scattered lunar pull was effecting the drivers more so than normal, I watched one driver ahead of me drift from the far left lane to the middle lane then on to the right without using a turn signal and didn’t once turn to look to see if there might be something in his path. He didn’t stop drifting until his right front tire drifted right off the road, then of course he overcorrected and almost smacked the car to his left. I just shook my head and passed him as quickly as possible so I didn’t get caught in the debris field.

After everything that had gone wrong Wednesday morning during the Blood Moon eclipse, I became a firm believer in the hold the moon has on the crazies.

Exercising With Your Dogs

You hear it all the time; get more exercise in by walking your dog. It’s supposed to be a win-win situation. The dog benefits by getting needed exercise, stays slimmer and burns off energy. You are moving more working your muscles and getting your heart rate up also staying slimmer and wears you out. Of course we all know how well my walks with dogs go in the morning. My heart rate definitely raises and I work lots of muscles, upper body and locked legs doing the “no, no, no” extensions when confronted with wildlife.

Yesterday in a further attempt to get back in shape after three surgeries in a twelve month period, I decided to start doing Yoga at home. I loaded the Yoga DVD in the DVD player, pushed the coffee table out of the way, unrolled my yoga mat and sat down for the opening breathing exercises. I was immediately face to face with Charlie who wanted to help me by sticking his nose right in my face to make sure I was breathing correctly. I pushed him away but he pushed right back and got even closer. He was determined to help me breathe. I tried to ignore him and stood up to move to the next series of moves. I dropped to plank and Charlie dropped down right next to me too. I sank into cobra pose and Charlie scooted closer. I moved into downward dog and Charlie rolled over onto his back right underneath me and whacked my face with his paw in an attempt to get me to pet him.

This was turning into more effort to avoid him than in doing the yoga moves. Cat/cow was equally a challenge because now Orso had decided that watching Charlie annoy me to distraction looked like lots of fun and jumped off the bed to come and join in helping me exercise. As I arched my back for cow and looked up I got a great big wet slobbery kiss from Orso right in the face. Yuck! That almost caused me to drop on the floor and squish Charlie who was still underneath me being a huge pain in my backside. I pushed Orso aside, tried to move into child’s pose and ended up putting my knees on Charlie’s tail. It did not make him happy. He jumped up causing me to jerk and lose my balance falling over into the coffee table, cracking my elbow on the table’s edge.

That definitely got my heart rate up.

Almost Fatal Attraction

I almost died this morning. No, not really, I’m exaggerating but it sure felt like it for a moment or at the very least I could have ended up with a really bad case of road rash, maybe even a bruise or two. And as is almost always the case, it was because of the dogs. Those miserable mongrel beasts that I feed, walk and let sleep in my house as well as my bed. Let me put it in perspective for you, I am five foot two inches tall and weigh in at a little over a hundred plus pounds, I’m not giving exact weight that’s only for the scale and me, but you can see that I am not a super big imposing person. The dogs on the other hand come in at one hundred and seventy plus pounds together, with Orso at a hundred and one and Charlie at seventy one pounds. Plus they both have way more muscle mass than two other people and me put together. Even though they are both senior dogs, Orso is eight and Charlie will be ten on Halloween, they can still get to afterburner speed when they are so inclined.

Our morning walks are always in the predawn hours when the creatures of the night are still out carousing and the morning animals are starting to stir. Most mornings I can hear owls calling out to other owls and a few of the early birds that are just waking up. It’s quite common to see raccoons, opossums and deer in the dim light. Because of that I am always on high alert making sure I see anything before the dogs hone in on it, causing them to bolt and charge after the object of their desire, thus making me a boat anchor dragging behind them. This has happened too many times to count. I’m pretty sure I’ve paid for more than one vacation for my chiropractor all from walking the dogs.

This morning started off very sedately, that’s how it always begins by the way. I get lulled into a false sense of security, a cool morning with fresh air and a slight breeze with the dogs sniffing and peeing on all of the bushes and trees strutting down the street like we are the only ones out this time of day. We had walked out to our time limit spot and had turned back to head home so I could jump in the shower and get ready for work. We had topped the hill and had headed down to round the curve in the road when Orso saw something and lunged forward to give chase with Charlie reacting a split second later. I was caught totally off guard, thinking about what I was going to wear to work, not paying attention and almost lost my balance. I came very close to actually falling down before I regained control and jerked on the leashes to yank them back. Orso turned and looked up at me with a very contrite look on his face and sat. Charlie on the other hand looked at me with a look that said, “It’s all the big dog’s fault, I was trying to save you. I would never have done that.”

It took a few minutes for my adrenaline level to get back to normal and my heart to stop pounding in my chest. I never did see what was out there in the dark that caused Orso to want to chase after, but I will definitely be watching a little closer tomorrow even though it won’t be there.

Monday

Can I please just go back to bed and pull the covers over my head? It started yesterday when we came home around 12:30 and backed into the driveway. I pushed the transmitter button for the garage door operator and nothing happened. I pushed it again, still nothing, so I pushed the remote on my key ring thinking the battery must be dead. Nope, the door didn’t budge. Mitch got out of the car and walked up to the keypad on the garage and punched in the code, nothing. It finally dawned on me there was no power. The electricity was out, it was working just fine when I left to go get Mitch, the sky was perfectly clear no storms, so what had happened?

We walked in the house and sure enough the house had no power too, duh. That meant no air conditioning either. Super. We had friends coming over for dinner at 4pm, no power meant no stove, no lights and no dinner. We called around to make sure we weren’t alone in our misery and found out that a huge dead tree at the other end of the lake decided to fall over and take out the power lines with it. Everyone on our side of the lake from one end to the other had no power. Perfect just perfect. Power and Light crews were on the way, but I wasn’t sure if and when we would get power back on. I called our friends to ask if I could move the party and all the food to their house if the power didn’t come back soon enough. The power was restored about 2pm so we were back in business. I reset the clocks and figured we were good to go. Dinner was great and I totally forgot about the power outage.

Guess what, forgetting the power outage came back to haunt me this morning. When I walked into the kitchen to feed the dogs and check on the coffee pot I noticed that it had already filled the pot instead of just starting to brew and it dawned on me that I had forgotten to reset the clock when I went around resetting everything else, so it started brewing two hours earlier. I quickly reset the time so that won’t happen again and went about feeding the dogs. I took Mitch to work, walked the dogs and got ready for work myself. I walked into the kitchen to fill my thermos and saw the coffee maker was off. I put my hands around the carafe which was still warm but not hot. That’s when it dawned on me that when I reset the clock I forgot to reset the heating time. It has a two, three or four hour on timer and when the power is off it resets to two hours, thus making my coffee lukewarm and I hate lukewarm coffee. I had to fill the measuring cup with coffee and heat it in the microwave before filling the thermos. Microwaved coffee is not so tasty, but I can’t go without my coffee.

I thought, “Please nothing else can go wrong, pretty please.” I took the dogs outside for one last pee break before heading off to work and standing there as big as you please in the neighbor’s yard was a very large deer. The two charged off in hot pursuit, with me yelling, “No, no, no, get back here right now!” That took five minutes to get them back in the yard and in the house. I was not pleased at all. I grabbed two rawhide chews and marched into the living room to hand the chews out and get my stuff. Now I’m running behind and Orso is still pumped up about deer chasing and reaches up to snatch the chew from my hand and missed biting down on my thumb.

I am not holding out much hope for the rest of my day.

It’s a Conspiracy!

I’m not normally one of those conspiracy theorists, but in this case I’m willing to believe that some other hand is at work here. Every morning I walk the dogs in the predawn twilight. Everybody that knows me knows that. Because of the time of day and lack of light I am always on high alert especially when we get to certain areas that are more remote like the one stretch of road where there are no houses on either side and trees block out almost all of any light from the moon. For the most part, our morning walks are usually sedate, with multiple stops to sniff and pee, but for some reason this week almost every morning we have had close encounters with something. I say “something” because I have not seen what it is.

Yesterday the morning walk was going very well, we had just crossed the intersection where three streets meet and were heading down the long dark stretch of road when Orso almost stood straight up and started barking his head off. This encouraged Charlie to follow in kind. I couldn’t see anything, nothing moved in the shadows and dark spots ahead, there was no sound, nothing. I hushed the dogs and kept walking on down the road. Yes I know, maybe not the brightest move, but I figured what’s the worst that could happen? An axe murderer waiting for me to get closer, not likely since axe murderers are usually asleep at 4:30 in the morning. A werewolf waiting for me in the shadows probably not, because it wasn’t a full moon yesterday morning. Some critter that was holding really still in the dark, that was the most logical scenario I could come up with, so I tightened my grip on the leashes and off we went.

Charlie was all puffed up sniffing the air and the ground jerking back and forth trying to follow the scent of whatever it was that had them both so spooked. Both dogs were walking with their ears perked listening intently trying to locate “it”. As we walked farther down the lonely stretch of road the dogs became more and more agitated. Charlie either caught the scent or heard something and started barking loudly and very throaty which set Orso off too. I couldn’t see anything but decided that maybe we really should turn back and not tempt fate. All the way back home both dogs kept straining at their leashes sniffing and ranging back and forth.

This morning the walk started off with the dogs on alert, ears up and searching the dark landscape for any movement. Of course when they are on high alert, I’m on high alert too, I’ve been jerked around and pulled off my feet too many times when I haven’t been paying attention. They settled down about the time we rounded the first curve and headed up the hill. Just as we started down the hill something fairly large jumped up and bolted away from us on the other side of a stand of thick bushes. I couldn’t see what it was only that it was large enough to make a lot of racket when it bolted. That startled both the dogs and me, thinking, oh goodie here we go again. We quickly walked down the hill and headed off toward the long dark stretch of road. We made it down the long lonely stretch of road and back without incident and I thought we were home free.

Wrong. We retraced our steps back up the hill, around the curve and were only four houses away from our home when Orso jerked around and lunged at something in the dark barking away. This caused Charlie to jerk back to search for the unseen threat. They yanked me back and I came really close to losing my balance, my adrenaline shot through the roof, thinking this was it, “they’re going to find my dead mangled body and think there was a yeti or something running around.” Nothing was there. I looked around and didn’t see anything at all, nothing. Whatever “it” is it’s creepy.

Now I’m wondering what is going on is there something out there or is it someone jacking with me or what? Maybe it’s my hairdresser, maybe she thinks I need to color my hair more often, by scaring the bejesus out me and making my hair grayer. Maybe it’s my doctor maybe she wants to go on vacation and if I have a heart attack, the insurance claim would be more than enough to subsidize a nice little trip somewhere. Or maybe it’s Mother Nature, trying to tell me she controls the night and I better be more careful.

The Silence was Deafening

Every morning I head out on the morning walk with the dogs around 4:30 give or take ten minutes. It’s always dark, with some mornings darker than others depending on the time of year, starry skies or cloud cover. We’re usually alone except for the occasional critter of the night still out foraging, raccoons, possums and deer. When we run across any or all of these critters the morning walk gets very interesting, usually with me hanging on for dear life and yelling “NO NO NO!” The main purpose of the morning walk is to burn off energy and the morning poop, the dogs not me, so the dogs can make it until we get home for lunch to let them out. It’s not a very long walk, about twenty minutes tops.

I am always on high alert walking in the dark, watching and listening for any unusual movement or noise that doesn’t belong there. I’ve been surprised too many times with wild animals, people that are not normally out that early (and are drunk) and a naked man (not a pretty sight). This morning the dogs and I had gone to the distance limit of the walk and turned around to head back so I can jump in the shower and get ready for work. Then I noticed the quiet. I stopped and stood still for a few minutes and just listened. Nothing, no sound at all. The birds hadn’t started their morning calls; there was absolutely no wind not one leaf was moving, no traffic noise, nothing, for that moment in time there was just absolute silence.

For some people this might have been very disconcerting, the feeling of being all alone, but for me it was perfect, the most peaceful moment in time. Just the dogs and me all alone in the dark standing in the middle of the road, soaking up the quiet. In this crazy hectic rush world where everyone wants something to happen instantaneously, hearing nothing was very relaxing and calming. All of my rush mode was gone for a moment, I even forgot what day it was. Then a rabbit ran across the road and I became the boat anchor I was meant to be trying to slow down two dogs, weighing in at one hundred seventy eight pounds and definitely with much more muscle mass than me.

Now I remember, it’s Monday!