Linda Sands » dog

posted something sad and something odd

Linda — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 23:13:31 +0000

over at Another Good Thing.

stop over and browse…

I can turn your head.

Linda — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 19:01:00 +0000

Kid Kallahan loves a meaty Chianti. Especially free ones from 1975.…

George Carlin gives THIS word at least 5 meanings.

Linda — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:05:00 +0000

I talked about it here. The lovely Miss FamousPants talked about it here (to a greater audience).

somone wrote a poem about it – on the internet .

Fecal offender of sidewalk you claim-
pray what manner of beast from who’s body you came
Were it poodle,or spaniel, terrier, or mutt
that expelled you indifferently from it’s canine butt?
And where was the master with negligent scoop
whilst you made your deposit at the foot of my stoop?

But George talks about it best here.

and now that I have exceeded the annual blogger allowance for crap talking and it’s only January, I will have to come up a whole new lingo for the campaign season

Totally off subject and a little meandering.

Linda — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 19:01:00 +0000

You might have thought it was the dog in your bed the way the poor thing whimpered, the way his leg jerked out, then kept running as if squirrels taunted him in the forest. You may have thought the kids were geniuses the way they blurted out mathematical figures and long monologues of poetry with their eyes shut. You may have thought someone was sick, someone was lonely or someone was angry, if you came upon any of us in our sleep.

My family will never go to one of those sleep clinics. I’m afraid they’d never let us leave. We are too much material for the research machine. We’re sleep walkers, sleep talkers, sleep writers and sleep arguers. We have solved all the problems of the world without ever waking up. If we were more enlightened we might think we were tapped into Shiva, the goddess of sleep. But instead, we just think it’s weird when people say they don’t dream, or if they do, they don’t remember.
I can fly in my sleep just take a few running steps and lift off. It’s not at all scary and I am in perfect control. I dream in technicolor, I revisit places, I see places I’ll go to next week and I remember it all. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and write it all down, just so I get it exactly right. I have known what was around the corner in strange places, because I have been there in my dreams. I have used dreams to jumpstart stories, to fill in the blanks of novels, to find that perfect line of a poem. I have also been angry with real life people for betraying me in my dreams and cautious of others because of what they may or may not have done in my dream.
My subconscious is such a strong part of me, it’s too bad I think sleeping is a waste of time. I’m a 4-6 hour girl. By choice.
My kids can just lie there 10- 12 hours, no problem. My husband can sleep 13 hours, and has, but if he’s under stress, he’ll flop around all night, he’ll mumble and flail and then he’ll
talk in his sleep. If I want to mess with him, I’ll answer back. This can go on for a few sentences and although I have no idea what what we’re arguing about, I always let him win. It’s his dream.

Dreaming isn’t all of it. I used to sleepwalk, not as bad as those weirdoes who pee in the kitchen trash can or eat odd food in the fridge, or the one girl who cleans all night and then is too tired the next day to do her job well. The first time anyone witnessed my sleepwalking, I was at my grandmother’s house and had gotten up from the makeshift bed on the couch, walked right into the bathroom where my tough as nails New Jersey aunt was brushing her teeth, told her good night and climbed into the bathtub, sliding the glass door shut behind me.
Not so bad, right? Though embarrassing in the morning. Maybe not as bad as my sister who became a bus driver in her sleep. One morning at our one room cabin in the Adirondacks, she told us all to “Move to the back of the bus!” I thought she ought to set her sights a little higher next time she pulled up the sheets.

Maybe having this second life under the covers is a good thing, after all who can blame you for what you do when you’re sleeping, right? If only I could fall into it as easily and with as little guilt as my dogs.
Yes, I have been trying to rest more while my nose heals.

Potty language

Linda — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:05:00 +0000

A quick note on coprophagia –which sounds like a lovely Northern Italian dish to be served piping hot with a cold glass of Pinot Grigio.

Well. It’s not.

It’s what my six month old puppy started doing. It is something that can make me think she’s not so adorable after all. It’s worse than the cute nose-picking kid.

My furry little AWWW Benji look-a-like puppy likes to eat shit–huge loads of crap made by our ninety pound lab, small steaming green mounds made by herself, old white flecked half frozen and stomped clods from the garden and tiny perfectly ball shaped rabbit turds from the bunny who lives in the compost pile.

Apparently, this is a common problem with dogs- starting back from the mother dog eating the fecal matter of her newborns in the den in order to maintain a sanitary place for the wriggling blind bodies—but this dog is 6 months old, the only thing she’s humping is her stuffed bunny and we don’t even have a den.

So why would she suddenly do this?

I may have missed a few hints. There was one day a few weeks ago that I said, as I wandered around the yard with a bag on my hand, “Where’s all the poop? I haven’t picked up dog doo in days, yet there’s hardly any to be found.” Hint number two. My daughter said, “Mommy, why’s the puppy’s belly so fat?”

So, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised…

Most Tuesdays are pet store run days, as the pet store is next to the dance studio and it’s a two for one plan. So once a month it’s dog nail trim time, as that is one task I despise¾ too many nipped quicks and dog nails bleed a long, long time.

So, we have the puppy in her carrier, as she is prone to motion sickness (something we all hope she grows out of ). And soon enough, bombs away!

My daughter, who chose to sit with the puppy’s carrier, says, “Ewww, she barfed!”

The rest of us say at the same time—“Eww. Something smells like dogcrap.”

My daughter looks in the crate and announces, “The puppy barfed poop. And not just a little-ack–a lot of poop!”

This brings a whole new meaning to the term diarrhea of the mouth.

The kids are gagging, and the puppy is puking and stepping in the shit-barf and I race down the road, pull into the parking lot and try to clean up the whole mess with some rags and plastic bags and bottled water.

The Groomer said it’s normal, but she winced when she told me, then held the puppy arms length away and pointed out the medicine row. I bought a package of Deter pills, guaranteed to end this “common but disturbing habit.”

I felt like a failure as a puppy mom. Whatever could I be doing that my adorable, fuzzy, six month old wants to shit and eat it too? How repulsive I must be to her if she would choose crap over me? And ewwww. She licked my mouth with that tongue!

But now, I see how she was trying to communicate. She taught me to clean up the yard more frequently, and feed her more fiber, like the veggie diet she used to be on. She now gets independent walks every day and has a new leash and muzzle (for the times we can’t watch her in the yard and she may be tempted), plus she can’t chew on pine cones or drag twigs inside anymore.

My big old lab looks at her like she is some kind of freak–a shit addict–but I think my puppy is just smarter than us. She is like her own science experiment, like her own little San Francisco .