Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

Mmmm Lung

Gary arrived home after visiting the Petco pet store. I could tell he was home by the distinctive way he screamed, "Honey! I'm home!" Actually, he screamed, "COME SEE THIS THIS IS AMAZING YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS THING I FOUND AT THE PET STORE!"

I went to the kitchen and found out that the amazing thing was a new snack, Lamb Lung Chips. I swear to you, it's dehydrated lung alveoli. From iddie bidda bayyyyby lambkins.

I asked Gary, "That sounds tasty and unusual. Why don't they make lamb chunks for people snacks?"

"They do! They're called ... something."

"Sweetbreads?"

"No," he said, "Those are the testicles, not the lungs."

I paused a moment, then said as I headed for the PC room, "Excuse for me a moment. I need to go write something down."

"No! No! I was wrong. Sweetbreads are the ... thymus?"

"Okay. So we'll be feeding our dog chopped up sheep lungs."

"Not sheep. Lamb. Because they are younger and their lungs are tender."

"Right, because it's when they hit adolescence and start smoking, then you can't use the lungs."

"It seems a little inhumane to eat the lungs. Think of all those baby lambs trapped in little iron-lung machines after they've had their lungs removed."

So Cute It Will Make You Puke

Look at this sweet face:

(And don't ask me what the story is with the green eyes. It happens even with the red-eye reduction on or off, which is ironic.)

He doesn't look sick, does he? No. He looks a healthy puppy. Granted, he looks bald for a silky terrier; they usually look like this:

Yeah, like we're going to maintain that coat. I barely brush my own hair.

He and I bonded pretty closely while Gary was out of town, especially since he refused to go for walks and held his water waiting for four days for Gary to get back. He's taken to pinning me down while lying across my breasts or belly (whichever is larger at that moment) and staring at Gary to ensure he doesn't leave.

That was the arrangement when our dog-human hybrid pack was all snuggled in bed, listening to Gary tell a story his Mom had told him today. It was about Arhan-fay and the assumptions his fiancee is making about family life. It was particularly tragic since it had been through the Sandy Exaggeration Lens, then through the Wilma Poetic Justice Lens, then through the Gary Comic Relief lens (in short, the fiance is acting like Sandy did twenty years ago). Gary gesticulated at the ceiling. Mac and I listened patiently. Mac listened patiently while until at one point he could take no more and vomited in Gary's face.

Mac doesn't vomit like we vomit. It might have something to do with the Silky Terrier Hair, I guess he knows no sister Silky will be there to hold back his hair. but he takes great pains that the puke doesn't land on his paws or face. As he barfs, he does this full-body shudder that strafes the vomit over a wide area.

And, it is sudden! There's no horking or burping beforehand. He's just sitting there calmly on your chest, looks up, ARRRURRPPP, vomit convulsion! licks his lips, then settles back down while everyone else screams and clears the bed. And, in this case, gets the camera.

Caution! Disturbing Image Warning! But funny! Funny like a guy covered in dog barf funny! Click, you know you want to!

And, yeah, that's dog barf on the pillows in the background.

Guest Post of the Week: Mac the Dog

(Ellen says: The dog has been fidgety lately, so I decided to let him post.)

Pleased to make your acquaintance. I am Mac the dog. Technically, I am McDonnell the dog (nee), but now that my cohort Douglas is gone the furless ones just call me Mac.

I need a forum to express my concern that some of you might be considering a Presidential candidate who would do this to a dog. I realize the article explains the dog liked being up on the car roof, but I doubt anyone from the Times interviewed the dog. As for the contention the dog liked being up on the roof because he "scrambled up there every time [they] went on trips," well -- not to sound breedist, but he's an Irish Setter. They aren't that bright.

Things here in the house have been interesting. The furless ones have been squabbling more than is usual. The smaller one, the one with the grotesquely swollen teats and the huge ankles, has been reading marriage counseling books for some work project she has. This has provoked absurd conversations between them about their "love languages." No one has asked me, but here is my take on these love languages.

Acts of Service (or as Dogs call them, Acts of Carrion)
I know some dogs (ahem - Irish Setters) chase and kill mice, deer, and such, but that doesn't appeal to me. So, I don't show love in that way. I also don't accept love when it is granted as an act of service.The larger furless one at times will try to wipe off my bottom, but I don't feel loved afterward. I feel slightly violated.

Gifts
The Furless ones and I have worked past this. For a while, they tried to show their love by giving me squeak toys. They would throw them and look at me expectantly. As if I were (and I'm sorry, but it's true) an Irish Setter. Of course, when I realized the importance they placed on gifts I tried to give them some gifts in my own way, but they just scream and throws my gifts in the trash dumpster. Hmph. So sorry I can't produce gold jewelry from my butt.

Talking
I'm a dog. They are not. We can't talk to each other. Someone, explain that to them.

Quality Time
The Furless ones seem to think they need to spend every minute together. Usually they are just watching the noisy box, and the noisy box bores me. Especially when that Chris Matthews guy is on.  As long as they check in before for dinner, we might spend all evening in separate rooms.

Touch
That's my love language. Oh, yeah, baby. I love the touch. Big Ankles has fingernails on her right hand, and sometimes she will scratch the base of my tail, or my teats. Mmmmm. Strangely, they don't like it when I do this to them. I'll make a special trip over their teats up to their heads and claw them violently, and they don't like it! They scream things like, "You are going to gouge my eye out!" and "I think he drew blood!" and "WHAT DO YOU WANT DOG IT'S FOUR A.M."

It's so hard, sometimes. Maybe I should try giving them some more of my special homemade butt gifts.

Ooooz A Good Boy?

An exchange this morning:

Gary: "Here you go, Mac. Here's your breakfast."
Gary in 'Mac' Falsetto: "Thanks Dad!"
Gary: "See, I made it just the way you like it."
Gary Falsetto: "That looks great Dad!"
Gary: "See? Mom just stacks it up, but I made it into a cone shape. I know you like that the best."
Gary Falsetto: "I do, Dad, that's the best! Mom doesn't do that."
Gary: "No, she doesn't."
Mac, the actual dog, because I can read his thoughts: "You are retarded.  Or, perhaps you are a paranoid schizophrenic. It's a tough call."
Gary: "Oooo, look at you eat! You are such a good dog! Good boy!"
Gary Falsetto: "Yes, I'm a good boy! I love the Cone of Food."
Mac: "Yeah, you know what I like? Honey-Baked Ham Tea Party Leftovers. Break out some of that."
Gary: "You like the way I make your food, on the big plate, in a cone shape!"
Gary Falsetto: "I love you, Dad!"
Mac: "Yeah, whatever. Why isn't that fat pasty woman making my breakfast anymore? And, hey, stop talking that way. I don't sound like that. I don't sound like a girl."
Gary: "Yes, that was yummy, wasn't it?"
Gary Falsetto: "Yum, Dad!"
Mac: "Jesus!"

A Haiku for My Dog, In Case of Thunderstorms

Thunder came before
Your ancestors went soft. Do
Dingo dogs do this?

Dog Thanksgiving

You may have noticed I haven't said much about Turkey Day at the S_______s, except there was, of course, pie. I've been working out exactly how to explain this year's unique brand of chaos.

See, Gary and I had girded our loins for the explosive combination of Sandy and her brood reacting with the rest of the S____ family after the ill-fated summer visit. (Things did not end well this summer after the kids left our house and went to the more restrictive environments of the S_____s and Wonderfuls.)

However, on Thanksgiving everyone was on their best behaviour, and I use the Canadian spelling because the behaviour was that good. Teenagers laughed. Politics were not discussed. I had a heart-to-heart with Arzaana-Fay and was not accused of grandchild stealing. The Kansas City contingent was three hours late, therefore the turkey was dry and stringy and NO ONE SAID A WORD.

You would think there was an undercurrent, but there wasn't, and that's what's so odd. Usually, after a big Blowup like the Summer '06 Blowup, there would be an air of strained politeness and eye-rolling. What I've decided is that the in-laws transferred all their hostility to the dogs. There were the half-Muslim KC dogs (Willow and Moses - yes, Moses is a big dude in Islam, but not so big you can't name your dog after him), then there were the S_____ Nazi dogs Ferrari and Mercedes (they didn't name them), then the Wonderful dogs George and Gracie, and then Mac. And as dogs will, every 20 minutes dogs would chest-butt each other and scream and shake their jowls.

This would provoke ten minutes of in-laws screaming and vaulting off the upholstery to protect their dogs, check their dogs for injuries even though no contact had been made, and lecture their dogs on how they should love the other dogs because they were cousins. Mr. and Mrs. Wonderful would speak sternly to everyone else's dogs and not their own. Sandy and I would have a dry little conversation on how these were dogs, not diplomats, and they should be allowed to act like dogs. Gary's mother, I swear to you, would get a newspaper and slap her hand with the paper. She claimed the noise of the slapping paper is what upsets the dogs, and it is unnecessary and cruel to hit the dog.

So, viewed from the dog's perspective, this was our Thanksgiving:
Mac: Hey.
Willow and Moses: As-Salāmu 'Alaykunna!
Mercedes: Who's that? I can't see.
Ferrari: I can't hear. It smells like those young pups. It must be a holiday.
Willow: Yes, it's Thanksgiving. Doesn't it seem like the most boring Thanksgiving ever?
George: Are they all on drugs?
Mac: My Mom's on drugs.
Gracie: It's too quiet. Ten bucks for the first one who gets someone to say their dog was abused as a puppy.
(Willow and Gracie squabble. Much screaming.)
Willow: Aahhhhh. That's more like it.
Ferrari: Heh heh heh. That was good. Watch this, I can get my Mom to beat herself with a newspaper.
Mac: Cool!
(Ferrari attacks Mac. Wilma runs toward them beating herself with a newspaper. Then, a few minutes later:)
George: I'm kind of sensing Sandy's been calm too long and she's going to bust. Let's get her riled up next. Moses, steal some ham.
Moses: So let it be written, so let it be done.

Picture hours of that. I only overheard two human squabbles. Hopefully, the dogs will take on Squabble Patrol for Christmas as well.

In Which the Mets Experience the Willful Cruelty of the Baseball Gods

"We barely beat them at the end. Which was exciting." - Some dude who handed out the trophy.

Video editing at onetruemedia.com

In Which we Mock Dog AND Husband

I would like to think my dog is housebroken. I would like to think that. It is a lie, but I would like to hold on to that lie.

I have only two dog rules:

1)       Do not move your bowels inside the house.

2)       Do not void your bladder inside the house.

I think the dog understands my list; he just has a longer list of loopholes and clauses that often override my two rules. If he could list his exemptions, they would be:

1)       I, _________ [state dog’s name] believe there is a rain and snow exemption to the two human rules stated above.

2)       I believe if a human is not watching me perform the act outside then I should “go” inside so they can appreciate it.

3)       I believe my urine protects the inside of the house from predators if reapplied daily.

So, he really isn’t breaking the rules, I just am not aware of all the conflicting dog rules. This applies to my husband as well. I have a very few limited rules, and while it seems that he ignores them, it’s just that his set of rules are sometimes in conflict with my rules. My rules are:

1)       Move your bowels and bladder inside the house and never let me know about it.

2)       Do not talk to me when:

a.      I am on the phone with someone else

b.      I am listening to music in the car and Steven Page is singing

c.      I am asleep

3)       If we have a party, do not make extra work for me to do.

4)       If I am working around the house, do not follow me around and suggest how I could be doing that housework more effectively.

Gary’s unstated exemptions to the above rules are:

1)       I, Gary, feel the first bathroom visit of the day should be announced so all inhabitants of the house know that elimination production is meeting normal standards. And I deserve a treat and a belly rub for that.

2)       I believe that:

a.      The people you are on the phone with would like to know I am still around.

b.      You need to be kept alert in the car.

c.      If I talk to you when you sleep you talk back in your sleep and say funny things with which I can mock you when you waken.

3)       If we have a party, and the books are not in Dewey Decimal order, you just don’t understand how that reflects on the man in the family.

4)       But don’t you want me to help with the housework?

In Memoriam

We had to put Douglas to sleep. It turned out he didn't have Addison's, his very first X-Ray showed body parts in entirely the wrong locations. He wasn't in pain, but it was just a matter of time. The vet gave us the option of keeping him there over the weekend, doing exploratory surgery, and if it was inoperable just not bringing him out of it. We decided not to have the dog spend a weekend in the vet's office on an IV and then die in surgery, since it seemed really clear something was pushing his organs into the wrong spots. We made a mistake with our first dog Fred and kept him alive way too long while we kept hope alive.

So, it is sad. But it reminds me of a story: Dog Death With Dignity

Dog Death with Dignity

One December morning I was making Christmas cookies with my friend Carol. The house was full of Christmas Crap decor - all the stuff that waits 11 months in the basement to come upstairs and clutter up your house during the holidays, and you have to move out your regular crap to make room for the Christmas crap? That stuff. Anyway, it was morning and Gary was sleeping and the dogs (I thought) were tooling around underfoot.

Suddenly Gary screamed from the bedroom: "Auuugghghgh! Augghgh! Damn it Ellen, the dogs have a bag of chocolate chips and they're eating it!"

Well, you with dogs know this is a crisis. Carol and I dropped our spatulas and ran into the bedroom to find McDonnell and Douglas in the closet chewing, this was true, on a noisy cellophane bag.  A bag that contained Fred. Technically, the cremated remains (cremains) of our late dog Fred. What sounded to Gary like dogs chewing through to chocolate chips was actually dogs chewing through to the well-done remains of their predecessor.

The dogs looked up guiltily for a moment. Then over the screams they turned back to their task. We grabbed the dogs and pulled them away from the store of non-Christmas crap that had been stored on the closet floor and surveyed the damage. The box that had previously contained the cremains had been torn open, the cremains bag pulled out and gnawed on, but luckily Fred had been double-bagged and I did not have to clean cremains into my Dustbuster.

Mad Dogs and German Men

Doug, the Sickly White Dog, has been increasingly sickly.   He was feeling pretty peaked when he went for some dental work . Gwen the assistant even commented he was not looking in top form and had lost weight. I commented this might be because he is Bulimia Dog and has puked every day for a week.

The dental work led to some antibiotics. Two days on the antibiotics and I had a different dog. Formerly, Doug would wake me up at 6:30 by whining his Little Whiny Song. Now he was waking me up at 6:30 by barking: "BITCH! Get UP!"

And he was kicking Mac's tail all over the house and snarfing down food. Antibiotics stopped, two days later, Sickly Doug was back. Started antibiotics again, puke dried up, Feisty Doug returned.

This led to some more lab work. It looks like he might have Addison's disease and might need some special medication. I mentioned this to mom, who said:

"He'll become horny."
"Huh?"
"Kennedy," she said. "JFK had Addison's. I think they said the medicine is what made him horny."
I sighed, " Some woman at work said her dog died from Addison's."
"You never know what might happen," Mom reassured me. "Doug might be driving past a grassy knoll and be shot by a lone gunman."

He hasn't been definitively diagnosed with a special Presidential Illness, but currently Doug's on dose three of the antibiotics, and a new dose of anti-spasmodic for his belly, and has figured out all of our pill-giving tricks. Pill hidden in peanut butter/ cheese / Vienna Sausages? Doug's not buying it. Pill poked down back of throat? Doug horks it up, gums it, and I find little white pills adhered to his lip-fur days later. Pills ground up with a mortar and pestle and sprinkled on the moist dog food? For a week Doug took minuscule nibbles of his food and spat out the bits contaminated with pill powder.

Now for the past two days he has stopped eating his dog food. I serve it, he looks up and sends me the psychic message: "Don't think I'm falling for some type of invisible pill you have in there."And of course, my puppy-whipped husband has decided we should feed the dog anything that will give him calories. So today Doug - and of course, Mac - have had:

1) A breakfast of  Vienna sausages.
2) For luncheon, shaved mesquite-smoked turkey.
3) A mid-afternoon snack of peanut butter licked off Gary's fingertips.
4) Smoked turkey flecks mixed into dog food. Doug used great tongue contortions to worry out the turkey and leave the dog food.

Finally I convinced Gary we could grind up the pills, mix it with something palatable and water, pull it into a syringe like the vet suggested, and fire it into the back of Doug's throat. I am sure Doug will soon adapt and begin projectile vomiting the medicine right back in my face.

Mac, the Barom-o-Dog

Killer tornadoes passed -- sorry, ripped -- through Missouri two nights ago. I knew this because my dog McDonnell was shaking and panting and sitting on my head at 2 a.m. I tried everything. The Full Body Dog Take-down. The Comforter Tent. The Tough Love Choke-hold. 

Mac the Mighty Weather Dog-ometer needed to alert me that dogs were being rained on somewhere within a two-hundred-mile radius. There was no rain outside my house, of course, but North Central Missouri evidently had tornadoes. Mac wanted me to know that little rural dogs were in danger of being swept up. (He has never seen The Wizard of Oz, thankfully.)

So, knowing the dog was reaching Emergency Alert System levels of panic (even though there was no rain here) I turned on the Weather Channel at 2 a.m. and I swear he watched it. He stopped shaking and studied the red tornado watch boxes closely. A commercial came on and he went back to pacing.

"I know, honey" I cooed, "There's a tornado two hundred freaking miles away. Do you think I can do something about it?"

"PANT PANT PANT!"

At least he contained his bowels, which is more than I can say of our late dog Fred, the Seismo-Dog, who could tell if an earthquake was happening.  I discovered he had this skill when one day I called the vet, complaining Fred was fine yesterday but this morning he had strafed the house with watery diarrhea.

"It's just the earthquake" the vet said, quite blase , "All the dogs are doing it."

"Huh? What earthquake?"

"There was a 2.5 earthquake at the New Madrid fault this morning. We can't feel it, but dogs can, and they panic and have diarrhea."

Since this is the vet who sometimes eschews the Scientific Method (see Dogs and Kangaroo), I thought it best to check with another source. My co-worker Barry's wife worked for Dog Fancy Magazine, so I asked him, "Barry, have you heard anything about the way dogs behave during earthquakes?"

"Yes" Barry said authoritatively, "They slide into the chasms right along with the buildings and the trees."

Still, Fred did seem to be a Discerner of Earthquakes, and McDonnell can certainly sense a tornado at 200 miles. Douglas it appears has no natural talent, unless someday he starts barking and chasing his tail and we are promptly flattened by a tsunami.

Dogs and Kangaroo (a sequel to Dogs and Butter)

Doug, the delicate fluffy white dog, has been getting sores on his skin since day one. We thought it was the grass fertilizer, the detergent, etc. Since it has continued into the winter we are thinking he might be allergic to his food. So, he gets new food (and since it would be too hard to explain to Mac, Mac gets new food too). However, they have to find something unusual to put in the hypo-allergenic food that wouldn't be in any other dog foods on the market. It used to be lamb, but then they started making lamb dog food.

This is the reason why my dogs will be eating KANGAROO. Expecting the worst, I asked the vet and he said if Doug develops an allergy to Kangaroo, then we can feed him venison. I say, first the venison, then the Kangaroo. Doesn't that make more sense? First the Disney characters, then the Pooh characters?

Well, later, I picked up the kangaroo from the vet. I asked Gwen (the assistant) if this was 100% Grade A kangaroo. She didn't realize I was kidding. However, she did start reading the bag, then said a moment later, "Know how much kangaroo is in this?"
"10 percent?" I guessed, fearing the worst.
"Zero percent," she said, grimly, then going off to track down just exactly how Dr. Morgan had gotten the idea the was any kangaroo at all in this stuff. I was relieved they hadn't started to laugh and say "Har - Kangaroo - really had you going."

I felt even better when Gwen returned and announced dryly that Dr. Morgan saw the brochure, it had kangaroos on it, there you go. We began trying to think why a marketing firm would choose kangaroos for its brochure. Well, I was trying, they were laughing at Dr. Morgan. ("Good thing they didn't put HUMANS on the brochure.") Turns out on further inspection of the bag (which it's obvious no one had ever done) it was discovered that:

1) it's made in Australia, and that
2) the office cats hadn't seen the brochure and sensed it was 100% chicken and had chewed a hole in the bag.

So, I paid $50 for a partially empty bag of American chickens that had been flown to Australia and broken down into their essential proteins. (This is what makes it non-allergenic, at least that's what Gwen surmised. I thought she might have double-checked this with Dr. Morgan, but he was hiding.)

So, I wasn't too excited anymore about giving the dogs ersatz kangaroo, and I didn't open the bag for a few days. I let them out before I went to bed and thought if I snuck the new food in when they were outside they might not notice it as much. The bag (which I had now read thoroughly) suggests slowly adding more food each day to their existing food. Of course, the chicken is a lighter color than the kangaroo (I still call it that). I was hoping they would be too sleepy the next morning to care. I set out their bowls in the hall with 20% kangaroo and 80% non-hydroliziginanted chicken, got ready for bed, and let them back in.

Dog noses shoving through the crack in the door! Dog noses immediately in the laundry room where the bag of kangaroo is! Dog noses racing down the hallway, dragging dog bodies along to the food bowl! Dog heads up to their necks in the food bowl! Dog tongues touching old food non-Australian chicken pellets 80% of the time and flipping them against the walls and doors! Plink! Snorffle! In less than a minute all the kangaroo pellets were in the dogs and all the native chicken pellets were scattered in the hallway.

Doug immediately stopped chewing on himself and his skin has cleared up.

Dogs and Butter

Last fall, Mac and Doug were in the Living room admiring the new footstool.
Mac said, "I must say, I admire the Furless One's taste. That is a fine article of furniture."
"Mmmm," Doug said, "Real quality. You can tell it's built to last."
"What's it used for? Does it have a purpose?" Mac wondered aloud.
"I saw the large one put his feet on it," Doug said.
"Perhaps we could put our feet on it as well. Do you think they'd mind?" Mac inquired politely.
"They're in the other room. Don't bother them. I'm sure it would be fine," Doug answered confidently, "Here, I'll go first."

(Doug jumps on footstool.)

"Hmm," Doug said, "Interesting height. Not as high as the other seating areas they bought for us. I could walk right across to this table --- why, someone left an entire stick of butter here."

And with that Doug and the butter were gone. All we found 5 minutes later was Mac licking the butter wrapper that Doug discarded.

Then, 2 hours later, the butter hit Douglas hard and he began to vomit, so Mac got some of the butter then, shall we say. In fact, Doug was polite enough to vomit in the bedroom while we were in the living room, Mac found it, and decided to clean it up. Not only did he clean up the vomit, he licked the carpet clean, and then he ate the carpet down to the mat, it was soooo tasty.

Doug got sick enough that I called Animal Poison Control and they said that was a serious amount of sodium for a small dog and his kidneys might fail, so Gary had to stay up all night and watch the dogs. 

Anyway, everyone is fine and we have a hole in the carpet. Also, the S_____s have been warned about the dangers of giving salted food to dogs. Gary anticipates his parents will stop salting their food entirely.

Actually, I'm concerned the vet will think I have Munchusen's Syndrome by Proxy and am inflicting illness in my dogs to gain sympathy.