RIP Junebug

Yesterday we had to put Junebug to sleep. It was something that we knew we would probably have to do before too long. She was 12 1/2, and in addition to being deaf, she had very arthritic back legs, to the point that she was having trouble standing, and climbing stairs. She had also started losing her house training. Still, the end was unexpected when it happened.*

I'm not going to remember Junebug as my favorite dog. She was a pain in the ass, plain and simple. We got her from the pound, where she had been staying with a foster parent, her second one. We were told she was house trained, and while that might have been true, the separation anxiety she felt when the foster parent left overwhelmed everything else. In addition to going to the bathroom, she destroyed carpet and anything else in her path. We tried keeping her in a crate during the day, but she was so freaked out that she broke out by overcoming the soldering, earning the nickname Houndini. And so the destruction continued. Kathy and I alternated as far as wanting to get rid of her, never both agreeing to it at the same time. Despite the burden she placed on us, we didn't feel comfortable with what it would mean to Junebug to leave her abandoned one more time.

We hired Bryce as our dog walker to help reduce the time Junebug was left humanless. And over time Junebug grew more comfortable with us. The messes happened less frequently, though we were reminded not to leave food or hardback books within her reach. And her reach was legendary -- anything on a kitchen counter was fair game, and she learned to open cupboards and drawers. Bryce wanted to install a camera just to see how she got to some of the things she did -- once at Bryce's, she got into bread that was two shelves above counter height. Houndini indeed.

One of the reasons we kept Junebug in those early days was because she had such a sweet disposition. Truly. And when she was young and mobile, it was a joy to see her when she was running, be it on the beach, in the snow, or in a field. It was there that one really saw her at her happiest. And we grew to love her in spite of the difficulties she presented, because after all, all she really wanted was a little bit of loving. And when you get down to it, that's not so unreasonable.

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* - I don't want to dwell on the end, but for anyone who wants such details, here you go.

Innocent Victims of Subprime Lending

I came across this depressing article today, describing the massive increase of abandoned pets as a result of the flood of foreclosures that are happening all over the country.

"[M]ost people grappling with foreclosure are returning to rental housing or moving in with relatives — two situations where it can be difficult or impossible to bring pets."

Shelters and rescue groups are having to turn down pets because they have no space for them. If anyone is thinking about getting a pet, please consider adopting from a shelter rather than going to a breeder or pet store. Especially now.


Junebug, Our "Pound Puppy," Enjoying The Beach (January 2007)

Flotsam

This is the month -- the plan is to use the embryos we had frozen in June. Figure we should find out in about a month whether Kathy's pregnant (though as we found out the hard way last time, that's only the beginning), so wish us luck.


After giving it a lot of thought, I've decided not to pursue the business that's for sale. I looked at the income from the store and realized that I could either work ~70 hours a week for at least the next two years with minimal time off; or hire someone, which would result in making almost no money for roughly two years (after coming up with the money to purchase the store). A not insignificant factor was the blurb above -- even if I were inclined to work long hours or for very little money if it were just the two of us, if we're successful at our attempt at pregnancy, I would want to be able to see my child(ren) and to not be worried financially. The business likely will be sold before we'd know about our efforts at pregnancy, though if it's still on the market at that time, I may quickly revisit the issue. As suggested by my earlier post, one thing that wasn't a factor was Kathy -- she's been incredibly supportive of my looking into this opportunity. I think she might even be a bit more disappointed than I am that it doesn't seem to work for us.


Much as we love Junebug, she's recently entered a phase that's really starting to piss us off. Last week, for the first time since we renovated our kitchen, she figured out how to open the dog food drawer and help herself. We tried holding the door closed with bungee cords, but to no avail, so we've had to put the food back into a closet, which is something of a pain. Today I came home and found out that she's figured out how to open the pantry, and that she had attacked several open boxes of cereal and gotten the rawhides down off a shelf about as tall as she is long. Needless to say, her methods of opening the drawers and the pantry cause some damage to the doors, which makes us very unhappy (expletives omitted) given that we got very nice cabinetry when we renovated the kitchen less than two years ago! I think we'll be able to keep her out in the future, but I expect there to be some additional damage before she decides she can't get in.


Rather than bore any of you with a full review of Pratchett's latest Discworld novel (I've reviewed two of his others), I'll simply say that Pratchett fans will be delighted to see a new story about Sam Vimes and the Watch. The rest of you should avoid this book until you've read the many earlier books concerning Sam, many of which are better than this one, and all of which provide context. It's not a bad book -- there are the standard conversion of elements of our world to the Discworld equivalents (a new trend is taking place among the young dwarfs, consisting of them carrying additional battle axes, and other such war-based paraphenalia -- it's called "clang"). And Sam is one of my favorite characters out there. But where the story to Night Watch (the last Discworld story centered on Sam) sizzled, this one doesn't come together as well. As for the other recurring characters, sadly Lord Vetinari has nothing more than a cameo in this one, though Captain Carrot, Angua, Nobby and the rest of them are entertaining as always. Rating: 7/10



And if you can stand one more bearded photo, this one is right up there with Mr. Flu's:

If she hadn't...

The bad news was that Junebug got hurt. So she got staples in her leg to close up a wound, which meant we had to take her to the vet to get them removed (Kathy refused to take me up on my suggestion that I bring my staple remover home from work). And while we were there, the vet had time to give Junebug a full exam, and because it had been too long since her last exam, we went ahead with it. It turns out she tested positive for Lyme disease, so as of tonight she's on antibiotics. So in a way the accident was a good thing, because otherwise odds are we wouldn't have taken Junebug in until she'd shown symptoms of Lyme disease. And this'll get us to take Nora in for a checkup (very soon), because she's been in the same woods that Junie's been in.

What does this say about us as dogowners? We love our dogs, and want them to live a long healthy life, but we don't seem particularly inclined to do some the things that would help them achieve that long healthy life such as take them in for regular checkups -- our vet approach definitely seems more reactive than proactive. At the emergency clinic after the accident, we spent $250. Today's bill was $240, including checkup, shots, lab tests, heartworm medicine, and the follow-up antibiotics. The vet didn't even give the distemper shot today because he likes to space the shots out, so we're going again in 10 days or so, and that'll be an additional charge. He wanted to run an additional test for the Lyme disease that costs $120, to get a more specific read on it, but I didn't see the point in paying for that when the proper treatment is giving her the antibiotics (and he'll want to run that more expensive test in a few months regardless, to make sure she's all better). A liver enzyme turned up in the high normal and he wants to follow-up with that -- if it's still in the normal range, why?! I guess I can count on Nora's upcoming checkup running another ~$200, assuming nothing else turns up.

Even though I'm griping about the cost, I recognize that these expenses are, generally speaking, part of the commitment one makes as a pet owner. If I'm not willing to fork over the money for the annual checkups and immunizations, then I shouldn't be a pet owner. But there is a point where one needs to draw the line, isn't there?

Our dogs are over eight (we think Junebug is almost nine, but because we got her from the pound, we don't know for certain), so if we're good pet owners, vet expense will continue to rise over the next few years. It's somewhat callous to think in these terms, but I figure that a pet is somewhere between a family member and a piece of property you need to maintain (a computer?). At what point does one say it's not worth $x to upkeep the family pet, and it's time to get an "upgrade"? By the time they discovered my dog Rosie's cancer in 2000, it was inoperable (she died a month later), so I didn't have to make a tough decision about spending thousands of dollars for her care. But before we found out it was inoperable, I was definitely wondering how much I was willing to spend, and feeling guilty as Hell over the thought that perhaps I wouldn't "spare no expense" for her. When I read this article a couple of years ago, I realized that there really isn't a cap on such expenditures for those willing to spend it.

So I don't know where all this thinking leaves me, I only know that we'll likely need to make difficult decisions in the coming years. In the meantime, we're going to try to be more proactive about our dogs' care, particularly now that they're getting up in years.

She's Ok Now, or Sometimes It's Necessary to Give away the Ending to Preserve the Reader's Peace of Mind

It's Kathy's boss' fault -- if he hadn't insisted on Kathy and him using free flights up to NYC, instead of taking the train, she'd have been home sooner. And if she'd been home sooner, then she'd have walked the dogs, because I'd walked them the past two nights. And if she walked them, Junebug wouldn't have run into the car, because she would have been on a leash. But of course that's all bullshit -- if I had kept Junebug on a leash myself, she wouldn't have chased after the cat, so Kathy and I wouldn't have been at an emergency vet clinic at 11:30 last night, even though I was coming down with a cold and wanted nothing better than to go to bed.

The incident happened last night while Junebug, Nora and I were all at the triangle down the street, a grass area where three roads intersect. At that time of night there's almost no traffic. Junebug was dropping a deuce when she spied a cat and took off after it as fast as she could. The cat crossed the street, Junebug crossed the street, and a car approached. The cat darted back into the street, right in front of the car, and Junebug was still in hot pursuit. I was frozen -- there was nothing I could say or do at that point that would make a difference, so I wished for one of two things. The first had no chance of happening -- Junebug wasn't going to have enough sense to stop and let the car pass. The second, however, did occur -- the car got to the collision point first, i.e., Junebug ran into the car, rather than the other way around. There was a thump followed by Junebug's piteous yelping. I called Junebug back into the triangle, and she lay still there for a while as the various people gathered around -- the driver, the woman on the cellphone in her front yard, and a few other neighbors. The neighbors hadn't seen the accident and assumed the worse, but because I knew she had run into the car, I was more optimistic. And after a few minutes, when I called her to get up, Junie was able to do so, although slowly. I thought she might just have been shaken up, as she moved fairly well all the way back to the house. But after Kathy came home about 15 minutes later, she noticed some blood on Junebug's underside. It turned out that there was an eraser-head sized hole on the inside of one of Junebug's hind legs, so away we went to the vet's. The vet cleaned the wound and put three staples into it, and told us that everything else seemed ok, other than some additional redness on her stomach from what the vet called "road rash."

We got back to the house and gave Junebug the first of her anti-inflammatories and antibiotics that she'll be on for a few days, and I headed to a restless night of fighting an incipient cold. This morning I got up early to go in for a four-hour conference call, then came home, both to care for Junebug and to try to get more sleep (no luck). On my way home, I thought about last night's events, and wondered whether I'll always be good about keeping Junebug on a leash in the future. Junebug seems happier off a leash -- she can play far more, and will often sprint back to the house. While crossing a street, at the moment I was thinking that I honestly couldn't make such an assurance, a squirrel playfully ran into the street, almost like it was challenging any dogs in the area to come chase it. If Junebug were with me right then, off leash, and had spotted the squirrel before I did, she almost certainly would have taken the squirrel up on its dare. It made me realize that even if I can't promise for 100% of the time, I do know that from here on out, it'll be the usual routine rather than the occasional one.

Something You Don't Want to Hear from Your Dog Walker

"Which one of you taught Junebug to use a zipper?"

That was the phrase that greeted me when I took a call from B, our dog walker, this afternoon. Yes, that clever dog of ours was able to unzip B's purse, sniff out the unopened box of Andes Mints, open it, and devour all but four of the mints in the roughly 60 seconds it took B to pick up another client's dog.

Junebug is easily the smartest dog I've ever had. She's also one of the sweetest dogs I've ever met, which is certainly a survival trait -- it's probably why we kept her despite all the havoc she created when we adopted her. Junie is part rottweiler and part German shepherd -- she's undersized and we don't know anything about her lifestory before she arrived at the pound. All we know is that she'd been abandoned, then was at the pound, then a foster home, then another foster home. So by the time we got her (in July 2000), she was a wreck -- to say there was separation anxiety is an understatement. Because she kept messing up our house we took to putting her in our room when we went to work, which was a big mistake -- her anxieties only increased. Then we tried crate-training, but that so freaked her out that she literally broke through the soldering to get out of the cage. She drove us nuts, and each of us was ready to take her back to the pound, but somehow we never wanted to get rid of her at the same time. The calm spouse would talk the enraged spouse down just in time for the roles to reverse.

Ultimately two things led to her turning the corner. The first was hiring B. The second was the rainy evening I literally picked her up when we were outside for a walk, to prevent her from going back inside the house before she'd gone to the bathroom. There's nothing like showing a dog who's boss, and apparently it was something that hadn't been made clear before then. After these two changes, Junebug still made messes, but gradually she became more comfortable, to the point where they occurred less and less. These days it's the exception rather than the rule to come home and find something to clean up. That's not to say that even five years later she's ever wholly reformed, particularly when she stays at B's (B is also our dog sitter). In addition to using the floor for a bathroom, Junebug will make you regret it if ever you leave food or the trash within reach (including counters) -- even if it seems impossible for her to reach, she'll get to it. However, because she only performs these stunts when no one's around, none of us know exactly how she does it. Discovering the answer to this mystery is the one reason I may someday invest in security cameras.

Today B couldn't figure out how Junebug got the plastic surrounding the box off without tearing a gash in it -- apparently it was left relatively intact. Such is the genius of Junebug.