My mutts and I

I am getting worse than my mother! When she watches the news, she listened to the first few words and makes up the rest of the story by herself. In my case, your Honor, I just don’t read the whole titles: for instance, this morning, I was working in the darn yard again which is invaded by those small tiny flies which bug me more than the big ones, hold on though, we haven’t been through the cicada season yet!

Anyway, I went back home to get some anti-bugs spray. Went to my bathroom, grabbed the spray where in big letters I see repellent – I was even amazed at being so good for once to have put that spray where it belonged -. I sprayed my legs, my arms, and was going to go after the neck when I noticed the remaining of the tile “Silicone repellent for leather and suede”. No wonder I thought I smelled like my Ugg boots! For your information, the bug repellent is MIA. So I am sure that if it rains, my skin won’t even get wet but these small flies are attacking me by hundreds.

I might deserve to be attacked by all these flies, because when I bought my lawn mower last year, again, I read one word:  propelled, except that in front of the propelled was “not self”, so I have to push the darn lawn mower on over two acres, and no it’s not flat, ok? I deserve it! I should stop being in a rush all the time!

Zeus Corner, my new venture, is getting born now, little by little, and it took over 11 months of work and several useless webmasters before I found the right one,  to reach that point. The pregnancy of a mare if I am not mistaken! So, yes, now I am a bit scared but excited.  If my 30 years or more experience with dogs, cats, and other critters can help others, then Zeus Corner will have a meaning. So stay tuned for its launching date, most likely it will be in June.

I have six panting mutts next to me. It’s kind of hot, and they played Frisbee or ball according to their preferences, and are now cooling down! Of course, Jackson is still outside, and every now and then, he is barking to let me know that he would not mind a few more Frisbee throws. Dream on buddy! Did I mention anywhere that I love that boy so so much?  In French, there is a saying when something had a real meaning for you; you say it was a “white stone in your life”. I had a few white stones mostly with black labs! Jet, the first lab who entered my life, and to get his ashes when I split up with the douche-bag who was his owner, I had to trade in my kitchen table and the sideboard. Then, came Zeus, the love of my life, and now Jackson is trying to mark his territory, meaning little old me!

Play time is fun. I start with Lola in the front yard, because I trust Lola. She will never ever disobey me. Then, while she is recovering with her front paws in their bowl of water, I get Jack out while sequestering – so DC like! – the others in my office. Jack is a trip by himself. He shakes from his paws to his face when he sees his beloved Frisbee. Unlike others, he waits until the Frisbee is thrown to go after, and then after he retrieves it, he is like the winner in a horse show and does a parade all over the yard, jumping, and keeping his precious Frisbee in his mouth! Ten minutes later, he goes straight to the door to get some well-deserved water. The fight at that point is to get the Frisbee out of his mouth before he buries his whole face in the water plus a few paws.

I got them a new toy today, a big strong ball orange and blue. Immediately, when Jack saw it, it was love at first sight. I threw the ball and there he went galloping all over the yard like a Mustang! The others came out, and noticed the new toy…. It just registered into Jack’s mind like “Over my dead” body, they won’t get it!”, and here is my Jack furiously digging a hole by the house despite of my screams – I thought we already went through the fact that the Potomac Metro Station won’t start in my backyard! – but Jack, oblivious of my screaming,  put his ball at the bottom and started to cover it with leaves.  Yes, I know, I still have leaves in the yard. No good excuse… Wait a minute…. Last Fall, I had a leaves allergy. That’s a good one!

Jack is looking at me like “it’s our secret right? You won’t tell them?”  And he slowly goes away from the hidden ball, nonchalantly lies down in the grass, seemingly enjoying the sunshine on his shiny coat, but I can see it in his eyes: he is protecting his ball, and almost looks like his sister when she is in squirrel or birds mood, and lies down in the grass, waiting for a suicidal critter. Jack found a new goal in life: he is the ball keeper!

Tomorrow I am going to the zoo. I hate zoos. Always did. I always felt that by losing their freedom and their anonymity, these animals become freaks.  But I need to see elephants. They always made me keep my balance, recenter myself. I will go straight to them, and just absorb them. Elephants give me peace, and since I cannot jump into a plane to experience free and wild elephants,  I am going to the zoo. So, I guess, I am wrong, and zoos do have a reason to be. Do you know that in the wild some elephants now are born without tusks? How pathetic is it? To survive, Nature made them born crippled? Greed no more…. Ivory no more…. Tomorrow I will get my “elephants” fix.

March is always a hard month to live by. This year even more…. I always say that pups should come with a big sign “Will bring so much joy in your life, but one day will break up your heart.” I should also wear a sign “Warning: cool to have as a friend as long as you don’t mind painless sudden death.”  My three best friends all died the same way: in their sleep, their heart stopped beating. Age doesn’t matter: 34, 56, 37. Not picky. I have one girlfriend left and not sure yet what I should do with her. Should I dump her to save her? You know what, that’s a good question!

Yesterday, my brother told me that he messed up his life. But that’s because he just doesn’t get it. Life is not only about companionship. Life is like a diamond with so many facets. You can screw up one of two, there are plenty left!  Maybe flaws should be considered as beautiful as perfection.  My diamond is not perfect, so what? Are you going to sue me? Relationships are not perfect. I am done with the Lovey dovey ones. I swear you can stick a fork in me. I am done. The last straw was from Facebook….. An ex-boyfriend who dumped me some twelve years ago because he could not incorporate in my life like if I were some kind of mayonnaise (by the way, I make my own mayo with egg yolk, mustard and olive oil!), suddenly found me on Facebook, and two marriages later wanted to have an extra marital affair with me twelve years later? Suddenly he cannot live without me? Breaking news sweetie: I can live without you!

Jackson is sleeping on my feet as I type this trying to make me forget that I spent $ 46.00 on him yesterday when he got loose in a pet store for 1 minute and managed to steal cookies and swallow them at the speed of the light. He reminded me so much of my late Zeus who could swallow anything in a second if he ever thought that I was going to get it from him.  The only difference Jackson Darling was that Zeus was abused, Zeus was starved before he came into my life, when there was not one day in your life where you skipped a meal you since you were born, so yes, snuggle with my feet as much as you want, Mom is still pissed!

And by the way, the cats are on a diet! Yes, that’s darn right. My ex vet told me that they were not overweight, and just big cats. Maybe so, but when they start screaming bloody hell in the middle of the night because they cannot jump over the gate to go to their room, I thing that yes, Houston we have a problem.  The big food bowl is gone, and now they get ¾ of a cup each daily and they are not happy, like if I care????  I want the best for you Sweeties….. I want you to be able to bug the mutts forever, so losing weight is the goal!

I do have to acknowledge that my Jackson is pretty cute though…. A friend of mine, psychologist, always tried to convince me that the older we get, the tougher we get. So, I guess that I still must be the exception, because there are always exceptions, right? I have no clue how I will manage when the mutts start to drop dead on me when they get older. I cannot imagine Max, my baby, becoming white and old. I just can’t. I also know that this ride is an exceptional one that I will never experience it again, so yes, I am taking the time to enjoy it, and to go through it with as little regrets as possible.  George is still around though, I almost feel like “Donkeyskin”, the fairy tale. It almost seems like I am carrying George with me, and my steps are heavier because of him. He never went away. Is it him? Is it me? I don’t know, but tomorrow I am going to the zoo to see the elephants.

As I always say – sometimes it makes feel as old as Tom Hanks in the Green Mile, I never understood the blabbering about Spring in DC. THERE IS NO SPRING IN DC! If we are very lucky, we might have a week of it, but most of the time we drastically go from winter to summer. Of course, this year I am right again! But go explain to the mutts – the black ones – that from one day to another, I cannot take them in the truck because it’s too hot. They don’t get it, so they go from every musical note they can imagine. I still wonder how the nearby bridge did not collapse with their howling and screaming!

This weekend, I have a photographer coming to take a picture of the mutts and me for the new website! Can’t say I am really looking forward to it. Never liked to be photographed, but no choice here! Therefore, I am working on the backyard in order for it to look half decent. The blooming trees are going to help a lot, but I added mulch – yuck – and some flowers in my Jack Daniels barrel. And I have breaking news for everyone – like Nancy Grace loves to say –: the deer are not as destructive as the mutts. I repeat, just to be sure that everyone gets it: the mutts are MORE DESTRUCTIVE than the deer. I came back with some flowers, put them on the deck, and went to work on my barrel. I turned back, and most of the flowers had disappeared, and here are the mutts, each of them with flowers in their freaking mouths – running around the yard. Are you kidding me? They did a great job, beheading a lot of my daisies, etc…. I tell you, the death penalty still exists in my yard, not called the French guillotine here though! I even saw a shy doe looking at them with horror! It could have been her breakfast!

Then, this week brought the news that the Emergency Hospital where I was taking the mutts when there was an emergency was closing, ok not closing, I change that again: it’s closing since the staff and the vets are out too, and it has been bought by someone that I despise, so my peace of mind is now gone. I just don’t like changes! That’s why I like Key West or Captiva Island in Florida: it’s too small to ever be able to change much. So mutts read the freaking memo: NO EMERGENCIES AT NIGHT OR ON WEEKENDS OR ON HOLIDAYS! Capisce? Yeah, yeah, they are all sleeping in my office or most of them. Jackson – he has to know that he is one of my favorite – is sleeping on my feet like I needed that with 90 degrees outside? It is weird though with Jackson. More and more, it seems like Zeus infused some of his personality into Jack. Jack used to be so independent. Now, I cannot move my small toe without him checking me out. First, it scared me. I thought “Wow, he is so glued to my skin that maybe he knows I am going to drop dead one of these days”, but for the time being I am here, so I guess he is just clingier. When he comes with me in the truck now, he has to grab my right arm with his paw, and we hanging there like two idiots paw in hand! I did put some limits though: I do not want him on my lap when I am in my recliner watching TV or reading. Yes, George did it on a daily basis, but it was George, and he was a good 10 lbs. lighter than Jack, and yes it makes a difference. But the thing I really love about Jack is when we go for a walk the two of us, no other dog has ever done that, and it’s the cutest thing ever as long as I don’t wear white. We usually walk along the C&O Canal, and maybe every 100 feet or so, he comes back to me like he suddenly remembered that I was at the other hand of the leash and gives me a hug! Then, he goes back to his power walk, then another hug, and another one….. Do you get the picture?  He is also the one who talks all the time, walking or in the truck, he can’t stop talking, not barking talking. And then, he has a great sense of humor. Just earlier, he was trying to get into the garage with me to go for a ride, and I got mad at him for trying, and I told him “Jackson, back. No way” then since the words did not seem to register with him, I got mad and told him “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you understand English when I had spoken everything before in French?  He looked at me like “Seriously? Are you for real?” This is my Jack. Then, when we go to bed, which is more like Noah’s Ark than a real bed, he snuggles with me, and pushes any book or Ipad out of the way if I even had the thought that I wanted to read without first scratching his ears. Kids you read them stories to put them to sleep. Jack? I have to scratch his ears, and soon he will be snoring, and bothering Charlie the cat who sleeps on the pillow next to me and has that look in his eyes like “How vile can they be?” and stretches as much as he can to show that the pillow is his, no mutts allowed on it!

The other ones are not that needy, and everyone will find his or her spot on my bed like parts of a perfect puzzle which will break into pieces by 5 am. I do have to recognize one thing: the mutts are not into slobbering kisses, just snuggling, except Maia, but Maia being my perfect Maia, her kisses are as light as a butterfly.

Last night, Lola woke me up, standing by my bed with her ball in her mouth, panting in my face, and her eyes saying “Come on Mom, I can’t sleep…. Just one time, please…..” It was 2:15 am, and looking at her eyes, I smiled, got up, took my flash light, and the two of us went outside to play ball. The remaining mutts were sound asleep and oblivious of their Mom’s insomnia! Our only spectators were some incredulous deer looking at each other and wondering if we were for real.

Of course, it was not one. I know my Lola…. The “one only” was just to get my sorry butt out of bed but I knew and she knew that it was going to be more than just one! Still fresh in my memory the tribute the mutt’s Grandmother gave to her late dog, Gavel.  When I learned he was sick again with cancer, I thought, I wished that once, just once, if there was any miracle, it should be for Gavel who went through so much with a big grin on his beautiful face.  So Lola and I played ball for Lola, but we played for Gavel as well, who is now pain free over the rainbow. And Lola, being Lola, it was always “one more Mom, one more!”

March sucks! The weather sucks, and the only good thing about March is the Mutts’ birthday. When I say “mutts”, I hope that everyone knows by now that it’s just a gentle nickname for my bunch but that they have the most amazing background and pedigree, and that they are in fact pure and perfect Labrador Retrievers.

My Mutts turned 4 on March 21^st! So, I guess they are now out of puppyhood on the paper! Of course, it was a bitter sweet birthday since one of them was missing, but I could not not have a birthday present for him as well, my George, my beautiful,  beautiful boy with always a big grin on his face. We put his picture on the table, next to the chickens, the toys, and the cream of wheat cake!

Of course, despite of everything, Jackson managed to get a bite at the cream of wheat before everyone else, and Sophie, being Sophie; she managed to get two toys: hers and George’s. She looked at me with them in her mouth…. Funny she had picked the two squirrels ones, I wonder if there is a message there from Sophie the Hunter!

My blog suffered from neglect in the past few months, and yes I received emails wondering where I had disappeared. I am around, but my fingers were frozen, or should I say my brain was numbed. I am the one who usually gets up in the morning with so many sentences already formed in my brain that my fingers sometimes are not fast enough. These months, every time I wrote, it was so painful, like overdue homework that I must have a dozen or more of unfinished articles. My heart was not in it. For the first time in my life, I could not let go of one of my dogs. I lost many furry companions but George’s death left me raw and numb.

Don’t get me wrong. I am enjoying every minute of the Mutts ‘life yes, even at 2:15 am, but with blurry eyes. I did not get cataract surgery today, just a clear mind, and it’s now time to move on. Zeus’Corner is going to come to life pretty soon, and for all the George, Zeus, Pouch, and Gavel in the world, I want to be there, and help!

Mutts, Mommy is home!

Dominique

Since Zoe’s TPLO surgery, she blossomed into a Diva. She took over my office, since she is not supposed to jump onto anything, and Zoe being Zoe, she has always managed until now to be more in the air than on our good old planet. She perfected the art of jumping in the air, four legs up. Of course, sometimes, the landing is not the one she had expected, but she always looked more like a doe than a dog. Now that the reality hit her, and that she needs to be on the ground with no sofas around, she decided she could be more demanding on everything. She screams at my door, that I will need to repaint since she also perfected the art of scratching the wood with her nails, I come. What does Zoe want? It varies. Yes, sometimes, it’s the obvious and she needs to go out to do her business, but it could be a various range of reasons. What is going to be? Request # 6?  Tummy scratched? Yes indeed if I open the door and find her on her back, her four legs up, request # 6 is the one. Or is it Request # 9 which is “I want play sit and stay with those green beans I like!” Keep in mind that these requests can happen at any time of the day or night! Zoe is demanding! Am I creating a monster right now?

For over the first two years of their life, I lost my sleep, and never managed to get more than two or three hours in a row since the mutts wanted to go out to do their business at any time. My under eyes bags have their names written all over. My vet used to tell me “let them scream!” Yeah, right! So my options were: “stay awake and let them scream”, or “get up, put them out, and go back to sleep”. I chose # 2 anytime of the night because you see, if I let them scream long enough, then the screams/barking becomes howling, and they know it, once they howl I am there in a split second. Are they spoiled? Yes! Do I regret anything? Nope! Not a thing. Just a small token to pay in comparison of what they brought into my life: joy, love, happiness.

Anyway, last evening, Zoe was half asleep when I tried to make her go outside. It was raining, She just stopped at the door, looked at me like “Are you kidding? It’s wet!”, and decided to go right back to her bed in my office. Sure enough, at 2:30 am, Diva Zoe decided she needed to pee, but when you are a Diva you have to be picky where you pee. It has to be the right spot. So here I am with a flash light, being dragged all over the yard by Zoe until she finally managed to find the right spot. Just at that precise minute, all the mutts crossed the yard in front of me going after something, a shadow the size of a big raccoon that did not stop to say hello to me!

When we finally got up this morning, they ate their breakfast as usual, then while counting the supplements they have, fish oil, Cosequin for Zoe, Lola and Maia, and cranberry pills for Maia, I got the cream cheese out, and started the distribution of the caps. Where was Sophie? Sophie knows the pack order, and she was still on the couch playing with a wet toy and growling at anyone coming close. The wet toy was actually a dead squirrel. Screaming bloody hell, I took the squirrel out, and no, it won’t have a ceremony the way we were doing it when my daughters were little and we were giving eulogy to every single dead squirrel killed in front of our house. When I came back, what could I have expected from Jackson? He swallowed all the supplements, and went on his couch with the cream cheese.

I love those mutts to death, but I was so ready to murder someone this morning. I, then, called my vet to ask her if Sophie could have caught any disease, and she started to ask me if the squirrel was still warm? Are you kidding me? I knew she was right but still. It’s early in the morning, I did not even have my cup of tea yet, and you want me to touch that thing? Yes, yes, yes, the darn thing was still warm!

Sophie, I love you. I love our energy, your mischievous attitude, your beautiful intelligent eyes, your happy tails, I love all of you girl, but next time…. Can you just go after your stuffed toys instead the live ones, pleaaaase? I don’t want to have PETA knocking at my door!

Jack…. I have nothing to say to you. I am still offended by your vile actions this morning, and one day, just one day in your life, Jackson, give me a freaking break!

Your Mom, Dominique

I miss Barbara…..

This morning, it just hit me how much I miss her. I still remember the last time I saw her at her office. I was in the lobby, and I saw her coming towards us, Maia and me, a huge smile on her face.  There are smiles and smiles; this one was in her eyes as well. Last time I saw her alive. She was supposed to come for dinner a few days later. She never made it.

Today, I know she would be the only one to get me. We were not clones, but very similar when it was regarding our pets. I forgot to mention that she was the dermatologist for my mutts first, then later on, she became a friend.

I remember one time; we were talking in her office and crying our hearts out while she was telling me that one of her beloved dogs was put to sleep. Her husband came in and had a look of panic when he saw tears running down our cheeks, and she said: “I was talking about “his” passing.” The look on his face was precious even through my tears like trying to find any possible exit from a place where he did not want to be, like if we were aliens.  He was not much into dogs, he was just married to a dogs person….. I realized that after Barb left us.

It’s just moments I remember with Barb, always linked to our beloved four legged buddies! One time, one of hers escaped and she took her bicycle and went through her neighborhood screaming his name, and concluded that the neighbors must have thought she was crazy, like she cared….. And her husband replied: “Don’t worry, they already knew you are crazy.”

She got me, and I got her, and today she would have understood my sadness mixed with love, and laughter. Three months ago today, on a Tuesday, George was put to sleep, and sometimes like this morning, I swear the darn dog is still around. While I was giving the mutts their vitamins, I realized I took one too many and I could almost see George jumping on the counter to get his. He was always the last one to get it because he knew that he was going to get more cream cheese….. I think about all the walks we did not take, all the bumpers I did not throw…. I also wonder if he did not know in his own way that he was not going to be around that long, and that’s why he was so clingy. He never missed an occasion of sitting on my lap, or greeting me with his big smile. Did he know something I did not?

Today is also Maia’s birthday, and we celebrated it with a long walk along the canal with her girlfriend Lola. It was such a lovely and warm morning that they were allowed to go swimming in the canal. Maia has always been more of a follower regarding water, but still, they had fun, and of course, the last dip that Lola took was in the mud, so I went back to the truck with black and chocolate labs!

So, yes it is a bitter sweet day. Tonight, it will be roasted chicken night for Maia’s birthday as well as like every 4^th of every month to remember George and his favorite dish. Most people would shake their heads thinking there is something wrong with me. That’s why I miss Barb today. She is probably the only one who did not need words to make me feel understood.

Barb was also the only one that I trusted 100 % for anything related to animals. Yes, she was a vet, but as a dogs Mom, she had taken before all the decisions that I took or will take, and her opinions were free of the dollar sign. She just did not care. She always wanted to do what was the best for them, not for her or for me, and I followed her path, because it was mine as well.

She had a way with animals that no other vets I met ever had or even were close to. She was treating them as living beings, it did not matter for her that they had four legs and a tail! There was no inferiority or superiority, just differences… I never have heard her doing puppy talk or kitty talk with them.

My last vivid vision of her is in her exam room with Maia. She was talking to me and Maia must have felt neglected because suddenly she lifted her paw to grab Barb’s arm and attention. The smile she had at that minute was one I put in a box, and I will always open the box carefully, in order not to let it escape: it was a moving smile made of love, care, fondness, tenderness with a tiny bit of surprise.

Today, I greedily open Barb’s smile box to warm up my day. It was the only medication that helped me going through the day.

Dominique

In Muttstown, when it rains, it pours, it cannot be a gentle sweet rain, it has to be a deluge. Maybe I should feel special about it.

It had to happen with Zoe right? Zoe who is the laziest one of the bunch. Her idea of exercise is watching TV on her couch! So, when she started limping and not putting one of her back legs on the floor, and after checking out her paw, I thought maybe the leg felt asleep in the position she was. Some time ago, it happened to me, I was waking up, and suddenly I got that slap on my face: my hand was totally dead and just fell on me like an intruder. Weird feeling ever!

It got worst on Veterans’ Day weekend. I think the mutts refused to read the memo about no emergencies on weekends and Thursdays where my vet doesn’t work. Zoe and I went to the Frederick Animal Emergency Clinic – I could probably drive there blindfolded these days! -, and the news came as a shock: she ruptured her cranial cruciate ligament, and I got these news before with Zeus, so I know the deal! Surgery is the answer: TPLO, and I am not going to go through the details, but at the end, she will not be able to go through security at any airport without screaming metal detectors: she will have a plaque with 6 screws, and if it goes like it did with Zeus, a year later, we had to do the second knee, since once they have the surgery, they have a tendency to favor the good leg which doesn’t stay good for too long!

So here I am again, in my office, while Zoe is resting. It’s the 3^rd day after the surgery, and between her morphine patch and the meds, she is mostly out except when it’s meals time. Hey, she is a lab. What do you expect?

But nothing comes easy with Zoe who refuses to go to the bathroom anywhere else than in her own yard… So, the trip back home after the surgery was one to remember. She bloody screamed the whole 30 minutes…. She needed to pee…. She did not go for 24 hours so you can imagine her level of discomfort! But even with that level of discomfort when I took her in the yard on a leash, she looked at me like: “You gotta be kidding! I need my privacy…. Over my dead body that I will pee while you are watching!”, and then she went….. Words, words, words….

How could she have ruptured her ligament is a mystery for me: jumping off the couch? Getting on the couch? Jumping on the couch when it’s meals time?  Another answer that I will never get…. When I talked to my vet about it, her comment was: “Oh man!”….. Yep, you are darn right, I need a break from veterinarians. It’s not that I don’t like them but can I go a month without seeing one, pretty please? That’s my request for Santa this year: a two-month-break!

Zoe cannot be with her siblings, therefore the siblings and the not siblings ones are not happy to see my office’s door closed, and kind of redecorated the exterior of the door with saliva and muddy paws prints. Quite an art work!

And Zoe sleeps…. Sleeps…. Sleeps…. I almost did not put the E-collar on her because she seemed so good, but then I read so many horror stories online that she got it. Better traumatizing her for 15 minutes than having her going after the incision and the staples.

But Zoe being Zoe, she waits to go to the bathroom until it gets extremely uncomfortable for her, and her timing is always in the middle of the night! I can drag her sorry ass outside as often as I can, she won’t do a thing until she can barely hold it. So, yes, 2:20 am and 4:45 were the time where my Zoe decided it was the time!

So far so good though, the incision looks real good, and yes it’s a bit swollen since she did not tolerate well the ice packs, but for the time being, we are on the right path….

Zoe’s Christmas present – I am not sure she is really going to enjoy it – is going to be 10 sessions of treadmill under water…. But the choice of the present is not an option!

So Santa Baby please, the only thing I want for Christmas  are good  health for my girls and for the mutts, and everyone I care for…. Am I getting too greedy? Santa Baby……

Dominique

After George passed away, the household went into chaos, and I was the general manager of it! Everyone was mourning George one way or another, and I was in charge of it except for Sophie who, decided a long time ago, that she was the second in charge, and was absolutely ready to destitute me of my title, and grab it.  She wanted to be the manager of that specific chaos. After all, she was the one who lost the most on September 4^th.

A month later, the mutts remembered George with a roasted chicken – his all-time favorite! -  Changes in the pack order, changes in attitude, except I have to say Zoe, who is right now in one of her blonde moments! The mutts have a huge 2 gallon bowl of water in the kitchen. In the last few days, the bowl became alive, and ended up most of the time in the middle of the tiled – Thank God! – Family room, with of course spilled water all over.  Lola was the main suspect, since she was next to the bowl the first time it happened, but I am happy to report that she was not implicated at all in the crime! Zoe, blonde Zoe is the guilty one! For whatever reason, Zoe decided that she could not go to the kitchen anymore, to drink, to eat, to try to destroy the kitchen rug, nope! But she still needed to drink, right? So a girl gotta do what a girl gotta do, and I saw my Zoe dragging with her front leg the bowl to the family room, then, resting for a second, and started drinking. This is just a Zoe moment like we are experiencing dozens in the house!

These past few weeks, I needed to make sense of the George’s death non sense, and therefore, learned a lot about Lyme. Yes, I could have done that earlier, but I just stopped beating myself up. It was too late for that.

Yes, despite of the Lyme shot, despite of FrontLine, he got infected without any signs of it until it was too late. As a friend put it not long ago: “Maybe consider yourself lucky, you could have lost more than one!” Yeah, thank you, like if I hadn’t thought about that! Seriously!

So first, let’s stop to blame Bambi for it. The deer carry the deer ticks like birds, squirrels, foxes, raccoons, groundhogs. But for the tick to get infected with Lyme, it has to first meet a MOUSE! I am sure everyone knows that but me, but if there is another clueless human being on this planet,  maybe this column will be useful! So, my title should be: “Blame it on Tom and Jerry!”

Then, the sweet little tick goes on with its life, after spending part of its journey on a deer mouse, and goes to see the wild word from the perspective of someone else, like a doe or a squirrel, then, the darn thing decided that George was a cozy home. Yes, that tick died, but another thing I did not know, it takes up to 48 hours for a tick to die with Frontline, and it can take only 24 hours to infect a dog.

George was not lucky. Something else could have helped: the heartworm test, that my previous and retired vet disgarded by telling me since you give HeartGuard to your dogs, it’s not really necessary. He just forgot to mention that the specific test will also test your dog for Lyme, and other ticks related diseases. So, please do this test every year, no matter what, no matter if you think you are doing everything right for your four-legged one. You need to have this test done.

Even my new vet told me right away that she wanted to test the mutts, but their annual checkup was close by so we decided to do everything at the same time.

So, to recapitulate, here is what I want you to know:

-          Vaccinate your dog for Lyme.

-          Use ticks collars or products which kill ticks fast (I am using Parastar Plus, which kills ticks within an hour, and is, on top everything else four times cheaper than many other products).

-          Read every notice of the product you are using. Some of these very expensive products mention that the product takes care of the ticks for 2 weeks and 4 weeks for the fleas, so you would  have to reapply it every 2 weeks if you want your dog to stay protected.

-          Do the heartguard test every year, no matter what.

-          And last but not least: GET RID OF THE MICE! I had some in my garage, and could not get rid of them until I decided to try a few months ago those plug in ultra sounds against mice, and let me tell you, it works.

Jackson has been stalking me for the last half an hour. Labs come with two pre-set alarms:

-          Meal time

-          Play time

And there is no snooze button!

This morning, my neighbor was at my door which of course made the mutts go berserk. It takes some effort to come to me. You have to drive even if you live next door except if you have a death wish. I am lucky enough to have the beltway by my driveway, I mean not exactly since it’s a small country road with no sidewalks and a 30 mile-an-hour speed limit, but who cares, right, about the speed limit? So rush hour I think drivers have vision problem and see 60 instead of 30! Anyway, I was just trying to give you the whole picture. Then, after facing the traffic, you have to turn into my driveway, which is long and could be quite treacherous if you don’t pay attention to the critters around.

Anyway, I am glad to report, my neighbor made it to my door without any casualty!  I haven’t seen him since the power outage last June. That’s how far we are from each other! He came to ask me if everything was ok, since he has not heard me scream “George” in the backyard for quite some time. He doesn’t even hear me scream anymore! You see, I told you, my house was quiet now, I am not lying! Even my next door neighbor, who lives a good 500 feet away from me, noticed it! I explained to him that George is not part of the pack anymore, and I did that without crying! Of course, as soon as I closed the door, I broke down, and the mutts were like: “Again? We did not do anything!”

I did realize something though with George’s death. I do not want to be happy anymore! I am not kidding. I am going to try to find stuff that makes me unhappy, no matter what. You see, each time, everything is good like it was at the beginning of September: mutts, daughters as well as my new venture which is starting to take shape despite of a marketing lady I hired and who managed to be so lame that I could have spent the money on shoes for instance, I was happy, and at the same time than being happy, I was apprehensive of what could happen. It’s a regular thing in my life, and probably in many – I don’t think I am that special! – but each time the river is quiet on my side of the world, suddenly rapids happen and take away everything.  This time, the rapids took away my George, and even though this morning, I was happy not to have him around when I spilled on the kitchen floor the doxycycline pills for Lola because his nose would have been all over the floor, far before me, I miss the darn dog in every minute of the day. I just don’t cry that much now. Niagara Falls is turning dry! Global warming or George?

At one point, I thought the mutts were going to call 911 to let them know their Mom was nuts! But we are now settling down. Yes at the beginning, it was like in the movie “Something gotta give”, where I always thought Diane Keaton was exaggerating with her crying over Jack Nicholson. Not anymore! I was the same basket case than she was:  crying at a paw print I knew was his, or any moment on the day where his absence was screaming out loud in my head.

Someone told me some time ago, that when we are getting older, we are getting stronger. Ok, she was a child psychologist, so what did she know about older beings? My answer to her was: “How many times do you think a heart can be broken? It doesn’t get better when you get older because all the old cracks in your heart reappear with the new crack and remind you they are there too!”

Don’t get me wrong though. In the pack, I think some enjoy the absence of rambunctious George. Maia is not shy anymore to get her vitamin in the morning the way she was it before when George thought I could be confused between two black heads and that he could get his vitamin twice! Jack’s motto now is: “You belong to me! I am not sharing!”. Sophie is the one who is still missing her brother.  When she goes to the backyard, she just disappears and when I went to check on her, she was by the fence, behind bushes, having uncovered their den  - George’s and Sophie’s! -. They had buried bones, carrots – yuck! – and toys just in case of bad days I guess! I recognized a toy that George had always in his mouth for a while and then it disappeared! The other mutts don’t care about the “den”, just Sophie. She digged part of it, and is now still keeping it safe. The good thing though is that she spends more and more time away from it. Do you know any lab who could resist a Frisbee? She sure can’t! Muttstown is just quieter these days!

Seriously! Paging Caramel’s balls…. He needs them back badly! Hey, the poor beast has been in rehab with Prozac locked in a room with me as the only living being coming to see him, feeding him, giving him his Prozac paste in his ears, scratching his chin, rubbing his tummy, and he is so ready to see the world now, or at least to rediscover the house.

Since he has been a good boy, and had peed in his box for now over 60 days, I tried to keep the door open with a gate preventing any mutt to go eat his food or his walnut crushed litter! I saw him, slowly going by the gate, and lying down in front of it, looking at the new horizon in front of him. Satisfied that it was a move in the good direction, I went back to my office to suddenly hear a minute later screeching, hissing noises in his room. Sure enough, Mean and Meaner, aka Charlie and Milou had invaded Caramel’s place! One was holding him on his back while the other was eating his food – which is by the way the same food that they have too! – I kicked their sorry butts out of the room, closed the door, and tried to coax Caramel to come out of under the bed.  His yellow eyes were showing so much distrust and disgust in me: “How could you do that? Allowing the two beasts in MY room, eating MY food without even spilling it all over like I do!”

Nothing did it, Caramel the Cat stayed under the bed, and is still there when I went to check on him this morning. I suspect that he sneaked out in the middle of the night to eat and drink, since food and water were splashed all over, but his last message was pretty eloquent: he peed in front of his always clean litter box. “Do you get me Lady? I am pissed! My space was invaded because of you!”, and here went two months of hard labor and TLC to make him as normal as possible.

Caramel is submissive, scared of his own shadow, and never stood up to Charlie and Milou, who, because of that, just took advantage of him. So, he needs his balls back, badly! I could imagine the faces of Milou and Charlie if, suddenly, Caramel stands up, and goes after them. He doesn’t know it, but I bet that my two monsters would be scared to death and would run away, but it won’t happen!  I don’t think I can really chemically induce the feeling of having the balls back, so what am I going to do now with my darn cat? After that episode, there is no way that Jessica can take him back and take the chance that he would consider her brand new second couch his cat litter again?

Since his balls are long gone, my only way now with him is going to be to alternate jail time between him, and the other two! They have their own room too….. That’s what happen when kids leave the nest! You have rooms for your cats. For the dogs, it would be useless since the only room they consider is the one where I am, and let me tell you my bathroom is quite crowded now in the morning when I take a shower. They get so upset when the door is closed, and since George is gone, I did not have the heart to close any door on them. It’s good that the weather is cool, because these days if I have to go to do some grocery shopping, I have 4 mutts in my truck. Lola, Maia and Sammie don’t enjoy the sardines feeling, but the mutts don’t mind. A weird thing happened as a matter of fact, mutts speaking, they used to sleep all over in my bedroom: some on the bed, and some in their own beds. That was before. Since George is gone, they recreated the way they used to sleep as puppies, on top of each other, or close to each other. Of course, they recreated the closeness thing on my bed, but they are so entwined into each other now when they sleep that I still have some space for my feet, and even for my whole body!

For Caramel, tonight, the house will be his while the two others will stay in their room, and maybe, just maybe, I will have three balls free happy cats in my house….. Maybe……